Thanks for the historical notes on that style of writing in BDSM literature. What you said makes a lot of sense. Now that I think about it, my master has a number of little paperbacks from the '60s or thereabouts in his porn collection which purport to be collections of case histories written by legitimate psychologists called things like....hmmm, let me just run and go get one... _Casebook: Total Humiliation: Making Girls Behave Sexually_," and have prefaces that say things like: "As a specialist in aberrant sexuality and perversions, I have met many beautiful, innocent young girls whose lives have been nearly devastated by cruel and abusive use of the enema bag. Their girlish bodies tremble with rueful recollection when they confide their shocking stories. For this book I have selected the most shocking cases I have been privy to in my career." Come to think of it, some book I read recently said something about how the Victorians really got off on reading _Psychopathia Sexualis_: it was a runaway bestseller (and we know why--wink), but back then it was considered absolutely legitimate reading because it was a medical book.

Although I prefer the hotter styles of porn where feelings and desires are described freely (the Beauty books are an example of this), I can, now that I am busy re-reading _Total Humiliation: Making Girls Behave Sexually_, (for the purposes of researching this article only, you understand!) almost "get" the appeal of these pseudo-scientific styles. I imagine some of the kick comes from the fact that the reader identifies with the narrator-scientist-doctor who sits back calmly and fully clothed while the subject or the case history is exposed, naked and humiliated to his eye with this cold, emotionless objective language. While I wouldn't mind one bit being the squirmy little bug under the microscope or the butterfly pegged out on the board (too bad women aren't built for that--g) struggling under the harsh flourescent glow of the language, I have a difficult time, given my power orientation, identifying with the fully-clothed and respectable observers. I not only want to know everthing that little buggy is feeling, but whether its helpless, pain-wracked squirming is raising bumps or wetspots in the pants of the objective observers .