Please remember, this is a model, a construct to account for observations. It will be more or less useful, and more or less "valid" the more accurately it can be used predictively. Only time and actual studies can do this "scientifically"; for now, I am interested in less rigidly constructed tests of validity.
So we can see that there are three major variables interacting to account for adult outcome. The center of the interactions are with the child's temperament and the goodness of fit with her parents. That interaction constitutes the most central and most highly determining of outcome. The third variable is the impact of trauma on the child: sexual, physical, emotional abuse, loss of significant others through death or divorce, severe socioeconomic strains on the family, illness in self or others, and such other often unpredictable severe stressors.
I am postulating the following three developmental lines:
I. The Healthy Submissive: is born with the central developmental trait of social responsiveness leading to sensitivity to others' expectation, needs, and emotions, and ultimately to becoming an adult people pleaser with an external locus of control. Her sexuality follows along these lines, and she has her most intense pleasure when in sexual service, even if, and often especially when, she suffers in service. She is relatively unconflicted about both her dependency needs and her sexuality, and is happiest in a consciously D/s based relationship.
2. The Submissive with a Severe Personality disturbance: This child is born also with the central developmental trait of social responsiveness leading to sensitivity to others' expectations, needs and emotions. However, due to either extreme poorness of temperamental fit, or extreme environmental trauma, her development goes seriously awry. She suffers such intense neglect, misunderstanding, devaluation by her parents, and often horrendous abuse that she develops severe disturbances in self-regulation. She exhibits the typical problems associated with such disturbance: a lack of trust in her own perceptions; misperceptions of others (detecting slights and attributing malfeasance to normal, everyday empathic failures); inability to modulate affect (emotion), ranging from intense overwhelming emotional states such as panic, rage, sadness to depression; inhibited grief, with many period of emotional shutdown; cycles of alternately overvaluing significant others and then devaluing them (often manifested by the numerous hirings and firings of many therapists during those cycles); and finally, a tendency to act out the rage and despair in self-harm: alcohol and drug misuse, promiscuity, eating disorders, self-cutting, burning, head-banging and other such acts. What distinguishes the submissive borderline from the nonsubmissive borderline is that if her pathology is not so damaging as to preclude longterm relationships at all, she can be held by a dominant man long enough to deal with the problematic aspects of her development and functioning. A non-submissive borderline is no more likely to be held by a Dominant than any other woman with a personality disturbance. The submissive borderline, in the hold of an extremely strong and healing Dominant, along with the judicious use of therapy, and perhaps medication, can do a great deal of healing work. The path is never easy, and carries risks: the risk of self-harm getting mortal; the risk of suicide when the woman feels her life will never get better, or is overwhelmed with grief and rage; the risk that in anger or rage she will turn her destructive impulses on her helpers and destroy the helping frame. While the submissive borderline has the characteristic underlying sexuality of the submissive, it is distorted by her interpersonal difficulties. She may be conflicted, shamed, guilt-ridden, and find herself acting out her conflicting needs in sexual promiscuity, sexual avoidance, or repetitive abusive relationships that repeat her earlier traumatic histories. But underneath all that, and coloring all those difficulties, is a submissive sexuality. Often, this is the woman for whom self-harm (cutting, scratching, burning self) has an element of eroticism; is a distortion of the healthy submissive's pleasurable response to sexual sacrifice, sexual suffering. This kind of self harm, rather than being the joyous, intimate act of a healthy submissive in a good relationship, is a distortion of that healthy impulse.
3. The NonSubmissive Borderline: This is a child whose temperamental mix does not have the prominent interpersonal sensitivity that the submissive child does. This child instead has experienced the traumas that typically result in the features of severe personality disorder and phenomenologically may look indistinguishable from the nonsubmissive borderline except that she does not respond to dominance in the way a submissive borderline does. I think that while a submissive borderline may suffer more intensely from interpersonal contacts, her very relatedness, distorted though it may be, is a good prognostic indicator, because she will be so influenceable. The nonsubmissive borderline does not have that same influenceability: therapy with her will be and feel different because she is less permeable to healing influences. This woman's sexuality is not characterized by the central images of pleasure through being used, disciplined, forced, swept away in the way a submissive's is. Her sexuality is not "fixed" in that way, is far more fluid and influenced by the rest of her personality, which as we have said, is not submissive.
The reason I think these distinctions are useful is because when a troubled submissive woman reports to her therapists the nature of her submissiveness, she is likely to encounter an uninformed therapeutic stance: that her submissiveness is just another manifestation of pathology: of disturbed interpersonal relations. The therapist does not know how to use the woman's submissiveness in a therapeutic way, because s/he doesn't understand what an ally in the healing process the submissive response is. Nor is it understood that a good outcome is enough healing to allow the submissive to express her nature and sexuality in a healthy manner, like that of her more fortunate sisters who didn't face such difficulties in development. In other words, she doesn't need to be cured of her submissiveness, just her "borderline" pathology. She needs to be helped to become a healthier submissive.
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