Chapter 2. The Relationship Model “Puttana”

Rebellion against morality: The trap of brazen protest.

1. NAME AND MEANING

Transcription and Etymology: The model takes its name from the Italian word “Puttana,” which translates as “prostitute.” But in the context of our method, the concept goes far beyond the physical sale of the body. It is a psychological archetype of a personality that, through trauma and protest, rejects the norms of society.

“I know better than anyone,” “Don’t teach me,” “I can do anything,” “I do what I want,” “I’m great”—when thoughts like these flow through a person’s mind, the end result is that they stop developing new knowledge and skills and instead grab attention through actions that can shock society. What happens then in the story of their life? They try to feel loved through people who worship not their personality but their fame. Such people cannot tolerate criticism and are susceptible to flattery. Lacking any inner love or praise for themselves, they feel cheated in this double game and go looking for that feeling elsewhere. In the end, they trust no one and try to expose the lies of everyone around them. In their youth they are the center of attention, but unable to build sincere and lasting relationships, they usually become a lonely and sorrowful figure after middle age. And because the mindset underlying this behavior never changes, no matter how much they suffer from loneliness, they find the cause in the people who left them. This, in turn, lowers their trust in people, deepens the feeling of isolation, and prevents them from building their next relationship.

Naturally, the models of relationships will be as varied as the human psyche is changeable. These cognitive styles of thinking have nothing to do with heredity, personality types, or fixed yardsticks. They are connected only with the adopted, internalized model of thinking expressed in behavior and speech. That is why even a child from a modest family, despite the social prohibitions instilled early on, may later come to defy them and display rebellious behavior.

Alongside people who regret their way of life and suffer for it, there are plenty of others who seem to deliberately destroy their own reputation. To approach this state from a psychological angle, let’s recall those who openly sell their bodies. From their choice of clothing to the way they move and speak, every nonverbal signal carries the message: “You can use me.” First, let’s remember that a person begins to take shape as a personality within society from birth. Socialization plays a significant role in human thinking at every stage of life. At each stage, those they constantly communicate with (loved ones, family members, neighbors, relatives, coworkers) matter greatly in what kind of person they grow into and how their needs get met.

Here is a small example to make this concrete. If at some stage of life a person falls into the world of prostitution or begging, changes begin in their psychology and worldview at the level of beliefs. These shifts affect not only their attitude toward that occupation but their general views on people and values. And since they are human themselves, they involuntarily project these thoughts onto themselves. Watching injustice in society, as it were, they conclude: “People are beasts,” “People are selfish.” Gradually they apply this not only to those they have encountered, but announce it to strangers at the very first meeting. Sooner or later, having accepted this thought as truth, they begin noticing the same traits in their own behavior. And trying to be honest with themselves, they seem to admit: “You’re a beast too, you’re selfish too. Accept yourself as you are, fear nothing, live as you are.” As a result, a thought born in the conflicts of their environment under the pressure of emotions grows into a life philosophy and shows itself in their dealings with people in every sphere. At the same time, by recognizing themselves as the epicenter of these negative qualities, they intensify their aggression toward themselves (auto-aggression, depression). This, in turn, leads to bad habits, impulsive actions, a tendency toward conflict, and inflicting bodily harm on themselves and others. Even one such thought steers their worldview toward aggressive convictions and breeds new ones, and in the end they reject the values of their environment, declaring them False Values, and begin to rebel against its moral foundations. With time, their relations with those around them grow strained, and their rebellious behavior extends to society’s prohibitions and taboos. Since society’s strictest prohibitions concern sexual relations, the behavior of such a person seems to push them into defying the taboo. Someone who rejects society’s rules and rebels against them declares that they recognize no prohibitions in the sexual sphere either. And so society judges them to be more available, more depraved. It is fitting to call such behavior “puttana.” However hard they struggle in this pit, they will find no way out. They will look at those who condemn them with hatred, seeing in them violators of their personal boundaries. In their micro-environment, internal norms connected with the “I” are already forming and being accepted, but they are unloved. Just picture it: a person is dissatisfied with themselves, avoids looking in the mirror, fears loneliness, and so is constantly among people. And at the same time they consider themselves superior to everyone. This unhealthy self-assurance keeps dragging them into arguments.

In Hindu mythology, Puttana was a demoness (Rakshasi) sent by the tyrant Kamsa to kill the infant Krishna. She took the form of a beautiful woman to deceive everyone around her, but her true essence was destructive. According to legend, she tried to poison Krishna with her milk, yet the divine power of the child drew the life out of her, forcing Puttana to reveal her true demonic form before she died. Encoded in this myth is the meaning of the model: the loss of spirituality and morality in favor of destruction, the attempt to hide inner pain behind a mask of defiance.

If in the “Lilith” model the priority was material provision, here the priority becomes a demonstration of total permissiveness. This is a relationship model in which the personality expresses itself through traumatic pain, protesting against all of society. It is a form where there is no shame, no disgrace—a state one could even call worse than prostitution, because what is sold here is not the body, but conscience and dignity, all for attention and self-affirmation.

2. SLOGAN AND BELIEFS

People in the “Puttana” state of mind often broadcast thoughts that become their shield against the world. Here are the three core beliefs characteristic of this model:

“I know better than anyone—don’t tell me how to live my life.” (A belief in one’s own superiority over society’s morality.)

“I can do anything—I do what I want.” (A denial of consequences and boundaries.)

“I don’t care what you think.” (A demonstrative indifference to criticism that conceals a dependence on attention.)

3. INFORMATION BLOCK: HISTORY, LITERATURE, AND PSYCHOLOGY

What happens in a person’s life story when this model takes shape? Often it is a reaction to a deep trauma. Someone whose personality has been under pressure tries to reclaim a sense of control through shock. They begin to draw attention not with talent or kindness, but with actions that shake society.

In psychoanalytic terms, this is a rebellion of the Id against the Superego. The Superego is responsible for morality and values, and the bearer of the “Puttana” model deliberately mutes that voice. They become intolerant of criticism but greedy for flattery. In their youth, such people may be the center of attention, but after middle age, loneliness and depression often await them. They build no deep connections, because they distrust people, seeing liars in everyone.

The psychological mechanism: a person can fall into an environment where amoral behavior thrives (for example, a milieu tied to selling the body or to a marginal way of life). The psyche adapts: in order to survive, they begin to see the norms of that environment as “correct.” A cognitive distortion arises: “All people are cruel and selfish, so I will be the same, so I won’t be a victim.” This grows into a philosophy of life. They begin to see the same negative traits in themselves and accept them: “Be who you are—fear nothing.” Aggression against oneself (auto-aggression) then spills out as aggression against the world.

Distinguishing this from borderline disorder: it is important not to confuse this model with the clinical borderline personality disorder. Although the symptoms may overlap (emotional instability, conflicts), “Puttana” is a behavioral model, not necessarily a pathology. A person can be the leader of rebellious movements, drawing followers around them. History offers many examples of scientists, politicians, or leaders of social movements (for example, radical feminists, eco-activists, members of LGBTQ movements) displaying the traits of this model through defiance of society’s taboos. Even Sigmund Freud in his day was perceived as a rebel violating Victorian morality with his theories.

Literary and mythological context: recall the Hindu myth of Puttana. She tried to deceive the world with beauty, but carried poison inside. It is the same with the bearer of this model: outwardly they may look successful and free, but inside they carry destruction, for themselves and for those close to them. It is the tragedy of losing the “true Self” for the sake of a mask of protest.

4. 5 FAMOUS FIGURES (ARCHETYPES OF THE MODEL)

Historical and cultural figures whose behavior matched the “Puttana” model: defiance of morality, shock tactics, protest through self-destruction.

Sigmund Freud (Austria, 19th–20th centuries).

In the Victorian era, his theories of sexuality and the unconscious were considered scandalous and unacceptable.

Manifestation of the model: the methodology points to him directly as an example of a “Puttana” in the context of rebellious behavior. He threw down a challenge to the foundations of society and was ostracized by his colleagues for it. His persistence in advancing his ideas despite public condemnation demonstrates a refusal to accept society’s restrictions for the sake of his own truth.

Marquis de Sade (France, 18th century).

An aristocrat who made amorality and cruelty the philosophy of his life and work.

Manifestation of the model: an absolute denial of shame and morality. His life and writings became a symbol of total permissiveness. He embodied a model in which pleasure is placed above any human norms, which corresponds to the definition of a “Puttana” as a state without shame or disgrace.

Sid Vicious (United Kingdom, 20th century).

Bass guitarist of the punk band “Sex Pistols,” an icon of the punk movement.

Manifestation of the model: shock tactics, drugs, violence, arrests. His life was a demonstrative protest against consumer society and its norms. He did not hide his fall; on the contrary, he took pride in it, which led to an early tragic death. It is a textbook example of protest through self-destruction.

Lady Gaga (USA, 21st century), early stage of her career.

At the start of her path she used shocking costumes (the meat dress) and provocative performances.

Manifestation of the model: using shock tactics to grab attention. Though she later transformed, her early image was built on breaking taboos and shocking the public, typical of the “Puttana” model in its search for attention through scandal.

Jean Genet (France, 20th century).

A writer, thief, and vagrant who turned his criminal biography into literature.

Manifestation of the model: Genet openly celebrated crime, betrayal, and homosexuality at a time when all of these were taboo. He did not try to hide his “dark” side; on the contrary, he made it his brand and his weapon against bourgeois morality. His life shows a journey from the bottom of society to recognition through the demonstrative violation of every possible norm, which fits the “Puttana” archetype perfectly: the one who turns shame into pride.

5. EXITING THE MODEL (DEPRESSIVE AND AGGRESSIVE)

Transformation and Crisis: If the “Puttana” achieves public recognition, her self-criticism weakens and her actions grow harsher. But when the fans turn away, when the fuel of rebellion runs dry, the collapse comes. The inability to vent the accumulated rage turns into aggression against the self. A person may find themselves facing loneliness or switch to a counterattack.

The depressive exit: The person is left alone. The fans drift away. Psychosomatic pains appear (headaches, heart pain). Then comes the realization that those they trusted have betrayed them. “People are unreliable. I was too naive.” This is the bifurcation point. The person may begin to hide their true intentions, becoming cautious and two-faced (a transition to the Chameleon model). Or they may withdraw into themselves, devaluing all connections (a transition to the Hippie model).

The aggressive exit: The person decides to punish those who turned away. They use the same methods of manipulation, but now with the aim of doing harm. If they have public influence, they may use it to hound their opponents. This only deepens their isolation. In the worst case, it leads to crime or total social downfall. Yet if the person can recognize their own wound, they may transform the energy of rebellion into defending others (a transition to Teresa) or into the search for a genuine connection (a transition to the Chameleon).

6. MARIA’S STORY. THE PATH OF “PUTTANA”

She stayed at Nina’s for two weeks, on a folding cot between the closet and the window. The first night, once Nina was asleep, Maria stood at the entryway mirror and studied the woman in a borrowed T-shirt for a long time. The face was the same; only the way she looked at it had changed. Her eye was critical now, the eye you turn on merchandise that has been returned to the store.

“I was used and then cut, like a budget line,” she thought, and the thought was clear, without a single tear. “So there’s nothing left to protect. They wanted a pretty thing in Rafael’s display window? Let them see what happens when the thing starts to talk.”

That night she abolished shame. It had been invented, she decided, for people with something to lose, and all she had left was anger, enough for a whole city.

She started with her phone. The first post took her twenty minutes, sitting on the cot and trying not to make the springs creak: it was about how women are bought and how “costs” on them are later “cut,” as if they were paper clips. She gave no name, but she described the watch, the car, and the habit of repeating “business is business” so that anyone in his circle would know him from the first line. She attached a photograph of a kind she would never have dared post before and hit “publish” while her fingers would still do what she told them. Then she lay until dawn with her eyes open and her heart pounding somewhere in her throat, from fear or elation, she couldn’t tell.

By morning the post had spread across strangers’ pages, and a month later the views were in the millions. People wrote her everything imaginable: “hero,” “disgrace,” “whore,” “finally somebody said it.” She read every word, even the filthiest, answered the angriest ones, and told herself she just found it funny.

“You’re the one stripping in front of them,” Nina said when she saw the latest photo. “What do you need this for?”

“Don’t tell me how to live,” Maria answered, and moved out that same evening.

She rented an apartment with money saved from the envelopes and saw a special justice in that. The same week her mother called. Her mother spoke haltingly, in a thin voice that didn’t sound like hers: a neighbor had come over with her phone and shown them, and now Maria’s father wouldn’t come out of his room. “Maria, tell me that isn’t you.” Maria answered that it was, that she was twenty-four years old and did what she wanted, and she hung up before her mother started to cry. Afterward her hands shook so badly that it took her several tries to get her cigarette into the flame, though a month earlier she hadn’t smoked at all.

By the second month she had almost stopped sleeping. At night she went from club to club, where the lights and the noise let her think about nothing, and she left with men whose names she didn’t ask. She liked being the first to go, while they were still asleep; she liked that she was now the one who chose and the one who walked away. In the taxi, toward morning, the feeling wore off along with the alcohol, and what remained was an ache through her whole body, as after an illness, and a disgust she pushed away, because the one she would have to be disgusted with was herself.

“You want my body? Take it,” she thought, examining yet another face on the next pillow. “All I need from you is an hour when it isn’t so quiet.”

At home she would sit down on the floor by the bed without undressing and open her phone. First she read what had come in overnight, and only then went to wash her face. If there wasn’t much, the day was ruined, and she would post something that was sure to bring a flood. There was something odd in this that she tried not to notice: the woman who had told a whole city she didn’t care what anyone thought fell asleep and woke up with other people’s opinions in her hand.

In the third month she saw him. It happened in a restaurant she had been taken to by a man whose name she forgot before the main course. Rafael was sitting two tables away with his wife and two children. A boy of about eight, probably the one who was afraid of water, was telling a story and waving his fork; the wife was laughing, and Rafael was laughing too, leaning back in his chair as if he owned the place, the way he did everywhere.

They were living as if she had never existed. For three months she had written about him every day, fallen out with her only friend, and driven her mother to tears, and he was eating fish and laughing.

Maria stood up before her companion had finished. Later she tried many times to recall what she had meant to say, and couldn’t: there were no words, only the certainty that now, at last, he would be afraid.

And he was afraid. He went pale, set down his fork, and said in a low voice, barely moving his lips:

“Please leave.”

Politely, formally, the way you speak to a stranger who has come to the wrong table.

Maria laughed loud enough for the whole room to hear, picked up his glass, and turned it over above the tablecloth. The wine ran toward the boy’s plate and splashed his cheek. The boy stared at her round-eyed, more curious than scared. And Rafael’s wife moved her son’s plate aside, raised her eyes to Maria, and asked softly:

“Miss, are you all right?”

There was neither hatred nor fear in her voice. There was pity, the most ordinary kind, the kind you feel for a drunk woman on the street, and that pity made Maria’s knees give way. For three months she had been bracing for hatred; she could have withstood it, would even have welcomed it. She wasn’t ready for this woman, of all people, to feel sorry for her.

A security guard took her by the elbow and led her out through a room where every conversation had stopped at once. Outside the wind was blowing, and her thin dress clung to her legs. She stood against the wall and waited for the triumph to come, since she had done the very thing she had dreamed of for so many nights. The triumph didn’t come. Inside she was empty, and in that emptiness the soft voice was still asking, “Miss, are you all right?”

She thought, “And now what?” Her hands were shaking, and she tucked them under her arms, the way she used to as a child at the bus stop, waiting for the bus and afraid to go home.

Next came the fourth month. Somebody posted the restaurant scene before she could, with video shot from a nearby table. In it she saw herself from outside: disheveled, her mouth twisted, and beside her a child wiping his splashed cheek with his sleeve. The people who had written “hero” the day before now wrote something else: “You’re destroying yourself,” “You’re finished.” Every day she had fewer readers, and that, to her own surprise, hurt more than any abuse. From Nina came three words: “Look at yourself.”

In the mornings her head ached, dully, somewhere behind her eyes, and pills didn’t help; sometimes there was the same dull ache under her left ribs, and she would get scared and then forget. Once she woke up on the floor, in her dress, among empty bottles, and for a long time couldn’t work out what day it was. Then she got up, holding on to the wall, and went to the mirror. Looking back at her was a woman with a gray face and yesterday’s lipstick smeared down to her chin.

“So what did you prove, and to whom?” Maria asked aloud, and her voice was raspy and unfamiliar.

The mirror, naturally, didn’t answer. The phone on the floor was silent too, for the second day now.

“I was taking revenge on him and smashing myself. He priced me at half an envelope, and for four months I’ve been proving to the whole city that I’m worth more, and all of it on his scale.”

This is the trap of the Puttana: rebellion against other people’s opinion is still dependence on it, only turned inside out.

She wanted to call her mother and couldn’t think of a first sentence. She wanted to write to Nina and remembered her own “Don’t tell me how to live.” There was no strength left for new anger, and in all those months she had grown nothing in herself except anger. So she packed a bag, one bag, with only the essentials, and put the keys on the table. She meant to leave the phone there too, held it a while, and in the end switched it off and put it in her pocket.

It was raining. She left her umbrella closed and walked to the station, soaked to the skin, almost liking the cold and the water running down her collar: at least it was something real. She had no ticket. She got on the first train at the platform without even looking at the sign.

“Where are you headed?” the conductor asked, stopping beside her seat.

“How far does this train go?”

He named a station she had never heard of, and she held out the money without a word.

The train pulled out. Beyond the wet glass the city dragged on for a while in warehouses and garages, and then it ended. Maria leaned her temple against the window frame and, for the first time in four months, felt no anger. What was left was fatigue, heavy, down to the bone, and under it something like silence. In Rafael’s apartment the silence had been made entirely of waiting for a call; in this one, nobody expected anything from her.

This, it seemed to her, was freedom.