Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007
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ORIGINAL: mistoferin
I "get" the idea of "punishment" as a means to add spice and fulfill fantasies as part of BDSM. "You've been a bad girl now drop your pants and come over here". Punishment scenes can be really fun and very hot.
I don't get this one at all. Disobedience and punishment have never been play for me. It might be part of some role-played scenario, but that's just scenery.
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I don't get the idea of punishment though when there is a sincere attempt to change behavior, deal with emotional issues or overcome conditioning.
Behavioural modification through mixed positive and negative direct feedback works for all primates, as far as I know, although it's not always the most effective. It tends to work well for those things that require (re)conditioning, though, i.e. things that aren't being regulated by conscious thought. Pavlovian conditioning and all that.
As for dealing with emotional issues, that's highly personal. I can only see one way in which punishment can have a positive bearing on emotional issues, and that is the bit about catharsis and a sense that "now that's been dealt with, there's no hard feelings, and it's in the past; finished". For some, it can probably alleviate guilt, for instance. To use it in dealing with emotional pathologies would probably be counterproductive in most instances, though.
In overcoming conditioning, there are two main approaches: desensitization and reconditioning. They can, of course, be combined. Punishment is part of many types of reconditioning, although most modern types emphasize rewards instead. Desensitization is a different topic, and unrelated.
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The main reason I don't get it is because we are all supposed to be adults here and I can not understand why adults should need to be punished.
Tell that to the justice department. 
Really, adults just have more developed cognitive abilities, more developed social reflexes and deeper conditioning than children. There's not that much of a difference in this regard. How many people in here can honestly say they've never seen an adult act childishly in some regard? Or never seen an adult do something that we would chastize a child for doing, even if the reasons are the same?
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Instead I would hope that as adults we should be mature enough to be responsible and accountable.
Accountability includes accepting consequences. In some dynamics, a consequence of certain actions may be punishment.
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I believe that life issues are better solved with communication, education, support and positive affirmation or in some cases, professional help.
Mostly, yes. Communication needs to be an integral part of any relationship that has, or may at some point develop, problems; it also should (IMO) be one for other relationships as well. Education, support and positive affirmation are useful tools. Professional skills, whether provided by a professional or not, are required for certain problems.
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As I said in another thread, if putting clothespins on your nipples, sticking a beer can up your twat and spanking your clit with a wooden spoon on web cam was an effective method of resolving issues or changing thought patterns or behaviors......mental health professionals would be prescribing it.
Well, I wouldn't recommend mixing punishment with sexuality. For physical punishment, I prefer simple pain or discomfort that doesn't have anything to do with sexuality. I don't generally do anything about the nipples or genitalia at all, and I certainly wouldn't want to broadcast it.
That said, it can be an effective method of putting some issues to rest, specifically the bit about having it be "over and done with"; having someone experience, rather than just being told, an event that marks the transition is useful to many people. This is part of why some people feel Confession (in the Catholic church) is very useful for them.
Changing thought patterns requires more care. Of course you can introduce aversion or saliency using purely physical stimuli, but it isn't always an optimal approach for that. And for more complex thought patterns, you need to know how those work, and how to go about changing them. Cognitive behavioural therapy, psychotropics and hypnosis are all useful tools for this, although most of these should only be applied by someone with professional skills.
For the much simpler task of changing behaviour, punishment works fairly well for stopping a behaviour. But, as anyone who has domesticated an intelligent creature in the past can tell you, it isn't a matter of beating someone up whenever you're upset about something. Personally, I'd prefer to combine it with some approaches from CBT, DBT and conditioning.
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There is a reason they're not.
Yes. Medical ethics, limited availability of time, and the nature of the problems dealt with by professionals.
Although, whipping (not in a context of punishment) is used in some areas where opioids cannot be legally prescribed in depression, for instance. Shock therapies have also been known to be useful for certain kinds of illnesses, but don't generally give long-term relief, as far as I know.
But, the most important reason is simple... can you imagine how an adult patient, or the parents of a non-adult patient, would respond to being told that the patient needs (for instance) a sound whipping a couple of times every day for six months?
That, and there are several therapies out there today that involve punishment. Most of them related to autism spectrum disorders and such, for instance Applied Behavioral Analysis. I'm not about to go defending ABA, quite on the contrary, I'll point out that several accepted therapies out there are considered torture by many people. Personally, I'd consider neuroleptic drugs to be way over the edge in a large percentage of the cases where they are used, for instance.
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Here on collarme we have an endless string of "I need punishment ideas " threads. I think that somehow, somewhere along the line these concepts got linked to this lifestyle to the point that some think that's what this is based on or about.
If you need ideas for punishments, you are looking for kink ("playful" punishment, for instance), are doing the punishments because you like having them in there (much as management in a corporation likes doing things a certain way, regardless of the results), or in some other way aren't using them to change (i.e. prevent reoccurance) anything. At least, that's my opinion. YMMV.
Edit: Note that I'm not saying this kind of thing is appropriate for all relationships.
< Message edited by Aswad -- 4/30/2007 9:33:32 AM >
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: "Punishment"???? - 
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