No Safe Word: Human puppies 201

I need to share some cool links to the No Safe Word podcast.  I got to (briefly) meet Sparky last month when he came to our Atlanta Dominion party.  We didn’t get much chance to talk b/c soon he was busy tying-up and ball-busting Leo while Sir was busy flogging me on the neighboring cross.  (Well, it was a Dominion party.)  Toward the end of podcast episode 37, Sparky says Atlanta Dominion was “awesome,” and does some namedropping (or attempts to).  Neat to have a shout-out for our little club.

Now, this is going to appear to be only about puppy play, but even if you’re thinking, ‘that’s not my thing,’ bear w/ me because a lot of this just has to do w/ community organization, leadership, and inclusiveness.

Episode 38 (the most recent one) is a really good interview w/ IPC’s International Pup 2014 Slavepup Axel (whose new blog is also worth checking out).  It’s really good – informative and entertaining.  Where No Safe Word episode 02 was a fantastic puppy 101 talk (listen to it if you haven’t), I think this one is like the 201 talk.  It gets more into the organization of the pup community (hey, “organized pup” isn’t always an oxymoron), and kind of expands into this meta-level conversation around pup-ing: handlers, moshes, contests…  They have a great take on the whole international title holders contests “controversy” thing that was a whole tempest in a teapot last year.  *rolls eyes*

There’s a great conversation in there about inclusiveness.  At one point Axel says some of the Leathermen “don’t think of us as part of the leather community, and we’re really not – we’re really kinksters.”  Someone else (I don’t remember who) points out that sometimes when you say “leather” you mean specifically the old guard gay leather community and sometimes you mean all of these things – to which Axel suggests the term “kink-fuckers” as a more inclusive alternative to “leather.”  Not a bad idea.  I like kink-fuckers.  But am I a kink-fucker or a kink-fuckee?

But there is this question of where and how does our community fit in to the leather community.  Obviously we overlap w/ them… but we also overlap heavily w/ the furry community for that matter.  But it does seem that for both the TNG and the pup community there is a sense of judgmental-ism and exclusivity coming from a certain segment of the leather crowed.

I also loved the throw-away line: a puppy mosh “is basically like a gay bar for pups.”  LOL

As someone who started into the pup thing almost ten years ago, it really does amaze me how much the puppy community has started to grow just in the last few years.  It’s crazy!  For like five years I was the only pup I knew – certainly the only person who identified as “pup” (b/c, for instance, boy Andy would pup-out w/ me sometimes but he didn’t really identify as a pup).  I really think I may have been the only pup in North Carolina for a time.  Now there are contests and moshes and pup-nights just springing up all over (well... not in North Carolina, but all over everywhere else).  We must be one of the fastest growing segments of the kink community.  (Does this finally make me an early adopter?)

Anyway – the No Safe Word podcast is always fun and informative; I recommend it in general - but if you are curious about pup play, I really, really recommend you check out 02 (if you’re new and starting w/ the 101 stuff) and 38 (for a more meta-level conversation about the evolving – and really very new but rapidly expanding – puppy community).  Great stuff!

Headspace: Puppy, S/m, and Sex

I think one of the ways that I am a little different from other pups (or maybe not – I don’t know) is that my headspace for puppy play, S/m, and sex are all very closely conjoined.  It seems like that isn’t true for other pups I know.  I think it comes from being what Sir calls an "innate pup."

I’m a pain slut.  I like getting ruffed-up.  I love to be bit and scratched.  I like being punched too.  And having my hair pulled.  Now, anybody who has been in the dungeon w/ me when I’m getting my ass beat knows (because I can be a bit loud) that I tend to bark and growl a lot while I’m bottoming.  Part of it is my way of processing pain… and also my way of feeding energy back to my Top.  My Owner hates stoic bottoms.  If she’s beating, bighting, scratching, or cutting somebody and they are just sitting there like a slab of meat, she’ll get board and stop the scene.  I am not a stoic bottom.  When I get hit or bit or cut, I make noise.  The Tops who like to play w/ me and whom I like to play with feed off this energy I’m throwing off.  We like it loud and sweaty and primal. 

That’s why I like my S/m to be more about primal energy that technique.  I’ve played w/ many Tops w/ outstanding technical skill… but I prefer it to be a bit more raw and hands on.  Some toys are cool (I like thuddy toys best) and some bondage is okay (I’m not a huge bondage fetishist, but some is cool – I generally like blindfolds, hoods, and gags)… but if you want to get me going, use your body.  Use your teeth, your fists, your nails…  Growl in my ear.  Beat me, bight me, lick me, scratch me, kiss me, edge me, beat me some more, edge me some more – repeat as necessary.

I growl and bark to process pain and send off energy, but I also do it b/c when I’m in a good S/m scene I tend to get into a non-verbal headspace.  It’s very primal for me.  That’s why I growl and yelp and bark.  I can ride the pain and channel the energy to let the inner animal out… which is also a very spiritual thing for me.  I’m very much into the whole shamanic, animal-spirit thing.  I love to feel the canine inside come forward and take over and the human monkey-mind recedes for a while.  (S/m for me is sooooo far away from the whole, idiotic myth of masochist feel guilt and some weird inner need for punishment.  My head trip is nothing like that.  It’s… empowering.)

What kind of scene do I love?

One of my favorite things to do is to do a heavy S/m scene and then drop straight into pup-mode.  I know this is odd for most other pups who find the two headspaces to be very different.  But when I’ve had a good beating, I am really halfway into pup-space already.  I love if when my Top takes me down from the cross after beating the shit out of me and then pets me, licks me, nips me, scritches me, says “good boy”… helps me into my paws and knee pads… hooks on my leash, lets me have some water out of a dog bowl… and then just keeps me there in pup mode for an hour or so.  I love that!  I can usually drop into a really good pup-space after a good beating.  Let me pup-out for a while… and maybe even let the puppy show his affection and gratitude w/ some yummy, licky, growly, puppy sex.

Ah, yes.  Sex.

I know a lot of pups and Handlers don’t mix sex w/ their puppy play.  I also know some sadomasochists who don’t mix sex w/ their S/m.  For me, these things are all inter-connected.  I like primal sex.  Even if I’m not in pup-mode, I tend to growl, and lick, and nip, and scratch, and drool, and bark, and yelp.  In my head, good sex has much the same impact as good S/m – it shuts out the human monkey-mind and lets the inner animal come out.  I like sex that’s very primal and aggressive.  I like to feel taken.  I like to feel like I’m being taken by a force of nature.  I love that, I don’t know if it’s going to eat me or fuck me, but I have a hard on, so right now I don’t care which. 

An important part of sex for me is to know that I am totally in my partner’s power.  That’s so key.  Just vanilla intercourse has a frankly limited appeal for me.  I really want to be… well, I guess the word is dominated.  Whether that comes in a violent, primal pouncing or in the more traditional form of orders and bondage and humiliation – either way I love being controlled by someone else I trust and surrender to.  Sometimes Ma’am lets her were-tiger out, and she violently devours me.  I love that!  Other times, it’s just her telling me what to do and making me perform for her – like a trained dog.  I like that too.  It makes my tail wag.  :)

So, Option One:  Take me down from the cross after a rough beating and some edging, drop me in puppy mode, leash me, treat me as your pet… and maybe let your pet show his affection w/ some yummy, licky puppy sex.

Option Two: Take me down from the cross after a rough beating and some edging… get on the floor w/ me and go primal.  Bight, snarl, pounce, and violently fuck me like a pair of wild animals let loose in the dungeon.  Different scene.  Also lots of fun.

Now, mind you, I also can just do S/m, and I can just do pup play, and I can just do sex, and I can have loads of fun w/ any one of those activities.  I’m just making the point that for me, unlike other pups I know, all three of these headspaces are easily mixed and mingled in my twisted head.

Sexual Disorientation

Most people, I surmise, have discrete boxes in their head.  For most people you’re either in the “straight” box, or the “gay” box, and if you’re not in one of those then you’re bi.

Certainly I’ve not thought of myself as straight in an awful long time.  You’d almost have to go back to college days in Knoxville.  My best-friend/roommate was gay (still is, in fact – gay, not my roommate) and I used to hang w/ some of his friends and occasionally go out to the gay bars w/ him… and at that time “straight but not narrow” was definitely the accurate label for me.  But back then I didn’t even have a concept of my own kinky sexuality.  I mean, I was always turned-on by whips, chains, leather, and latex… but it was all just fantasy stuff then – I had no idea there was a safe, sane, healthy way to pursue all of that.  Once I did get into the BDSM scene, I soon dropped the label “straight.”

Anyway, back to the 3-box approach.  Some folks will say:  Look, if you have sex only w/ people of the opposite gender then you’re straight; if you have sex only with those of the same gender then you’re gay; and if you have sex with both, then you’re bi.  That’s a pretty sound approach, and I can’t argue with that.  From that standpoint I have no issue with being labeled bi.

On the other hand, there’s another way to look at it, which is who you’re physically attracted to, and that’s slightly different than who you have or haven’t danced the hokie-pokie with.  I recall a really interesting study that was done in which scientists showed subjects pictures of men and women while a special camera recorded their eye movement.  When you see someone you find attractive, you’ve iris automatically dilates some.  One fascinating aspect of this is that this reaction is automatic and unconscious.  That means, even if you were super repressed and deep in the closet even to yourself, that this test would still find you out.  (It also, by the way, offers yet more scientific evidence that sexual orientation isn’t a lifestyle choice but something programmed in our biology.)

As I explained once before in a previous post, I’m not, as a rule, attracted to other guys.  I’ve been hanging out w/ gay people for my whole adult life and one thing I’ve noticed is that gay men are always checking out other men.  This isn’t at all surprising; straight men are always checking out girls.  This I also know from first hand experience.  A pretty girl goes by and, sure, I turn my head to watch.  (Of course, if a motorcycle goes past, I turn my head and bark at it… and if a pretty girl on a motorcycle goes by, I bounce up and down and vibrate fiercely.)  Meanwhile, my Owner, who is definitely bisexual in this sense, is quite equally attracted to men and women.  If a pretty boy or girl walks by, her head turns.  (Though usually Shdwkitten is the one turning heads.)  For her, gender doesn’t seem to make a difference regarding physical attraction.  But for me, I would expect, on the afore-mentioned iris-dilation test, my eyes would not react to very many pictures of men… unless they tapped in to some fetish of mine, which changes the whole game.  In terms of physical attraction at least, I’m “mostly straight.”  Guys – good-looking or otherwise – just don’t really get my attention that way.

So what about “hetroflexible?”  Well… I have issues w/ that word.  It bugs me.  It’s just the sound of it.  I’ve always said that it sounds like the yuppie version of “bisexual.”  Like I’m supposed to be wearing a collared polo shirt and slacks, aviator glasses, cut my hair, and be upwardly mobile.  “Look at me; I’m not bi; I’m heteroflexible.”  :P

My Fet profile somewhat begrudgingly says “hetroflexible” mostly b/c I think that will probably be the more accurate-ish descriptor for the primary clientele of Fet.  On the other hand, I was on PupZone long before Fet, and my PupZone account has always said, “bisexual” – but of course most of the guys on PupZone are gay; it’s a different crowed w/ different definitions.

Now, some people get really bent out of shape if you don’t classify them by their chosen label, but that’s certainly not me.  Words mean what we use them to mean.  There is never a “What does X really mean?” only “What do we mean by saying X when we use it?”  That’s one reason why I really don’t care what you call me; just don’t call me late to dinner.

Busy Summer Highlights

Just time to do a quick recap on recent events.

So, the first weekend of the month, Shdwkitten and I went to the beach to visit her parents.  We didn’t manage to squeeze in any mini-golf due to rain (wolfhounds love mini-golf!), but we did go fly a kite on the beach which was almost as cool.

On the 3^rd of July, my lovely Owner took me out to Charlotte’s UpStage along w/ two of her paramours.  We thought it was our usual kinky karaoke night, but there was actually an open mic thing at the bar that night, which brought a lot of vanilla people into our crowd’s usual Wednesday night hang out.  It was all cool, but there were a lot of “who are those people” looks from both sides of the room.  We had fun, geeked-out about comic book movies and obscure bands, drank a lot, and stayed out until 3 AM.

The next day was Independence Day, and I had to drive in the pouring rain (on like 4 hours of sleep) to Atlanta for Sir’s 4^th of July bar-b-q.  It was totally worth it.  I was there early along w/ Nitro and Master Dan (AtlantaRubber), and it was nice to spend a couple of hours just chill’n around the kitchen table drinking rum & coke and munching on potato chips.  Eventually we had like ten other guys arrive – almost all of them puppies, so thanks must go to Sir’s husband for opening his home to all of our craziness.  We didn’t break anything, but we did manage to dump half the water out of the hot tub.  Got another 4 or 5 hours of sleep before driving home (while eating cookies – b/c wolfhounds love cookies!), crawling into my kennel, and napping the day away, because…

The next day was, for Ma’am and me, Domination at the BoilerRoom in Asheville along with Noir and SanguineSnow.  This is a TNG, heavily geek-themed, kinky bar night that brings out a pretty fun crowed.  The costumes may range from leather and latex to Ewoks.  (No shit, Ewoks.)  Haven’t seen any fursuiters yet, but I’m waiting.  I got to watch Noir do a great scene w/ Sanguine and Shdwkitten… and later there were two hook suspensions.  Very cool.  The only downside was the girl who got hooked was wandering around the bar afterwards w/ blood on her.  She could have easily pulled on a shirt or a jacket or something, but no…  I’m not really blood-phobic, but that bugged me.  Common courtesy, people – use it.

Other than Domination, we also just really had fun hanging w/ Noir and Sanguine.  Discussions covered what we like and don’t like in evolutionary psychology, how we all want to see a Saturday morning cartoon called Cathulu Babies, to how hot Shdwkitten looks… and let the record denote the very important fact that another beautiful woman wants to fuck me w/ a strap-on.  *Wags*  (Wolfhounds love sexy women w/ strap-on’s!)

The next weekend, which was this last weekend, my ex-girlfriend and her husband came down from Michigan for a visit.  This was a definite highlight of the summer.  We haven’t seen her in about five years… which is unfortunate b/c she’s a good friend both to me and my Owner and her husband is also a really cool guy – and doubly unfortunate be/c they own a liquor store, a tobacco store/humidor, and a head shop… so when they visit they bring the best gifts: like two bottles of wine, a MASSIVE bottle of 1800 Silver, and some Johnny Walker double black (the smoothest scotch I’ve ever tried), along w/ various other things.  We spent a lot of time happily discussing religion and politics - the two subjects you're never supposed to discuss in polite company.  We also went spelunking (and my Owner hit her head on a rock), went hiking (and my Owner slipped and fell on a rock), and dropped in on my favorite pub up in Blowing Rock (where nothing bad happened to my Owner).

Since it’s a 12 hour drive back to Michigan, our guests had to leave after breakfast Sunday… so Ma’am decided to take her hound back to Charlotte for Up-Stage’s bondage brunch.  We hung w/ our peeps, Ma’am got hog-tied, and I got somebody to show me a simple technique for putting the rope away after my Top is done.  Still need to practice; wolfhounds aren’t great at tying knots.  We’ll leave the fancy knot tying to Saint Bernards.

And somewhere in all of that I managed to take the FZ6 into the mountains for some cycle-therapy.

Busy! Busy! Busy!

This weekend is Atlanta Dominion, 1763’s all-male play party.  And next weekend Pup Nitro is coming to CAPEX to teach his super-sexy breath play class, and the whole puppy pack will be there.  If you’re in NC, you should join us.  See you there, maybe?

Yes, I’m still here.

I have not jumped ship on the mass exodus from Google Blogger.  Haven’t yet seen the point.

I started blogging in 2003 on Livejournal.  It was (and still is - the archive is still there) a locked blog where I used to share my thoughts w/ only about 15-20 people who could read it – all friends I actually know in the real world.  The blog dealt w/ kink stuff, but that was only about 25% of it.  Mostly it was about books, travel, movies, games, music, mythology, comic books, art, philosophy, motorcycles, and anything else I felt like essaying about.

In 2003, everybody was on LJ.  A few years later FetLife started.  I never liked Fet. (1) It’s all fetish community based, and surprisingly many of my friends aren’t kinky.  (2) It’s too busy and too “networky” for my taste.  I’m not much of one for social networking and tend to have a rather slight online presence in general.  I blog mostly as an essayist and memoirist – Fet seemed to be more about “chatting” and hooking-up.  The online equivalent of small talk at a kinky bar or party.  If I want to do that, I’ll go to an actual freaking bar or party.  (Like I am tonight – it’s kinky karaoke night at the Up Stage!)  (3)  I never liked the fact that you can’t “lock” your Fet and restrict who can view it, and at that time I was only interesting in sharing my blog w/ my friends.  (4) The ads are annoying.

However, as the years went on, more and more people left LJ and moved over to Fet.  Finally, it came to feel like nobody but yours truly was left on LJ anymore.

So I decided to try something new and, last year, started this bolg on Google.  This was new in two big ways: (1) It’s public.  Anybody can read this.  That, in turn, affected change (2):  It’s mostly about being a kinky human-puppy.  Since it is public, I’m not as comfortable making it really about me in a memoirist kind of way like the LJ blog was.  Instead, it’s mostly restricted to one interest of mine (w/ occasional tangents onto other topics).  Thus, someone reading this gets a pretty good look at Pup Emrys in the kink community but sees only peripheral glances of me in any other context – which is what I prefer since most of you reading this are strangers to me.

After building-up the blog for a few months, I did finally relent and create a nominal presence on Fet – mostly just to make it easier for people to get in touch w/ me, and to direct people to this blog.  Why Google Blogger?  Well, I do like the easy-to-use format.  It has more features than LJ.  It’s not chit-chatty like Fet and doesn’t have annoying ads.  And most of the other leather-pups I was getting to know last year were already on blogger.

“Were.”

Recently, as most of you probably already know, Google “changed” its terms of service for adult content blogs.  In fact, so far as I can tell, it wasn’t a change at all, but they reiterated something that was always there.  Which is:

“Adult Content: we do allow adult content on Blogger, including images or videos that contain nudity or sexual activity. But, please mark your blog as 'adult' in your Blogger settings. Otherwise, we may put it behind a 'mature content' interstitial.

There are some exceptions to our adult content policy:

Do not use Blogger as a way to make money on adult content. For example, don't create blogs where a significant percentage of the content is ads or links to commercial porn sites. No incest or bestiality content: we do not allow image, video or text content that depicts or encourages incest or bestiality.”

Despite the fact that it says, “we do allow adult content” (obviously; why else have the “adult content” warning label) it looks like many pups and kinksters interpreted that otherwise and decided to jump ship and take their blogs elsewhere (which is fine w/ me – I’m not partisan here).  But the policy looks to me to come down to: ‘We allow legal adult content as long as you aren’t making money off it.’  Okay, I’m cool w/ that b/c I don’t want to make a buck off my blog and I sure as hell don’t want anybody else making a buck off my blog (i.e. through ads).  So, for now, I’m still here.  Now, who knows – Google might suddenly delete me at any moment, but that seems, to me, unlikely.

P.S.  I hate Facebook.  To me, its format is even more annoying than Fet is.

Man of Poop

The Supreme Court is ruled today on DOMA and Prop-8… but everybody is already talking about that.

SELF was last weekend, but my pack has already covered that, and I have little to add.  (vide posts by Sir Loki, Tebow, and Hunter)

My Owner dodged her cancer scare – turns out she only has a harmless dilated capillary.  Yay!  :D

No, no.  Today, I want to blog about something really, really important: Man of Steel.  I’ll try to make some greater social point here, or else maybe I’ll just be one more fanboy blogger venting his spleen.  We’ll see…

Okay, so if you haven’t been following the news, the new Superman movie has, by and large, been declared to be crap.  A big, stinky load of poo.  There seem to be three primary criticisms, all closely linked:

(1) The tone of the film is dark, gritty, monochrome… wildly inappropriate for the 4-colored Superman which people expect to be fun, joyful, uplifting… to feel like the sound of that classic John Williams score.  Da-dat-DUM!

(2)  The final action scene is a looooooong, boring, painfully drawn-out, ultra-ultra-violent, glibly 9-11 referencing, “orgy of mass destruction” in which literally thousands of people are needlessly killed.

(3)  Superman fails to be heroic.  He doesn’t even really protect people.

I’m not going to elaborate there, but I will point you to two reviews worth reading/watching.  This first is Mark Waid’s already-going-viral blog post.  Waid is one of the best Superman writers in the comics, and I think his take is spot-on.  (spoiler alert):  http://thrillbent.com/blog/man-of-steel-since-you-asked/

The second place I will direct you is the even better already-going-viral vlog (is that really a word now?) full-on, profane rant by Max Landis.  Landis really gets the Superman character, and he perfectly outlines what Superman really is and why ‘this ain’t it.’ (also contains spoilers):  

 Okay, now that we have that under our belt, let’s talk about Alex Ross and Mark Waid’s Kingdom Come.  In 1997, Waid and Ross wrote an absolutely outstanding comic that was a comment (equal parts scathing and hopeful) on the glut of ever-more violent “heroes” that were populating comics in the mid-to-late 90’s.  From Wikipedia: “This Elseworlds story is set in a future that deals with a growing conflict between "traditional" superheroes, such as Superman, Wonder Woman, and the Justice League, and a growing population of largely amoral and dangerously irresponsible new vigilantes, in many cases the offspring of the traditional heroes.” 

The major villain of the book is Magog, a satire of various Image and Marvel dark-n-bloody “heroes.”  When he finally confronts Superman he rails:  “You were afraid that I was the man of tomorrow. You were afraid of the future I represented… The world changed, but you wouldn’t. So they chose me. They chose the man who would kill over the man who wouldn’t…”

Dark Knight gave us the NSA-Batman tapping all of our cell phones, for our own protection of course, and conducting “enhanced interrogations” on mobsters by dropping them off fire escapes.  And Dark Knight Rises showed that Batman’s refusal to use a gun would have lost if Catwoman wasn’t willing to use a gun to shoot down the bad guy – so better not let them take our guns away (only our privacy).  I didn’t care for the politics of those films, but I loved the movies b/c they were well done and b/c that is Batman.  Batman is a very Hobbes-ian, rather Neo-con, somewhat fascist kind of character - a rich guy who beats up on the poor and the mentally ill.  That’s why his villains are so scary and his world is so dark – b/c it takes a dark and terrifying world to justify that kind of character (if such a justification is ultimately possible) - you have to live in constant fear to want a Batman around.

Now, look, I like Batman.  Batman is cool.  I’m very okay w/ a dark and gritty Batman.  But Superman is not Batman.  Superman isn’t dark and spooky.  Little kids run up to Superman when they see him.  Superman hugs little kids!  Superman is like Santa Clause… only w/ abs. 

(And if Warner Bros ever did bring those two together in one movie, the whole fun of it would be the conflict of how completely different these two men are.  It’ll be like teaming-up Dick Chaney with Mahatma Gandhi. These two will not get along.)

How sad is it that the day of the Kingdom finally Came… and rather than being there to stand up for the best in us against the dark, violent, Death Wish, Eastwood, 24, anti-heroes… now Superman has gone and drunk the killer Kool-aid?  That makes me very sad...

Okay, here’s my confession.  I haven’t seen Man of Steel.  I don’t plan on spending money on it.  Rather than sitting through 2.5 hours of a pseudo-Superman film I almost certainly won’t like, I think I’ll stay home and watch the Christopher Reeve movie again, which always makes me smile.  That scene where Superman flies down and rescues the kitten from the tree and gives the kitty to the little kid… who runs inside:

“Mommy, the cat was stuck in a tree and a man flew down and saved her.”

“What have I told you about lying!”  SMACK!

LOL.  I defy anybody not to love that.  :)

Enantiodromia in Zen and BDSM

In explaining BDSM, I often give Freudian explanations evoking the Id as the devil on our left and the Superego as the angel on our right. The Id is the reptile brain, interested in food and sex.  Can I eat it, or can I fuck it?  The Superego is the civilized part of us that says, “One does not behave like that.”  I suspect that Freud was onto something when he figured that all forms of eroticism are based on going against the superego – what is erotic is precisely what proper ladies and gentlemen do not do.  Giving expression to the Id, Steven King once wrote:  “Sex will certainly continue to be the driving force in the horror genera… [and] much of the sex in horror fiction is deeply involved in power… where one partner is largely in control of the other…  [A] bug-eyed-monster or the mummy striding through the darkness… w/ the body of some lovely in its arms. Beauty and the beast. You are in my power.”

But for right now, let’s turn from Dr. Freud to his colleague Dr. Jung and think about BDSM and the shadow.  “Shadow” was a technical term for Jung, sort of related to Freud’s Id. To quote the Doc: “It is our own ‘dark side,’ characterized by inferior, uncivilized or animal qualities which the ego wishes to hide from others. Not wholly bad, but primitive and un-adapted.”  The shadow is our own inner Werewolf, so to speak – the animal within.  Maybe immoral… or maybe more accurately, amoral – not adapted to civilized life.

Noteworthy is that Jung also used the word “inferior,” which is also a technical term for Jung. It generally refers to the weaker functions in our personality. In Jung’s typology there are four cognitive functions which result in eight personality types.

Two of Jung’s functions involve acquiring info: intuition (time-focused) and sensing (space-focused).

Two of the functions involve processing info: thinking (analytical, abstract and step-by-step process oriented) and feeling (the big-picture, systems theory, composition/design – how it all fits together). (The thinking/feeling distinction was already present in the eighteenth century work of Goethe who wrote about the principles of Gesetz [law] and Gestalt [form], and later got echoed in Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintinace where he called it Classical vs. Romantic)

One of these four functions would be dominant in a person (though none would be absent), and to that Jung added his introvert/extrovert distinction and came up w/ his eight personality types:

Extrovert Thinking (scientists, engineers, economists)
Introvert Thinking (philosophers, mathematicians, computer programmers)
Extrovert Feeling (talk show hosts, politicians)
Introvert Feeling (monks/nuns, musicians)
Extrovert Sensation (builders, mechanics, craftsmen)
Introvert Sensation (artists)
Extrovert Intuition (adventurers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists)
Introvert Intuition (day-dreamers, poets, novelists)

(My examples should be taken purely as shorthand generalizations.)

The inferior functions would be the ones diametrically opposite the dominant ones: Thinking opposite Feeling, for instance.  But sometimes these poles could flip, a phenomena Jung labeled enantiodromia – from the Latin enatio, “to turn about,” and droma, “to run” – to turn and run in the other way. Jung’s idea was that it was possible for a person’s personality type to switch around under certain circumstances such as mid-life crisis, a love affair, the sudden death of a loved one, a religious conversion or spiritual experience, etc.

Personally, I’m an Introvert Thinking-Intuition type… so, theoretically, my own shadow, my animal w/in, could be the flip side of those – my inferior functions: Feeling and Sensing. Getting in touch w/ my Feeling/Sensing side is always a challenge. Years ago, when I was doing meditation up at the Zen Center, my big obstacle was always my thinking-intuitive head.  It’s so easy for me to sit and day-dream or analyze – to visit “Idea Space” – but the goal of Zen is to cut one off from past and future and logical analysis, and put one in touch w/ immediate surroundings, sensations and the current moment; to see things as pure “objects in space” w/o any set of mental associations w/ them.

BDSM and puppy play turned out, for me, to be a better enantiodromia than meditation.  What I found was that, when I get into a good pup-space, it allows me to flip over to those inferior, shadow functions.  Usually I “think” everything into rationally organized hierarchies (the “Classical quality” in Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) and spend most of his time thinking temporally – i.e. day-dreaming and imagining other events and situations.  My shadow (or animal totem) “feels” things holistically w/o step-wise analytical thought (the “Romantic quality” in ZMM) and exists in the Now.

It’s a little bit of a different spin than the Freudian perspective… but it also works for me.