Quote Originally Posted by Top-Rock
I wonder if anyone else is as intrigued as I am by the article in the May, 2003 Discover magazine entitled "Emotions And The Brain: Love" beginning on page 70. The article relates stress to the production of the peptide oxytocin in women but relatively much less so in men, who produce adrenaline instead. Oxytocin has effects which produce behavior quite different from a man's "fight or flight" reaction. Instead women seek out social contact. Their "tolerance effect" in reaction to naturally occurring opiates, (opioids), is suppressed. Hence oxytocin intensifies the feelings of pleasure and reward and satisfaction attendant on social bonds which are produced by opioids, prolonging and enhancing their effect.
I believe this neurochemical complex explains part of the reason women make intense social bonds with Dominant Men when those men subject them to stress. In terms of evolutionary biology, it makes perfect sense. It would have provided an important survival mechanism for women kidnapped by members of neighboring tribes. (This is a common practice in New Guinea even today, in the internecine warfare which reigns in the hinterlands.)
To TOP rock's excellent summary of this article, and his highly relevant (for us) hypothesis, I thought it might be useful for those forum members who don't want the bother of reading the at times technical article to add a more detailed bulletin of its target points :-

1)rats subjected to repeated electric shocks bit and clawed each other to death, but this and many other experimental studies on reactions to stress, all supporting the adrenaline driven “ fight or flight “ response were all carried on males.most research on humans also related to males

2) A researcher(female)struck by this, thought that, instead of F&F, women tended to reach out for loved ones.She looked up mega reviews and found that 26 out of 28 studies showed that women in stressful circumstances are significantly more likely to seek social support than men.

3)Oxytocin levels are known to be significantly raised in childbirth,breast feeding , and at times of sexual climax, and whilst the presence of oestrogen enhances its effectiveness, testosterone reduces it; oxytiocin is thought to be associated with mother/infant bonding, and even face recognition

4)Praire voles belong to the 5% of mammals who after mating remain monogamous for life. On examining their brains it was found that their oxytocin (tending and nurturing) production centres
overlapped with their dopamine( pleasuring) production centres; a feature lacking in polygamous montane voles. However when the action of prairie voles oxytocin was experimentally blocked they began fucking indiscriminately appears that the overlap in the prairie voles caused caring and nurturing behaviour to become pleasurable

5)Lactating women have high oxytocin levels and handle stress better than, non lactating women .
It appears that oxytocinis actually responsible for that gut wrenching feeling that occurs when a mother hears a thud followed by her child screaming, in other words it is an “ Oh god”crunch time mobilising feeling that gets all the nurturing and tending into full gear,.So People under the influence of oxytocin have smaller, briefer stress responses than others do; bad news seems to roll off them more readily. The link between stress response and social attachment is at the heart of the idea of the tending instinct. You can fight your way out of stress by destroying your enemies, or you can reduce stress by reaching out to loved ones. In terms of brain chemistry, you can load up on adrenaline and fight or flee, or you can cool down with oxytocin and tend and befriend.

6) Another interesting fin was that "older women living with husbands and finding those husbands to be non supportive have chronically higher levels of oxytocin. Now it's not clear what the direction of causality is. But a tentative conclusion that I would make is that when social-support needs are not being met, oxytocin levels go up as a signal to seek out social contact. And then once found, oxytocin may be restored to normal levels. So oxytocin isn't the 'feel good' hormone. At times, it may be the 'feel crummy' hormone that leads you to take steps to feel better." Some scientists believe oxytocin works in tandem with the body's natural opiates, with oxytocin triggering the drive for social attachment and the opioids supplying the warm, fuzzy feeling of being in the company of loved ones.( no wonder drug addicts abandon their family for those cuddly needles with the sensuously sweet contents).

7)One of the effects oxytocin has is to reduce the tolerance effect that plays such a devastating role in drug addiction. Just as addicts develop a tolerance to heroin that causes them to take ever-larger doses, the brain develops an identical tolerance to naturally occurring opiates. In tests with animal subjects, oxytocin injections dramatically reduced tolerance to opiates. In other words, oxytocin may not create the visceral pleasure of love and attachment, but it does enable that pleasure to last for a longer period of time.

From all of this I can only echo Top rocks idea that maybe this gives clues as to why owned slaves can experience intense waves of love and gratitude after floggings of such intensity as to send them into subspace, and not unlike the feelings Winston felt for his interrogator, after he had been confronted and broken by exposure to his worst fear in room 101, in George Orwell's chilling novel1984.
I have also makes one ponder on whether consent can always be assumed to be informed consent in more extreme D/s relationships. Another situation I have been wondering about is the Stockholm syndrome ( where kidnap or hostage victims start to take up the kidnappers perspective , a famous example being Patty Hearst). I don't know but intend to try and find out whether women are more at risk of this effect than men.