INTERNAL ENSLAVEMENT part 1 - "What constitutes slavery in M/s context?"

So, I am starting a series of articles on the concept of "Internal Enslavement" (IE) that is described on the website http://www.enslavement.org.uk. I find the ideas presented in the essays on this website very thought provoking and inspiring, and as a submissive D/s lifestyler I can relate to a lot mentioned there.

Some background about the internet resource that I will be using for the series of articles: The IE website was initiated by the Fetlife user Tanos in 1997. He is an M/s lifestyler since many years, living in the UK with his long-term female slave mia. Tanos has written many essays on the dynamics of Master/slave and is still active with doing so. Until 2009 he published them on the www.enslavement.org.uk website together with his former long-term slave lili who also wrote many essays. So the website presents the Dominant's and the submissive's perspectives. They also present essays of other people who are active D/s lifestylers.

Tanos' "newer" writings since 2009 (after he and lili had split up) are published on the website http://www.ownership-possession.com. It is a highly interesting resource for D/s and M/s lifestylers as well. Background info you can find on http://www.tanos.org.uk/.
So you see this man is quite active with publically promoting M/s lifestyle and his ideas about it. I don't know Tanos in person, and the reason that I am doing some articles inspired by the Internal Enslavement website's essays is simply that I am fascinated by them. I am convinced that they can hold up with the reality of an M/s relationship in real life. They also have a quite scientific approach to it, not just because psychology plays a role. They say "We believe it is essential that theories of ownership are tested by comparison with the real lives of slaves and submissives". I specifically like this approach, because it is grounded in a healthy realism and not a "D/s bliss ideology" that might more of an illusion than grounded in the world of real relationships as they can be. A lot of the information given on the IE website deals with M/s and personality which in my opinion is very important to put focus on when you want to conduct a long-term successful M/s relationship.

So, first of all, what is "Internal Enslavement?" (IE)
Some keywords to "frame" the term would be "Master/slave" ... "Total Power Exchange" ... "Psychology" ... "Analysis" ... The concept of "Internal Enslavement" deals with the question if a radical consensual slavery is possible in an M/s context that is based on the pillars of safety, sanity, consensual and mutual trust, respect and commitment, in the physical, emotional and mental area of relationship. According to Tanos the answer is yes. Radical consensual slavery is possible (-> TPE = Total Power Exchange). It is a goal you can work towards to step by step, and you can make more and more achievements towards this goal. Tanos also believes that there are certain techniques derived from psychological knowledge that help with the "examination of a female slave's thoughts, emotions and past experiences to establish and maintain a solid and inescapable state of ownership".

In this article, I decided to focus on the question "What constitutes slavery in M/s context?".
In the IE concept, there is one plain simple answer to this: The submissive needs to be a "natural slave" in order to make an intimate M/s relationship work long-term for the sake of happiness and satisfaction of the Master and the slave. Before going into some details, I want to cite Tanos former slave lilli. She wrote about her relationship with her Master: "He changed my life in ways too numerous to mention and i owe much of my inner strength and happiness to him. For that he has my respect and undying loyalty." I think this puts in a nutshell what many submissives wish to achieve in their D/s relationship. Maybe some of you reading this article and can very much relate to this. A slave having this feeling about her Master must be truly happy and not need much else in her life.

We can read "To be a Natural Slave - to be a slave by nature - implies that the individual has some inherent, innate or inborn character trait which predisposes them to slavery in some way." Tanos believes that if a submissive is a "Natural Slave", there are certain techniques derived from psychological knowledge that help with the "examination of a female slave's thoughts, emotions and past experiences to establish and maintain a solid and inescapable state of ownership" (-> TPE = Total Power Exchange). So to speak, "enslavement" in M/s context is a process of purposely influencing and occupying/possessing more and more of the "inside" of a submissive (--> "internal" enslavement).

A huge aspect of determining what constitutes the being of a "natural slave" is that they seem to show a lover level of every-day "Reactance" (psychological concept first described by Brehm in 1966). Reactance is an emotional reaction to mentally or really experienced restriction of freedom. It is an emotional reaction that you could call "inner rebellion" in order to reestablish personal freedom; hence it leads to actions of resistance, struggle and fight until the restricted freedom is re-achieved again. In case the freedom cannot be restored there is a typical turning point that is described as "reaching the peak of reactance": giving in, trying to settle with the situation that seems inescapable ... when it is dramatic it can lead to depression etc. If You want to read about "Reactance" in greater detail, I advise you these two resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactance_%28psychology%29 and http://www.enslavement.org.uk/reactance

On http://www.enslavement.org.uk/natural we can read:

"Submissives may experience lower levels of total Reactance (roughly stress), when their freedom is restricted, compared to when they are free; and that they also don't experience the depression and low performance which psychologists observe with "normal" people in psychologically defined helplessness."

"We can go further and use Reactance to define a type of slave: a Natural Slave is a slave for whom slavery can be better than freedom, since they have the capacity to experience less Reactance when living in that condition, without the depression normally associated with Helplessness. Thus they are suited to slavery by their nature - by some inherent quality of their psychological makeup."

"Even though Natural Slaves in this IE sense may experience slavery as a positive experience, other factors in their environment may prevent this. Notably, if the Master behaves in a destructive way, ignoring fundamental needs, then the Helplessness may become negative rather than positive for the slave."

This is why I brought up the pillars safety, sanity, consensual and mutual trust, respect and commitment in the beginning.

We can also read an explanation of what mechanism could be at work in an M/s relationship that is based on informed consent (next to safety, sanity, mutual respect, trust and commitment). Keyword: "Paradoxical Gratitude / Stockholm Syndrome"

"Such phenomena can be seen as" survival strategies to cope with defeat. In particular, there may be a sexual dimension when the captor is male and the captive female, since the female's reproductive success may be best served by accepting the situation. The instinctive tendency to find captors sexually attractive if they provide for the captive's needs would facilitate this acceptance. This may be the root cause of the Enslavement process we observe in IE between Masters and female slaves."
(quote taken from http://www.enslavement.org.uk/natural)

The conclusion Tanos is drawing is this:
"This would suggest that Internal Enslavement may only be possible with Natural Slaves, since the trust and intimacy (in the Transactional Analysis sense) that forms the emotional bondage would be inhibited if the helpless state were destructive rather than positive for the subject." (quote taken from http://www.enslavement.org.uk/natural)

I hope that with this opening article of a series on Internal Enslavement i could help you to work yourself into the backgrounds of the concept and understand the basic approach to it.
In the next article I want to expand on one of the psychological techniques that can help with the "examination of a female slave's thoughts, emotions and past experiences to establish and maintain a solid and inescapable state of ownership" (Tanos): Transactional Analysis.

I would like to thank the IE website owner Tanos and the authors who published their essays on the website http://www.enslavement.org.uk/ for their awesome work and interesting thoughts on the dynamics of a Master/slave relationship.


Written by Mirjam Munro, July 2011