Terence Sellers

Terence Sellers (born 1952, in Washington D.C.) is an American author and psychologist, specializing in sadomasochism. After graduating from John Jay College in New York City and doing graduate work at St. John's College, Santa Fe, NM she became an editor and reviewer.

to John Robert Sellers, a writer and Gloria Ruth Schlosser, a painter. Her father "Bob" was an autodidact and avid book-collector, and instilled in her the ambition to be a writer by the age of seven. "Terry" became "Teresa" in Catholic school for ten years, when the 60s intervened and she enjoyed the freedom of public school for her last two years in high-school.

Though superficially a bohemian like her parents and a 'hippie,' she was drawn intellectually to the classics, and attended the famous St. John's College, Santa Fe campus, and there studied "The Great Books." Her father's financial problems assured her an early foray into earning her own living, and without graduating or returning home she moved to New York City at the age of 19 in 1972.

Early experiments in writing were heavily influenced by the French Decadents: Baudelaire, Mallarme and Nerval, as well as the French Surrealists. Jean Genet was a very early favorite, based partly on her knowledge of her father's own incarceration when she was five years of age.

Being something of an autodidact herself, her library in a tiny New York apartment at 21 Jones Street, financed by a secretary's salary, burgeoned. She taught herself French, visiting France several times in the convening years. Her father's influence included the burly American ethos of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and John O'Hara.

Other early interests were in abnormal psychology and psychoanalysis, in which she read widely. (She was herself in analysis for close to twenty years.) By the age of twenty she understood she possessed a psyche dominated by sado-masochistic matrices. Her subsequent readings, studies and experiments in sadomasochistic psychology and behaviour led her to write the seminal work, "The Correct Sadist," which was first published by ikoo-Buchverlag in Berlin in 1981 as 'Die Korrecte Sadismus.' She undertook to self-publish it in 1982 under the imprint "V.I.T.R.I.O.L," a medieval acronym referring to the transformation of lead into gold. This self-publishing venture drew the attention of New York's Grove Press, under the famed Barney Rosset. "The Correct Sadist" appeared in 1985 was among the last books Mr. Rosset published under his original Grove Press imprint.

Terence completed her education at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where she graduated 3rd in her class summa cum laude, 1986, with a degree in Forensic Psychology. She also received a tribute to attend graduate school. However, realizing that a career in straight society was closed to her due to her infamous book, she determined to remain in her underground of the Dominatrix, attend to a clientele of over twenty-years' standing, and very likely write more.

During her heyday as a Dominatrix and Madam, Terence was able to purchase property, design and build a home, and make plans for a 'writing retirement.' Returning to New Mexico with strong memories and emotions connected to the place - the landscape, her new home, and her alma mater, St. John's - she was joined in this exodus from New York in 1988 by the painter Carl Apfelschnitt. Though they were friends only briefly, from 1985 until the time of his death at age 40 by AIDS, Carl had a profound influence upon Terence, inspiring her to write her novel "One Decadent Life" based on the admixed heroin culture and art world of New York City. An autobiographical piece, "Is There Life After Sado-Masochism" to be found with other works on her website, http://www.terencesellers.com/wr_lifeaft.html perfectly describes the fin-de-siecle mode of their collaboration. They would be the New York Exodus Renaissance...

After Carl died, Terence's house was completed but she was without much impetus to engage in Renaissance. She somewhat abandoned New Mexico and returned to New York and a lively new reality, "Jackie 60," a nightclub/performance space/social club of bohemians she had known for going-on twenty years. The 'Whipshack,' as it was fondly known by her friends, continued on, providing a somewhat decent living for the author.

She did go to New Mexico on writing retreats, during which time she completed a second work on sado-masochism, "Dungeon Evidence." Aka "The Correct Sadist II," this work was originally 'commissioned' by Grove Press-Weidenfeld by one of its new editors - a personage who shall remain nameless. Upon completing "Dungeon Evidence," a work marked by her psychiatric studies and highly influenced by the case studies' work of the early psychoanalysts, her editor reneged. He had gone to South America and had a literal conversion experience - whereupon he was sworn to the Virgin not to publish anymore degenerate literature. Though Grove Press soon fired him, "Dungeon Evidence" was snapped up by an arts' press in England, Creation/Velvet, and appeared in 1997.

Another project Terence enjoyed with Creation was the publication of the 13th Editor of Krafft-Ebing's 'Psychopathia Sexualis', one of her favorite works. She was asked to write its Introduction, which gave her the opportunity to remind the powers-that-be that much of the body of Krafft-Ebing's work were observations by 'women of the night,' without whose co-operation he would have had less than half his material. It also gave her the pleasure of writing her own "Case History," #236 under Krafft-Ebing's aegis: a few paragraphs that the author considers one of her most mordant, yet finest works. This Introduction may be read at http://www.terencesellers.com/wr_psychopathia.html

She now underwent a period of relative non-productivity, concentrating on a relationship with a beautiful young transgendered lady, Falon, a talented web-artist who brought Terence out of her Luddite fixation with the 19th century, speeding her through the twentieth to land squarely in the 21st as a fully functional member of the Wired World, as a Author and dark 'Sex Symbol,' shamaness, crone and renegade psychologist. The creation of her web-site http://www.terencesellers.com became a primary focus, her archive and hand out to a world that had mostly remained unaware of her work.

After 28 years Terence lost "The Whipshack" in the burgeoning real-estate frenzy of 2004 and present... her tiny old building was sold to an Israeli real estate conglomerate that razed it literally at her heels. Unable to locate any space worth having for what she might pay, she arrived on October 1, 2005 to live full-time in New Mexico. At about the same time, the New York University's prestigious Fales Library bought her papers for its "Downtown Collection," featuring artists of every stripe who lived and worked in New York City's downtown from 1972 - 1995 - just about precisely her most creative time-span there.

She now limits her visits to the Great Satan to once a year. This Fall 2007 she is again part of the 'Downtown New York' scene with the publication of issue #5 of "Verbal Abuse," a literary journal she has worked on since its inception in 1992 with the renowned artist and poet Chi Chi Valenti, creator of the Jackie 60/Mother parties and multitudes of multifarious events. The new "Rapture Cafe" on Avenue A will be the scene of many readings, performances and celebrations of this literary journal, curated by Chi Chi and edited by her trusty submission(s) Editor, Terence Sellers.

A piece from Terence's newest work, "Unpublished Novel By Bob Sellers" will be featured in Verbal Abuse available for download or purchase at this link on Lulu.com as of Fall 2007. This work encompasses a memoir of her late father-writer Bob and his unrealized literary ambitions, and features his unpublished novel, garnished with her editorial whip-hand.

[As of July 9, 2007, by the Author. To be continued.]

Literature

 * Der korrekte Sadismus, Ikoo 1993, ISBN 3886779122
 * Begierde. Drei Paradigmen unerreichbarer Liebe, ikoo-Verlag 1988, ISBN 3886779386