Internal Enslavement will always have an initial training period, but as the relationship develops it does not require much communication and there is very little or no negotiation at all. For example, this is from the definition of “slave” in the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary: “One who is the property of, and entirely subject to another person, whether by capture, purchase or birth a servant completely divested of freedom and personal rights.” When we say “slave”, we mean literal slave, defined in this way.” HOW IS INTERNAL ENSLAVEMENT DIFFERENT TO THE USUAL DEFINITIONS OF MASTER/SLAVE RELATIONSHIPS? “One of the key concepts of IE is literally – slave: this is just the everyday definition of “slave” that everyone grows up with, and it doesn’t include the roleplay slaves you sometimes meet elsewhere in BDSM. Tanos defines it on the Internal Enslavement website as: It was coined by Tanos, and there is very little negotiation (and a lot of training) in this relationship.

Internal Enslavement is a sub-culture within the broader BDSM umbrella, bringing power exchange to the extreme maximum. They sound like they might be similar concepts, but “mental BDSM” usually refers to psychological (rather than physical) control, while “internal enslavement” refers to what you’d imagine the dictionary definition of “slave” is. Two terms that nearly always cause confusion in conversation are “mental BDSM” and “internal enslavement”.

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