On Wed, 16 Feb 2005, David Rodemaker wrote: > With equal respect, without some guidance most people are not credible > sources of information about their own psychology in general - that's why > people to various and sundry trained professionals to help them out with > such matters. Quite so. > Internet discussion groups are one of the worst possible examples you could > have pulled for this. The signal-to-noise ratio of people *actually* in the > Scene vs. those who practice 'eBDSM' is generally high - and even then may > or may not be a representative of individuals in the larger Altsex > community. This is a solid point, and I'm sorry I missed it. > Also keep in mind that 'BDSM' covers three very distinctive groups - B&D, > D/s, and SM. Three different styles of play with often quite different > motivations and results - and also there's a huge range of activity or > intensity within BDSM play. Is it a spanking from your wife or do you a St. > Xavier cross in your bedroom with a single-tail hanging from it? Is this > something occasional to spice up an otherwise vanilla dynamic or are you > talking a 24/7 TPE (Total Power Exchange - i.e. Master/slave) relationship? Er, yes, though I'm not sure how the taxonomy of powerkink is particularly of import. > The antecedents are about as clear as mud. *nods* > An important thing is to differentiate between pathological sadism or > masochism and the sadistic or masochistic identity. Childhood abuse can be > much more reliably linked to PTSD, Disassociative Identity Disorder, and > Borderline Personality Disorder, among other syndromes - there's little > clinical evidence to a BDSM lifestyle being linked to childhood abuse. About as little as there is clinical evidence for DID, the existence of which is still pretty strongly debated, or was last time I checked, sometime in the 1999-2001 area. Not disputing the claim that evidence is weak, mind, just making a sidebar comment. pe