Twist away - Detorquere
Glyph symbol for Twist Away Detorquere for The Ki by Leonora Weston. Copyright.
Detorquere in Latin - means to twist away, or turn away or deflect.
from dē- (“away”) + torqueō (“twist”).
I distort, misrepresent.
The English word “torque” force comes from the same etymology. In the Ki response of Twist Away - Detorquere it is a psychological and physiological embodied response to adversarial force power.
Missing as an additional Fight-Flight-Freeze response
In writing of the 5 Danger Instincts for self-preservation in his book Instinct and the Unconscious (1920), Dr W.H Rivers recorded:
Flight - Aggression - Manipulative Activity - Immobility - Collapse. (Footnote 2)
“Manipulative Activity” very much fits the Ki response of Twist away - Detorquere.
Additionally it is “missing” from today’s current conception of Fight, Flight, Freeze, Flop.
I was unaware of Dr W.H.R Rivers’ work when I identified this response in my own research. It was only brought to my attention by a psychologist attending one of my keynote talks and my discussing the Twist away Detorquere response to power.
Dr W.H.R Rivers’ 1920 “manipulative activity” response
Dr W.H Rivers was a psychologist, physician and anthropologist, and during World War I became a “shell shock” specialist, based at Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland. He treated soldiers and airman suffering shell shock or what we would today call PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, that they suffered from serving Great Britain during the their country in the war.
Dr W.H.R Rivers portrait by Henry Maull, before 1922. Image: Wikicommons
Dr W.H.R Rivers outside Craiglockhart Hospital. Image: Wikicommons.
He discusses the manipulative activity response (writing in context of soldiers and airmen in war and being treated for shell shock) as “a special kind of activity, often of a highly complex kind, whereby the danger may be avoided and overcome”. (Footnote 3)
In his longer elaboration he describes “Manipulative Activity and Absence of Affect”, noting it is “wholly free from fear or any other emotion except perhaps a certain degree of excitement”. He notes that:
“Highly complex acts designed to allow escape from, or to overcome, the danger are carried as as coolly as, or even more coolly than, is customary in the ordinary behaviour of daily life…. That the absence of fear is due to suppression of affect, which seems to accompany the primitive reaction to danger is supported by the insensitiveness to pain which often occurs at the same time.” (Footnote 4)
He also makes reference to the kind of movements required, captured in a way by the examples he provides:
the driver of a car or pilot of an aeroplane in danger of collision have to perform complex movements by which danger is avoided.
War planes painting from the RAF Museum.
the beings which seem to come next to Man in this respect are the quadruma [eg monkeys, primates] or other animals with an arboreal [tree] habit, for this habit greatly increases the complexity of flight and needs a high degree of delicacy of adjustment of sense and movement. (Footnote 5)
Antique monkey print (1861) from Charles Henry Dessalines d'Orbigny Dictionnaire Universel d'Histoire Naturelle.
If one envisages the kind of complex movements that are required - these are twisting-bending movements. Whether that twisting-bending is through the skies aerially - to avoid enemy fire getting a lock on; and twisting-bending movements of monkey hands, limbs and body through trees. There is also alternating acceleration and deceleration, and unexpected shifts of movement, with a subtle askew position in the body accompanying this response.
Psychological & physical manifestation
Psychologically it is characterised by out-of-the-box thinking and reactivity to force power, for self-preservation. It’s when someone twists away from compliance or surrender to power, to navigate around or manipulate a threat or challenge.
What’s fascinating it that it has a literal physical manifestation in its embodiment. The person positions themselves askew - on an angle, olbique - in relation to the Other who is perceived as an adversary. There is an often subtle twist - in the shoulders, as if the body is beginning to manifest into a kind of embodied deflect. It is also noticeable when a person is seated, the Twist away Detorquere response is embodied in an angled body and chair in relation to the perceived adversary Other.
As the Detorquere response intensifies, it is often accompanied by a physical wriggle movement within the body; the person squirms.
If they are walking, they will divert - twists away from - the normal path.
They scan the contextual environment and adversarial figure force looking for loopholes, weaknesses and features they can use to gain advantage, and test those potential weak points.
If caught in a net, the individual uses twisting movements to try and escape, to weaken the nets connection points, to increase a hole, to squirm out of or break the net.
Twist-away glyph symbol
I rendered the Twist Away - Detorquere glyph as an upward spike (the top of which can poke, provoke, bump and test the dominant force power), and then into a curling twist.
Twist away - within sexuality
Within sexuality of the Ki, the Twist Away Detorquere response is highly associated with self-identified “masochist” and “bottoms” identities in my data, and with the ability to take high pain while activated. Pain is not experienced as pain, but rather as sensation plus intensity. This correlates with Dr Rivers’ own description of the activation of “manipulative activity” response in his 1920 book, during a threatened shipwreck event in which he felt no pain from the sun blisters on his legs while he was activated in response.
Sexually, the response also correlates with enjoyment of particular activities such as erotic wrestling (in which the body is physically twisting), attempting to escape nets and bondage, trampling and strangling. Interestingly from a linguistics analysis, many of the words correlating activity preferences end in “le” (derivational suffix from -el.)
The relevance of this? The suffix is used for diminutive, repetitive, or intensive actions of force power.
eg) wrestle, wriggle, trample, struggle, strangle.
The response is associated sexually with wanting to be put under adversarial force power, in a manner that activates a delicious Twist-away Detorquere - adversarial response to force power.
I have noticed that the person seeking to manifest the activation of Twist-Away Detorquere seeks out intense force power that is adversarial challenge to them.
This has the structure of “do me”; wrestle me, trample me, strangle me, etc; with the individual seeking for the Other to attempt to over-power them and/or outwit them.
The linguistics and expression of Detorquere
I have been very interested to hear about how these responses to power are formed within linguistics and Proto-Indo European PIE roots of words.
Linguistics specialist Karen Parker has been teaching me the PIE roots - or as I joke - teaching me how to eat PIE. (By which I mean understand, absorb and take in the PIE linguistics roots of words.)
There are two significant PIE roots that seem to keep coming up in relation to the Twist Away Detorquere response.
PIE *terkw- meaning “to twist” and PIE *wer-(2) meaning “ to turn, bend”.
Amongst words formed from *terkw- (to twist) are:
contort, distort, extort, retort, torment, tort, torture, queer.
Words from *wer- (2) (to bend) are:
avert, divert, pervert, subvert, versatile; wriggle, wrangle, wrestle.
Non-conformism and Contrarianism
The verb “to deviate” also comes from a similar linguistic path, meaning to turn aside or wander from the (right) way”, from Latin “de” - away and “via” meaning way, road or path.
What this Twist away Detorquere can look like embodied within a work setting with dress code in place - is a non-conformist streak of purple hair, inappropriately bright or abrasive shirt, mismatched socks, loud stripes or spikes - that provoke and stimulate. Most often there will be what I call “technical compliance” which is technically not breaking but bending the rules. Although it may be self-evident to others - that this is not what the authority had in mind for dress code, and likely to be perceived as provocative and/or inappropriate.
Examples of office attire which manifests a Twist away Detorquere response to the power of the corporate office and social rules; with technical compliance but contrary individualistic streak - a streak of hair colour, loud corporate work shirt, mismatched colourful socks.
This response to a corporate dress code - invites attention, humour, commenting on, as well as often attracting greater authoritarian scrutiny, amendment of rules to try and close down loophole to enforce greater conformity and compliance, and may attract disciplinary action.
Twist away Detorquere in the workplace
The enormous benefit of people who tend towards this activated response is they can think outside-of-the-box, challenge and find innovative solutions no-one else has seen, scan and test for errors or glitches making them excellent editors, adapt well to transformational change, help break apart entrenched solidified and rigid thinking with aspects which may well be out-of-date.
People with activated Twist Away Detorquere response tend to versatile, adaptive and flexible thinkers, who can perform in management when they are set up with incentives which align company’s goals with benefit to themselves. They tend to perform better than many of their peers in high pressure and challenging work environments, deflecting a lot of that pressure. However it can be challenging for bosses to manage those with Twist Away Detorquere response activation, with the high dose of maverick, bending of rules, subversion and diversion, distracting others and undermining of authority.
For queries or to book a consult or education, email: info@theki.com.au
References:
(1) Latin Detorquere / Detorqueo definition - see Latin Cactus 2000 Germany online https://latin.cactus2000.de/showverb.en.php?verb=detorquere and Wictionary Dictionary here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/detorqueo#Latin
(2) Dr W.H.R Rivers (1920) Instinct and the Unconscious: A Contribution to a Biological Theory of the Psycho-Neuroses Cambridge University Press, London
(3) Ibid, p.54
(4) Ibid p.57
(5) Ibid. p.55