I started my practice in fetish analysis much the same way that the founders of the field of psychoanalysis started their practices. That is, I began studying philosophy as teenager, then I studied psychology in college for several years, then I had personal access to a set of several hundred people who all shared the same or similar fetishes, fixations, fantasies, obsessions, &c. Like the earliest psychoanalysts, the segment of the population out of which I formed my theoretical foundation are not the dysfunctional or 'deranged' people who are locked inside mental rehabilitation institutions, but those who function on a very high level in society, are exceedingly intelligent, but who have serious emotional problems in their personal lives.

During my early years (which I'm still currently in), in order to interpret the data that I have collected from observing and/or talking to hundreds of people, I have a choice of either creating my own theory based on my observations, discussions and reflections, which is a difficult and very time-consuming thing to do, or I could simply subscribe to one of the various widely-accepted theories already in existence that claim to explain why people have bizarre fantasies, fetishes, fixations, obsessions, &c. The latter choice is not possible for me because there are currently no theories in existence that adequately explain repetitive uncontrollable fantasies, thoughts and behaviors. Therefore, I am left to create my own theory, which if it is a good one, will not only explain the phenomena using hypotheses that can be scientifically tested by anyone who has access to the same population set under study, but the theory will also be highly efficacious when applied in actual practice. If this can be done, it will be the first time in history that a psychoanalytic theory has been created that is both scientifically valid and highly efficacious when applied. Knowing this is a strange and exhilerating position to be in. At some point in this massive project I'm going to need the help of some fellow philosophers and brilliant empirical researchers, but for now I'm doing fairly well in the mission alone (because no helpers have appeared yet, but I'm sure they will when the time is right for collaboration). It has only been about 100 years since the earliest psychoanalysts put forth their theories. Not long ago, considering that the field of psychology is only about 250 years old compared to the field of philosophy, which is thousands of years old (probably tens of thousands actually). There is still a lot of room for new perspectives on human nature to be born. I really think the existentialists are far ahead of the game by recognizing that emotional problems (which cause behavioral problems) are often ontological problems, which need to be dealt with philosophically, not clinically. Though my own thought draws much from past philosophers who can easily be categorized as 'existential', mostly the ancient and early-modern ones, my thought is very different from the modern existentialists who tend to fixate on the idea of 'meaning' in life, and seem to think that 'finding meaning in life' is the answer to every problem. There really is no accurate single term to call me, because I'm a mix of an analytic ontologist, a psychoanalyst in the neutral, philosophical sense of the word, and an existential philosopher. I think the term 'fetish analyst' is OK for now since the analysis of fetishes was the very beginning of my work and will always be a major part of my work.

In the very beginning of my theoretical development, for the first 2.5 years (1999-2002) when I was mostly practicing how to ask people questions, how to inspire comfort and trust in the strangers who spoke to me, I asked the same set of questions to hundreds of people who were engaging in similar acts. I did not try to make any guesses on why all of these people were doing what they were doing, I simply gathered data, remained neutral in my views (which was easy to do because I was already neutral at heart without even trying) without ever saying a word to them on what I thought about what they were saying to me, and slowly over time, as I reflected day and night, year after year, on all of these things people told me, I began to feel like I understood this aspect of human nature. Part of my reflection was on my own experience in obsessions and 'fetishism' which took on various forms over my lifetime. Eventually, I began telling some of the people why I thought they were doing what they were doing. We had very interesting conversations which helped me to develop my theories further, until finally I felt I had a pretty good grasp on why people engage in BDSM, fetishism and other acts found on the so-called 'dark' side of life. At that point, I decided to start doing fetish analysis formally, because there seemed to be a great need in the world for this kind of work and because I needed to expand the set of people I was studying by having analytic discussions with people whose fetishes and fixations did not involve visiting dominatrices. So that is when I put an ad in the counseling section of the weekly newspaper, made a new website devoted to my new work, and started calling myself "the fetish analyst", in 2002.

During my basic theoretical development, before I began doing analysis formally, I worked as a professional dominatrix in Seattle, which is how I had access to the population under study. In the first three years of my formal practice, between 2002 and 2004, I did both jobs, but gradually started doing more analytic work and less dominatrix work until I finally quit professional domination altogether. I have to say, since I've quit, I have not missed it at all; honestly I never liked it from the beginning. The standard set of acts that dominatrices do with their paying clients I found myself incapable of doing because they were so much against my integrity. Even though I had done lots of BDSM and fetishism in my personal life before 'going pro', including being in an 8-cast extreme BDSM performance art troupe, I found that the acts in the commercial version of BDSM make the women into just a sex object / sex worker robot for the man, so I did not engage in the standard acts that most dominatrices do (instead I did other acts that to me felt far more authentic). I don't think all the women who work in the sex industry perceive themselves as being used as sex objects for the man's benefit and the woman's loss, but that is how I perceived the job most of the time. I think professional domination can be, in some sense, empowering to some women, while other women, like me, find it insulting because it is not authentic and is a service industry job (I'm don't like any service-industry jobs and I've done many of them!) that the nature of which is dictated much more by the men involved than the women involved. So, there I was doing a job I really did not like but continued to do because it gave me access to a population that I would otherwise not have access to, and I wanted to continue studying them and understanding them on deeper levels, but because the dreaded standard acts are expected by the clients and professional dominatrices would all go out of business if they did not do them, I found it more and more difficult to continue doing the job because with each inauthentic act I felt like a had lost a little part of myself and the effect was cumulative, which made it very difficult for me to continue the robotic acts, but the research and philosophy aspect of the job was truly fascinating and fulfilling work, so I did not want to quit, and to solve the problem I hired a beautiful prostitute to work with me. She was very friendly and accomodative and she happily carried out the acts that I had no interest in, and she actually found the very same acts that I found insulting to be empowering to her. Amazing that humans can perceive the same acts in such radically different ways. So, this solution allowed me to focus more intensely on the psychoanalytic part of the job. At this point I was free, without any inner-conflict, to delve even further into the psyche of the people who came to visit me, in order to try to understand as deeply as I could, why they were there, beyond the superficial reasons that they gave me about just wanting thrills, or just wanting to release some of life's pressures, etc. Those reasons are true, but they are only the surface. The deeper reasons why people engage in these acts are almost always unconscious to them; they are acting out of an urge, a feeling that they cannot control. It is difficult, but not impossible to uncover the unconscious reasons why so many millions of men pay hundreds of dollars to professional dominatrices and other types of sex workers, on a regular basis, and can't seem to stop themselves from doing so. Some men spend tens of thousands of dollars every year on sexual entertainment. It is a multi-billion-dollar industry, and the non-ordinary or 'dark' version of it is deeper and more complex than the ordinary, or 'mainstream' version of the sex industry (however, all subcultures are eventually commodified and 'absorbed' by the mainstream culture, though in a lighter, fluffier, less complex, glossier version, but whenever this happens, a new underground is automatically formed because underground cultures are the natural, necessary antitheses of mainstream cultures). It is the underground darkness of the mainstream culture's simultaneous desire for and fear of sex, especially 'forbidden sex', that I find most interesting. The sexuality of a culture, in both its overground and underground versions, says a lot about the culture as a whole.

Over time I uncovered more and more reasons why all these people were coming to me, asking to be put in pain, or immobilized, or 'punished', or relentlessly teased and humiliated, etc. I learned that the deeper reasons are existential reasons, often involving themes of the desire for catharsis and metamorphosis, and often there is a buried desire to express a profound grief or remourse that has no means of expression in the ordinary world. Sometimes the reason involves an unconscious attempt to fulfill an extremely deep and complex emotional need that has no means of fulfillment possible in the ordinary world. We do not have rituals in the ordinary world that have the power to reach down into the deepest part of the human and bring it forth into conscious awareness while inside a safe medium that allows expression, resolution and release of something that can never be adequately grasped by mere words. One of the most ecstatic discoveries I made during this time was to learn that the people who visit the dominatrix are on an unconscious level trying to heal a sad, broken and hurt part of themselves, and this frequently contains a primeval, unfulfilled longing. No wonder the attempt is a physical one: Profound healing always involves some kind of physical process. We can not heal on the deepest level by sitting in a chair and talking about our disturbances; we absolutely must go through some kind of physical ritual process that expresses, resolves and releases the disturbance, or else we will remain permanently disturbed. Through my experimentation during the five years I worked as a dominatrix (1999-2004), I learned that humans need rituals that fulfill various emotional purposes, sometimes very bizarre rituals are needed in order to access the part of the person that is needing to come forth and be engaged, and rituals are so needed by humans, that if they are not sufficiently creating the needed rituals consciously, humans will attempt to create them unconsciously. Another unstoppable need that humans have is the need to express what lies deep within themselves, and if expression to a sufficient depth is not attained through conscious means, they will get sick and eventually will develop a physical disease and die. There is a lot more I have to say on what I discovered about human nature during those years, but I will have to save it for the book I'm currently writing.

In summary, my professional practice began with five years of methodical, repetitive exploration into the dark side of humanity with several hundred people, doing bizarre rituals and observing people very closely, followed by about three more years of theoretical development and reflection, which itself is informed by several years of studying philosophy and a few years of studying psychology in college. I've been immersed deep into the dark side of life, long, long before I ever went through my little phase of being a dominatrix. This gives me a distinct advantage over those who learn about the darkness of life out of books rather than actual life experience.

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