Mind Rape/Literature: Difference between revisions

* [[Older Than Television]]: [[EE Doc Smith]]'s Arisians (the ''[[Lensman]]'' novels) do exactly this to interlopers who enter their space uninvited or in violation of previous warnings. All the bad, wrong or evil things they have ever done are dredged up to haunt them, and they can adjust the intensity. Helmuth gets off light with only a brief dose, but he's still shaken from the experience and heeds their warning not to come back. {{spoiler|On the full dose, people go insane to the point that ''they kill themselves''}}. And for those races too cold-minded to be Mind Raped, they can skip the pleasantries and turn them into [[People Puppets]].

* A mild version of this is a favorite tactic of [[The Fair Folk|the elves]] in [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[Discworld (Literature)|Discworld]]'' novel ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Lords and Ladies|Lords and Ladies]]''; they use their "glamour" (which is essentially a form of psychic domination) to make all but the most strong-willed mortals (or anyone wearing iron) feel worthless and powerless.

** In ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Eric|Eric]],'' the new Demon King Astfgl has worked it out that Hell's traditional punishments - burning, etc. - are useless for tormenting the damned, who have no bodies. He substitutes relentless mind-numbing boredom, like having a demon show you an interminable slideshow of his vacation to the Fifth Circle.

** What's interesting is, the King of Hell was actually ripping off Humans themselves! In other ''[[Discworld]]'' novels, it's pointed out that ''[[Humans Are Bastards|humans invented]]'' concepts such as mediocrity, dullness, etc. (Compare the [[Real Is Brown]] trope to, say, any photo of nature, or [[Real Life|just go to a park or something]]). For example, forcing the Sisyphus [[Expy]] to listen to hours of boulder pushing safety regulations rather than being [[Fate Worse Than Death|allowed]] to just get on with pushing the boulder. Hell, even the ''torturers'' felt tortured.

* In [[Robin Hobb]]'s ''[[Realm of the Elderlings (Literature)|Farseer]]'' trilogy, The Pretender King and his agents use mind rape to forcefully help themselves to whatever a persons mind can give them. Be it information, loyalty, control of the body or simply for the sadistic pleasure of it.

** Oddly enough, the conclusion of the trilogy saw {{spoiler|Fitz use much the same technique back on "King" Regal, in a way that was not portrayed as even slightly anti-heroic. Then again, Fitz was the narrator, so...}}

** Another example: a trainee Soul Drinker psyker in ''Crimson Tears'' uses his abilities on a human who died as a sacrificial combat slave under the lash of the Dark Eldar, and described it as "someone...someone tore out their souls."

* In the ''[[Anita Blake]]'' books, there's a few different kinds exhibited by the vampires. First, they use simple brainwashing of a human into a happy automaton with no independent thought (most often used to get people to stand still while they take blood). Not usually used for physical sex, however, taking blood this way is very sexual and is described as metaphysical sex. Then there's dream/magical simulation manipulation. While not used to its full potential, all the characters able to do this are nymphomaniacs and use it to force sex on the unwilling. Thirdly, there's emotional manipulation - this can be either making people hopelessly in love with the vampire or making a person incapable of feeling anything but fear, and both types are shown both with and without physical rape. Finally, there's establishing the Human Servant/Master bond against the servant's will; basically, being a master vampire's human servant is the equivalent in being the wife in a medieval marriage, except the ceremony allows your husband to make you watch any memories he chooses during it and to play with your mind, to some extent, afterwards.

* In the ''[[New Jedi Order]]'' series, teenage Jedi apprentice Tahiri Veila is kidnapped by [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|Yuuzhan Vong]] [[Mad Scientist|Shapers]], who attempt to rewrite her memories to convince her that she was a warrior of their species, as part of an attempt to create Jedi-fighting Force-sensitive Yuuzhan Vong. She's rescued before they finish, but there are still [[Split Personality|lingering consequences]] for the rest of the series.

* Remember ''[[A New Hope]]'', and the scene where Vader brings in an interrogation droid? In the novelization, and in the [http://www.youtube.com/user/StarWarsAudioDramas#g/c/FC7DB8AFA5900D5E audio drama], he dismisses it in favor of what starts as a [[Mind Probe]] but, as she resists, quickly becomes this. It even gets to the point where he's able to make her believe that she is being burned alive, and that [[Irony|he is her father]] and needs to know what happened to the Death Star plans. Somehow, even this doesn't get her to talk. While she needs a medic after, she's also able to recover remarkably fast, shunting aside any effects just [[Angst What Angst|like all the other trauma she suffers in that film]].

* In ''[[Luke Skywalker and The Shadows of Mindor]]'', the [[Big Bad]], Cronal, wants to [[Grand Theft Me|take Luke's body]], but he has to soften up Luke's mind, first. He does that by forcing Luke to endure The Dark, [[And I Must Scream|an eternity of nothing but watching the stars go out]]. Luke's able to find a way out, but he couldn't take much more and for most of the rest of the book he is disturbed and nihilistic. Later, Cronal decides that Leia would be [[Squick|an even better choice]], and when he does it to ''her'' he closes that avenue of escape, and cuts away her senses, her awareness of her body, and all of her memories. She takes much more than Luke did without breaking, and it's an open question whether she would have broken even without the interruption, though she too is in poor shape later.

== "Mundane" Torture ==

** Further to this, the premise of DoubleThink is a slow-acting form of Mind Rape in and of itself. Even worse because it's ''self-inflicted''.

* ''The Cardinal of the Kremlin'' has a torture scene in which a female double agent is completely deprived of sensory input until her own imagination overwhelms her and she loses her mind...[[And I Must Scream|after twelve hours]]. Being [[Tom Clancy]], it is ''totally plausible'' - ten whole pages of [[Nightmare Fuel]].

* In [[JRR Tolkien (Creator)|JRR Tolkien]]'s ''[[The Silmarillion]]'', Túrin Turambar and his sister Nienor get cursed by the Big Bad and go through a [[Trauma Conga Line]]. The thing is, when it all started, Túrin was all of eight and Nienor hadn't even been born yet--the person the [[Big Bad]] ''really'' wanted to break was their father, who had to sit there for twenty-seven years and helplessly watch it happen. {{spoiler|It worked.}}

** See also the previous category for a less mundane example.

* What {{spoiler|[[Hanging Judge]] Wargrave}} puts his victims through in ''[[And Then There Were None (Literature)|And Then There Were None]]''. Specially in the case of the one he thought of as the ''worse'' of all of them: {{spoiler|child-killing [[Yandere]] Vera Claythorne}}.

* ''[[Harry Potter (Literature)|Harry Potter]]'': The Cruciatus Curse causes excruciating physical pain. However, extended use of the curse causes [[A Fate Worse Than Death|complete insanity]] in the victim.

* In [[The Republic Of Trees]], {{spoiler|Isobel}} tried to leave the group, which by the laws of the Republic is punishable by death. The only alternative to death is "correction therapy" - unfortunately, with each of the other characters at different stages of their own [[Sanity Slippage]], the role of the therapist is left to Joy, the second in command in the group, a [[Knight Templar]] about the rules and, which others haven't realised yet, {{spoiler|a newly self-discovered [[Yandere]]}}.

* The tracker-jackers in ''[[The Hunger Games (Literature)|The Hunger Games]]'' cause hallucinations of your worst fears. As we find out later, the Capital has been playing with the venom--low doses, carefully applied, can teach you to associate any particular thing with fear and horror.

* In the web-novel ''[[Domina (Literature)|Domina]]'', Malcanthet, the "Queen of the Succubi," used mundane rape to break people and make them her slaves before the series started.