How Does It Mae You Feel?

The question I'm asked most often these days is, "Debbie (or Dr. Cohen), how did you get the idea for Manual Restraint Therapy?" A wistful smile spreads over my face, but I've never given a straight answer to the question, until now. Part of my reticence was knowing that a full account of the episode entails conduct on my part which contradicts the protocol I've since developed. I was a student at the time and had raging hormones. But I've decided that as MRT has gone mainstream, the public can benefit from learning its origin story, with an understanding that on this first experiment, I fell short of the best practices I've since developed in the field.

The first thing I noticed about Jim on the fateful day he walked into the office with his partner--I'll call her Cathy--was the unease he wore on his face. I was a grad student getting my masters in Psychology. One of my first assignments was a session with two undergraduates who'd applied for couple's therapy through the school's free counseling problem. Jim wrote on the questionnaire that they were having problems in their relationship, and he was concerned about it turning violent. As a budding feminist, I had reservations about working to patch up an abusive relationship. I knew that if Cathy was in danger I would face the dilemma of reporting it. But I was taught to keep an open mind. I would need it.

Jim slunk down on the couch first with a sheepish posture. Cathy, on the other hand, wore a wide smile on her bright, pretty face, as she sat flush against him and dropped her hand onto his inner thigh. It was an August day and she was wearing tight short shorts and a belly shirt.

"It's great to see you both here," I began. "Who'd like to start?"

"Go ahead," Cathy gestured, flashing a knowing thousand-watt grin at her tense boyfriend. "He says he's been wanting to tell me something."

"Okay then..." he swallowed nervously. "Cathy and I started dating freshman year. There was mutual attraction...She told me she liked my muscles."

Cathy rolled her eyes and snickered. Jim faced her angrily. "You told me you liked the feeling of being held in my arms." He stopped and looked lost for words, crestfallen. I noticed him squirm in his seat. Indeed, he did have powerful arms bulging from his t-shirt. But he was radiating insecurity.

"Well...?" Cathy rolled her eyes and laughed again. "Go on with the story."

"Well..." he began, and let out a sigh, an unconscious release of nervous energy. "About a month ago, things changed, you see. It was the night of my birthday. Cathy asked me if I had any fantasies I'd like for her to indulge as a birthday gift. And so I told her I wanted to wrestle..." His voice faded in volume on this last word. "Well, ever since then she's been making insulting comments..." He trailed off.

"What comments?" I prodded him. I was intrigued.

"Oh, about how she 'wears the pants' in our relationship. Stupid things like that."

At that point Cathy boiled over with impatience at his narrative. "You lost in wrestling to your own girlfriend!"

Jim grimaced, his face turning red. "I did not!" He turned back toward me but looked at the floor. "You see what I'm talking about, Denise? She's been showing our friends a video of us wrestling... which she edited--selectively--to show only the parts where she was in control."

Cathy became heated. "Oh really, Jim, ''the parts where I was in control'? I posted the entire match on instagram. We wrestled five times and I pinned you five times! Then I choked you until you tapped out. You quit!"

"You sound angry, Cathy," I put in.

"Not angry, just annoyed. Jim still doesn't get it. It's not that you lost, Jim; it's that you can't take it! You keep lying to cover it up." She turned to me. "It was his idea to take a video. He wanted to dominate me and have us watch it back. When it was over he panicked. He insisted he watch me delete it from my phone. I told him if he admitted I won I would delete it, just to get him off my back. Otherwise I could show you."

I couldn't picture this cute slender blonde taking down the well built man sitting next to her. They were both about 5'10" but he was double her mass. I was surprised at feeling my pussy tingle as I realized that even by Jim's account, Cathy had been 'in control' of some of their bout. He was comically defensive about what happened, whereas she was indignant at him downplaying her performance. If the truth lay somewhere in the middle, as my textbooks told me it usually did,, it was safe to say Cathy had come out on top. Yet I couldn't picture the mechanics of how that took place. Why didn't Jim just knock her arm out of the way when she choked him? Why couldn't he just push Cathy's skinny body off him?

"Look," I told them, "we're not going to settle who's wrong or right. I wasn't there. If I'm going to really understand this conflict, so I can help you decide what to do from here, I need to see it for myself. There's enough space on the carpet. Show me one fall so I can analyze you as a couple."

Jim swallowed. He looked like he wanted to decline but couldn't think of an excuse. Cathy sprang from the couch with a Cheshire grin and beckoned Jim provocatively. "Look, he's already hard. Show Debbie. And he's blushing. My boyfriend is obsessed with wrestling."

Like a man on death row, he slowly rose from the couch and squared up across from her. His shoulders sank in expectation of defeat. Then, reacting to Cathy's playful swagger, he seemed to stand straighter, and his eyes burned with a determined hope.

What took place for the next minute was the most dramatic and arousing spectacle I'd ever witnessed. Jim held nothing back, charging at Cathy with everything he had. I sensed he was desperate to avoid losing in front of me. He clumsily attempted to mount his girlfriend in the missionary position, but she firmly kicked him off with her legs, and then rose to her knees vis-a-vis her bewildered beau. From there she was poetry in motion. She bounded onto his back, twisted his arm until he yelped in pain, while spanking him sharply with her other hand through his shorts. "What do you think, doc, should I keep spanking him till his whole ass is red? Ooh, it's getting there already." Before I could reply, she flipped him onto his back and sat on his neck, winking at me seductively as Jim kicked his legs and bucked helplessly beneath her like a captured animal. "This is what you didn't want the doctor to see. No wonder!" she chuckled.

To the extent there'd been a struggle, it couldn't have been more clearly decided within the first minute. Jim was a lost boy against an Amazon warrior. The slender, delicate female prevailed with apparent effortlessness, showing no sign of strain or quickened breath. She ground her ass into his face as she squeezed his scrotum and penis while he writhed in a primal mixture of sexual arousal and pain.

Just as I was thinking that I didn't see how a man could be any more emasculated, Cathy took it to a new level. Still sitting on his neck, facing his feet, she grabbed his legs in each of her hands and pulled them over his body, past his neck, until he was forced into a headstand, his own bodyweight and Cathy's bearing down on his neck. He was silent, as his face wore a look of sheer terror. I began to rub my clitoris, as I wondered if she would break his neck. He was completely immobilized, his arms pinned, his legs suspended in the air, his hulking body folded into the most undignified and unnatural position imaginable. Just then she dropped his legs, stood up over him, dug her toes into his scrotum for a moment, and then sat back down on the couch. For a good minute, Jim stayed prone in the middle of the office floor, gasping and trying to recover himself, looking ashamed and frankly absurd.

I felt a whirlwind of emotions, generating intense sexual excitement. Part of me felt sorry for Jim and wanted to see him get his revenge on this tormenting vixen. I sympathized with the loss of his manhood and yearned to see him reassert himself, if only he could. Another part of me felt irritated with him, strangely angry at his failure. Mostly at that moment I felt an awesome admiration for Cathy, as I marveled at the incredible skill and boldness she had exhibited. She had met all of Jim's testosterone-fueled rage head-on and nullified it utterly. She'd ingeniously turned his blind aggression against him and left him lying in a fetal heap. She'd laughed right in his face as she did unto him as he would do unto her. Poor Jim, I thought. He'd pushed with all his might and failed to win his girlfriend's respect or even affect her in the slightest degree. Finally, I felt annoyed with Cathy in her infinite smugness--I realized later that this feeling was envy.

As Jim struggled to his feet, I pressed my hand on his shoulder firmly and urged him to stay on the ground. "Take a second," I said. "Stay there. I want you to tell Cathy how you're feeling at this very moment."

"I don't feel anything," he grumbled.

"Nothing?" I asked ironically, nudging his bulging cock with my foot. "It looks like you feel something. I think anyone in your position would be going through some pretty complex feelings at this moment. It's okay. That's what you're here for."

"Look, Cathy's a good wrestler, is that what you want to hear?"

"I certainly can see that," I said. "But you're not answering my question: how does it make you feel?"

"How does what make me feel?" he fenced.

"How does it feel to be beaten by your girlfriend at wrestling?"

"I don't feel anything about it," he repeated stubbornly. "It was never about who won or lost to me. We both gave our best. Cathy's the one who had to make it a whole thing."

"I guess that's why you made me come to therapy with you, right, babe?" Cathy shot back sarcastically. "No, it doesn't bother you at all. Yeah, right."

"I shouldn't have bothered," Jim pouted. "I'm leaving." He moved to get back to his feet.

At that moment I forgot everything I'd been taught in my studies and moved on instinct. I dove on top of Jim and pinned him onto his stomach, as he sprawled in surprise. I recall feeling self-conscious that my skirt was riding up and showing Cathy my thong. I grabbed one of Jim's arms with both of my hands and twisted until he screamed.

"I need you to communicate your feelings, Jim," I told him in my most soothing voice. "I can't help you if you won't open up."

I'd never wrestled before, but I found myself emulating what I'd just seen Cathy do. I found that by concentrating my force against one side of his body I could move him around just like Cathy had. I flipped him from his stomach onto his back and straddled his neck, with my back to his face. Copying Cathy, I lifted his legs and pulled them toward me, folding his body in half. "Come over here, Cathy," I said. She looked shocked but amused as she sauntered over to our spot on the rug. "Stand there and hold his legs just like that," I instructed. I moved off of him and knelt beside him, pulled down his shorts and grasped his hard penis, pointing it toward his face like a gun.

"Ow!" he wailed boyishly. "Okay, what do you want to know?"

"How do you feel about being beaten by your own girlfriend?"

"Embarrassed," he whispered.

"That's better. What else?" I asked, squeezing his testicles. "And louder, please."

"Ashamed....humiliated...frustrated...afraid...turned on. God, what more do you want from me?"

"Tell Kathy."

"I can't..."

"Break his neck then, Cathy--"

"No, no, wait! I'll talk," Jim cried, as Cathy was on the verge of doing serious damage. "Cathy, I love you. I admit it, you're stronger than me. You beat me every time. I'm sorry I lied. I was afraid you would leave me. I didn't think you would stay with a guy you could beat up. I'll do whatever you say. Just please let go of me!"

With that, he began to shoot a thick rope of semen all over his own unguarded face. It was a long and powerful ejaculation. He let out a series of deep guttural moans and clinched his eyelids as I stroked him, coating his face in his own desires.

"That was much better," I said. I gestured for Cathy to release his legs. We both returned to our seats as Jim rested on the carpet. I couldn't help but rub myself from behind the desk.

Then I remembered myself. "Cathy, you were wonderful. Jim, you need a lot of work. Our mission at this school is not just to teach you, but to help you strengthen and grow as a person. You're big," I winked, glancing at his still naked penis, "but you're weak. I want to begin working with you individually." I had figured out how to do what Cathy did and my interest shifted to Jim.

"Will I get to wrestle you again?" he asked forlornly.

"I insist on it," I smiled.

Cathy's hand was palming Jim's ass possessively as they walked out of my office. He simply stared at the floor as he shuffled ahead of her in a daze.

And there, dear audience, was the first use of what the world now calls Manual Restraint Therapy. As I said, the method was in its infancy. I've since spent hundreds of hours training in wrestling, so that I can properly restrain anyone who isn't well trained in combat, and most who are, male or female. I've learned that wrestling is more than a sport. It is the oldest, and still one of the most effective foundations of self-defense. In attempting to impose our will upon another person, wrestling reveals something fundamental about who each of us are.

Some people dismiss MRT as a fetish, or psychiatric mumbo jumbo. But there are many people, more men than women, who can't be moved to share their feelings without some literal twisting of their arms. It probably looked like Cathy and I were being cruel to Jim, but we led him to a heightened state of emotion, in which he was able to express feelings he had masked in denial.

Today I would never make a patient ejaculate on his face, unless he agreed to it beforehand. I could have ended the session at his confession, but I was driven by my own passion, a violent form of countertransference. Some men benefit from this and even more extreme methods of humiliation. Other men are fully satisfied with, and can be effectively treated, with simple manual restraint. Fortunately Jim flourishes under drastic methods. I ended up counseling and wrestling with him hundreds of times in the years that followed. You can meet him in the audience tonight. He's been my husband for three years.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.