Whip Worship front cover

by Cliff Barrett, Ph.D.
Published in 1972 by Impact Library

The attention grabbing cover blurbs promises insight into a world of women who “live and love by whip and pain and twisted torture” and “…females who attain amazing summit fulfillment by painful agony aberrations.” Unfortunately, Whip Worship reads more like a series of random stories thrown together willy-nilly instead of a cohesive narrative of any form.

The first scene of the book is a rather standard case history of two teenage sisters. (Well, the tale they tell of turning tricks while hitchhiking isn’t exactly standard but the “case study” format of the concerned psychologist is.)

Next, we are then treated to a first person account of a group of soldiers enjoying the spoils of war.  Even though the gangbang triple penetration described therein is arousing, the abrupt shift in writing styles is abrupt so much so that it proves distracting.

There’s little need to describe the rest of the scenes – they vacillate from tired third person narratives of sadistic prostitution rings to the confession of a depraved bisexual masochist – the sort of girl that fantasies are made of – to an upper class masochistic man who enjoys the charms of street urchins of both sexes.  It’s the last vignette I mentioned that serves both as a crescendo of depravity and the books’ highlight.   Despite the fact that it wasn’t at all arousing to me sexually, the vivid descriptions of enjoying cunnilingus with a VD sufferer and the glass table show made me feel a little morally superior.  No matter how twisted or demented my fantasies might become, I can take solace in the fact that I haven’t sunk quite as low as Mr. Upper Crust.

In sum, this is a mess of a book.  Readers who enjoy their smut straight, predictable, and internally consistent should stay away.  However, sick fucks like me will find themselves happy.