I will be off later this month, bound for London, to be filming and undertaking research for my new work in progress.
For those wanting to see me while I'm over, I will be giving a talk at the Freud Museum London on Tuesday 22nd November from 6.00 pm - 7.40 pm, titled "Sex, Fear and Arousal: Recreating Theresa Berkley's Salon & Presenting the Ki".
DATE: Thursday 22nd November 2022 at 6.00 pm - 7.40 pm
VENUE: Freud Museum London, 20 Maresfield Gardens, London NW3 5SX, UNITED KINGDOM.
NEAREST STATION: Finchley Road
Note the price works out approximately £22 but will appear in Australian dollars as AUD $39. Eventbrite won't allow me to list it in GDP due to my address and bank being Australia, hence it billing in equivalent Australian dollars. Sorry for any inconvenience or confusion as a result.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER:
Anne O Nomis (aka Leonora Weston) is a historian and International expert on Dominance studies, history and art. She is the author of 'The History & Arts of the Dominatrix', and holds a Masters in Comparative Art and Archaeology from UCL. Her home base is Melbourne, Australia, from where she teaches hundreds of students around the world, and annually hosts talks and courses in the UK and Europe.
ABOUT THE VENUEThe Freud Museum London is the final home of Sigmund Freud, as the father of psycholanalysis, with it's centrepiece being the famous psychoanalytic couch alongside Freud's collection of Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Near-Eastern antiquities.
It is located in Hampstead, at 20 Maresfield Gardens, NW3 5SX, London, and a short walk from the Finchley Road station.
RECREATING THERESA BERKLEY'S SALON
For one night only, you can SEE, FEEL and TOUCH (carefully / gently) the equipment of famed female flagellant "Governess" Dominatrix Theresa Berkley, in a recreation of her early 19th Century salon. All the equipment has been reconstructed from historical accounts, by Anne O Nomis, originally for a TV filming on the History of Sex in London.
Theresa Berkley was arguably the most famous Dominatrix (female flagellant 'Governess') in history. She operated in the 1820s, and died in 1836, leaving behind a a Memoirs full of letters from her clients, anonymised, which was unfortunately destroyed. Her spirit and craft was however fortunately captured in historical sources - the Foreword to Mary Wilson, and in a letter by Frederic Hankey to Victorian erotomaniac Henry Spencer Ashbee.
"Her instruments of torture were more numerous than those of any other governess. Her supply of birch was extensive, and kept in water, so that it was always green and pliant: she had shafts with a dozen whip thongs on each of them; a dozen different sizes of cat-o'-nine-tails, some with needle points worked into them; various kinds of thin bending canes; leather straps like coach traces; battledoors, made of thick sole-leather, with inch nails run through to docket, and currycomb tough hides rendered callous by many years flagellation. Holly brushes, furze brushes; a prickly evergreen, called butcher's bush; and during the summer, a glass and China vases, filled with a constant supply of green nettles, with which she often restored the dead to life. Thus, at her shop, whoever went with plenty of money, could be birched, whipped, fustigated, scourged, needle-pricked, half-hung, holly-brushed, furze-brushed, butcher-brushed, stinging-nettled, curry-combed, phlebotomized, and tortured till he had a belly full."
What was different in the 19th Century compared to today? What was the same?
And what does this tell us about sex, about sexuality; and about the differences and continuities across time?
PRESENTING THE KI
Following on from Berkley, Leonora Anne Weston presents on The Ki; a framework which fell out of the BDSM bottoms survey, laying bare the operation and interconnection of sex, fear and arousal.
Weston argues that the dynamic of BDSM both activates and plays with fear and arousal responses. Upon which, self-identifying terms used by BDSMers overlay onto activated responses.
With self-identified "submissive" having strong overlap to Placant; the response of softening, pleasing, sweetening, giving, yielding, and taking pleasure from the pleasure of the Dominant.
With the self-identified "slave" having strong overlap to Thrall; the flight response yoked and into following command and orders, discipline and robota, and given purpose and having a place as a captive slave of the Dominant.
With the self-identified "masochist" (and to a large degree another term - "brat"), having strong overlap to Detorquent, to twist-mend to manipulate to gain advantage; in which in this heightened response state associated with excitement - sensation and intensity substitutes "pain".
The "Detorquent" response is missing from modern day framework, but mistakenly so. It was in the science back in 1920 with Dr W.H.R Rivers, the WWI physician and psychologist who wrote his book 'Instinct and the Unconscious'. River's book laid out 5 danger responses, and within those - we find the "missing" piece that Leonora found in 2021, independently of Rivers, stimulating interest in his work.
Lastly, she discusses the "Acquiescent" response, and the entry to the metaphorical Underworld, which is associated considerably with "sub space". Within BDSM it is associated with self-identified "kinksters" and "kinky surrenderers", but also with all identities able to be taken down into it. It is associated with the bodily response of going floppy, collapse and surrender, in deep acceptance of helplessness to total power of the Other (eg Dominant), quieten, and experience often of leaving the body, floating, flying off - into the universe, the heavenly, an Otherworld. This response is often associated with going into cocoon / shell / second skin, and splitting of spirit from body, in the metaphorical and symbolic transfiguration of the experience.
Leonora Weston explains that no one is limited to any response state, but that people tend towards a particular default or preference. And as the journey taps into something deep within them in their life force response to their Dominant in their session, play or relational dynamic, they identify with who they "are" with their arousal response.
The talk will leave some time at the end for Questions, for discussion on how this insight might be helpful to BDSMers and indeed to the world-at-large.
DATE: Thursday 22nd November 2022 at 6.00 pm - 7.40 pm
VENUE: Freud Museum London, 20 Maresfield Gardens, London NW3 5SX, UNITED KINGDOM.
NEAREST STATION: Finchley Road
Note: This is a pre-ticketed event talk organised by Anne O Nomis, and those interested in attending and tickets need to be purchased in advance - available only on this site.
CONTACT: anneonomis@live.com