Keeping up with the latest
I logged onto the OED online to check something out, and just for the heck of it I checked the entries that were just added last month. Would you believe they have just got around to adding mindfucker?
mindfucker, n.
coarse slang.[< MIND n. + FUCKER n., after MIND-FUCK v.]
1. Something that disturbs, astounds, or amazes.
1969 in J. E. Lighter Hist. Dict. Amer. Slang (1997) II. 559 This thing is a real mindfucker! 1971 Oz 34 42/1 Some gigs Jimi [Hendrix] was terrible, some nights he was good as it ever gets. His records generally contained, an equal mix of absolute killers, real total mindfuckers, and interesting little also-rans, marking-time things, ultimately just fillers. 1980 A. MAUPIN More Tales of City (1989) lvii. 188 Jon shook his head incredulously. ‘That is..a mind-fucker.’ 1993 R. RUCKER et al. Mondo 2000 71/1 It’s a real mind-fucker.
2. A person who psychologically manipulates another.
1971 E. E. LANDY Underground Dict. 133 Mind fucker,..[a] person who attempts to manipulate another’s thinking without consideration for the other. 1980 National Lampoon Aug. 67 You’re some kind of mindfucker. You’re a witch. 1992 Harper’s Mag. May 36/1 In common usage, the term ‘mindfucker’ refers to someone who manipulates other people, who fucks them over emotionally or financially
Why does it not surprise me that one of the earliest attributions is a reference to Jimi Hendrix?
But this wasn’t what I was looking for at all. I actually was looking for a word that I found in the online Malleus Maleficarum that Luke so graciously pointed out. Believe it or not, one of my professors used this historic work in a rhetorical theory class. But then again, he did his dissertation on something regarding the rhetorical structures of Gothic death metal… But I digress, again, as usual. The passage that caught my eye was this:
JUST as the generative faculty can be bewitched, so can inordinate love or hatred be caused in the human mind. First we shall consider the cause of this, and then, as far as possible, the remedies.
Philocaption, or inordinate love of one person for another, can be caused in three ways. Sometimes it is due merely to a lack of control over the eyes; sometimes to the temptation of devils; sometimes to the spells of necromancers and witches, with the help of devils.
Philocaption seems to be an interesting problem. I’ve suffered from it from time to time. I think my problems largely stem from the first reason, a lack of control over my eyes. But I suppose I’m open to the suggestion that I’m tempted by the devil. Unfortunately, this charming word isn’t even in the OED, let alone any other online dictionary. It’s a charming thought, but the Malleus Maleficarum (Witches Hammer) insists that strong men can resist:
It is said that when a man does not give way to temptation he does not sin, but it is an exercise for his virtue; but this is to be understood of the temptation of the devil, not of that of the flesh; for this is a venial sin even if a man does not yield to it. Many examples of this are to be read.
. . .
There are still some strong men cruelly enticed by witches to this sort of love, so that it would seem that they could never restrain themselves from their inordinate lust for them, yet these often most manfully resist the temptation of lewd and filthy enticements, and by the aforesaid defences overcome all the wiles of the devil.
Sorry, I’m with Tom Waits on that one: “Temptation, temptation / I just can’t resist.” Then again, it seems like a fun cop-out, oddly connected with the National Lampoon reference in the OED: “You’re some kind of mindfucker. You’re a witch. ” But maybe the real problem is that I like witches. My ex-wife’s mother was a bona-fide Wiccan, and she was one of the nicest people I ever met. No mother-in-law jokes from me; she was a fine lady. I don’t really suspect the witches; I suspect that my eyes are the source of most of my mindfucks.
