Chapter 11: The Laying On Of Hands

An important part of the process of behavioural adjustment is the release of the student from the tyranny of self-concern. I bring this about by providing opportunities to endure discomfort and pain which serve as a distraction from lesser, more existential, matters. My students sometimes report heightened pleasure during some of these sessions. This is not, however, the purpose behind them. The purpose is to create in the student a separation from abstract concerns of self by focussing the mind on concrete matters.

To this end, I start and end each student's day with the administration of some punishment or other. Sometimes this has been earned (my students soon discover that there are many ways in which they can transgress and so earn retribution) but, equally, on occasions it is arbitrarily applied.

In line with my usual practice, then, I found myself seated in the room at the rear of my house, looking out at the bright morning sunshine and the glowing colours of an English summer garden with the largely naked Miss Amanda Tusker draped across my lap, the globes of her buttocks presented pleasingly for my attention. Since the girls had started wearing their maid's uniforms, the only time I was certain which I was dealing with was when they undressed and, in Amanda's case, I could see her lower heels and the lack of padding in her corselet.

I say largely naked in two senses. She was both mostly naked (she still wore her corselet but her drawers had been lowered) and large in her nakedness. Although I feed my students adequately, I did not imagine that her diet would sustain the bulk she carried when first she presented herself to me. I was wrong. She was still wearing her maid's corselet and hose but she had been stripped of her uniform. She still wore the hood with its doll face and slightly startled expression. She was about to undergo a paddling for a failure by her or her sister to complete the morning's laundry. As she spread her weight face down across my lap, I wondered if I would need to arrange for greater padding in her sister's costume to maintain the illusion of identicalness.

I had chosen a round leather paddle as the most suitable on this occasion. The paddle delivers a thick, widespread sensation of pain, quite unlike, say, the sharp, almost metallic sensation of being caned.

"Hands!" I ordered.

Amanda knew that she would be held while being punished and set her hands behind her back. I gripped her wrists with my right hand, pressing her down against my thighs. With my left I stroked, patted and pressed her buttocks, assessing how best to apply the punishment. I picked up the paddle and began.

Slowly slapping the thick leather down on alternate buttocks was not initially painful. Amanda wriggled on my lap, her buttocks and thighs rippling with each blow. As the strength of the blows steadily increased, the level of pain increased, the pinkness of her buttocks began to redden and her struggles increased. Although the gag muffled her cries to a series of inarticulate grunts, it was clear, from the way that she was shaking her head, that the blows were causing the required response. Although a cropping or whipping is useful for many punishments, I must confess to taking pleasure in the physical sensation of a struggling young lady across my lap. The erection was, I suppose, unfortunate but inevitable. Amanda, her attention focussed on the repeated impact of the paddle, appeared not to notice it.

After twenty heavy strokes, I could feel the heat of pain in her buttocks with my hands. Her own struggles had weakened as she had become disoriented, lost in sensations of pain. I released her. She stood and curtsied as I require at the end of each punishment. Normally I require my students to thank me for the benefit of correction but, of course, with her hood's plug gag so firmly in place, she was unable to do so.

I told her to dress and watched as she became transformed once more to the appearance she shared with her sister. She curtsied once more when I told her to return to work and disappeared just as Estelle presented herself for the same treatment.

Beatings of various descriptions form an important part of the adjustment programme. I had imagined (correctly, as I later discovered) that corporal punishment had been a feature of the girls' education prior to my arrival on the scene. I believed that its continued use would benefit from drawing a direct line back to their earlier formative experiences. Of course, such punishments did not represent the entirety of the measures that I employed, the wide range of behavioural adjustments needed meant that an equally broad range of training approaches have to be used. Even so I needed to ensure that punishment and restraint formed an important part of the girls' daily routine.

One example is in the area of posture. I had noticed that, in common with many other young people, both girls were slack in the way that they carried themselves, slouching when they walked and sprawling when they sat. To overcome this I use a combination of measures. Of course the process of corseting helps. In addition to the corselet that the girls wear during their daily maid service, they each have a period wearing an outfit developed at my request by the remarkable combination of Madame Genoux (an expert corsetiere) and an expert leather worker of my acquaintance.

The outfit in question is a long-skirted, high-necked dress in thick leather. It incorporates a boning scheme of Madame Genoux's to hold the waist and to keep the body straight. It includes a similarly boned arrangement for the neck which holds the head still and erect. The skirt is tightly laced at the rear and the boning of the corset extends over and below the hips to allow the wearer only the shortest of steps. The upper parts of the sleeves are attached to the bodice so that movement of the arms is only possible below the elbow. In combination, the constraints placed on the wearer encourage a general improvement in posture by requiring considerable attention to be paid to every movement.

The dress also had the amusing feature of openings for the breasts and buttocks, allowing appropriate punitive attention to be applied in the event of the required care in movement not being demonstrated.

As well as providing a physical restraint on the wearer's posture, the garment added to the set of psychological conditioning processes that I employ. For the wearer, there is an increased emphasis on the fact that they have very little control over their appearance and their movements. This adds to the sense of self-effacement that I wish to inculcate. The fact that they can see the positive effect on others' views of them (certainly my own response to the girls so dressed has been encouragingly priapic) adds to the positive feed-back that they gain from accepting that which is done to them.

Other measures in my programme are designed to combine this sense of self-effacement with increased self-esteem gained from a realisation of being valued for the performance of a service or duty valued by others. Too often in our society, self-esteem seems to be driven from a sense of being rather than achieving. We see this in the quest for celebrity and the idea that celebrity for its own sake is of value. This concept I try to reverse by providing the opportunity for my students to be of service in ways that are entirely independent of any personal attribute that the student may possess. To this end I have formed an association with a small group possessed of highly specialised interests.

One of the features of the New Victorian landscape has been a revival in the many and rich forms available for the expression of sexual desire and gratification. Fortunately the institutionalised prudery normally associated with the first Victorian era has not been seen in our own times and the range of clubs and associations celebrating, practicing and promoting obscure sexual practices is wide. Many put this down to the obviously loving and physical relationship between our monarch and her consort, Prince Albert the ninth of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha[1]. Some claim that the Prince has been a breath of fresh air to the institution of the monarchy. I would agree that his promotion of British industrial interests has been most beneficial but I still feel that the informality he has encouraged at court is to be deprecated. When Music Hall performers are dedicating performances of "You Can Call Me Al" to the Royal Family, you have to wonder if the boundaries of respect are being stretched too far.

There are those that believe my own methodology owes much to a personal interest in sado-masochistic scenarios. I say only that I use that which I perceive to work. Because of my work and the interest that it arouses, I have found myself in contact with many on the outer fringes of human sexual interest and occasionally I have been able to turn their enthusiasms to my own advantage.

Gordon Beckwith, the founder of the National Forum for Forniphilia, is one contact that I have found invaluable. The son of a master cabinet-maker, Gordon was brought up appreciating the fine lines of classic English furniture. His enthusiasm became a fixation through his adolescence and now the lines of a Hepplewhite chair or the fine marquetry and joinery of a George Seddon piece are as arousing to him as another man might find the glimpse of an ankle beneath the hem of a skirt or a flagrantly bared breast. But, to give the man his due, he decided in middle age that this fixation was unhealthy and sought treatment from an associate of mine at the Fritz Freleng Institute.

The cure was only partial and in some ways it is not a particularly good advertisement for the techniques of my colleagues. Nevertheless Gordon has embarked enthusiastically on a new life in which he is determined to fulfil the desires that his therapist has convinced him are his right. Now he recognises the potential for sexual interaction with women but he has not lost his love of furniture. He now combines the two desires and has found that there are many (well, some) like him, who enjoy the objectification of women as pieces of furniture.

(Actually, Gordon, in his own defence, claims that he is not interested in the objectification of women; his enthusiasm is for the sexualisation of objects, but it is probably not worth the quibble.)