The Shaping of Human Tools: Part 1: Introduction

A long time ago I wrote the first drafts of this essay. I was recently cleaning it up in order to post a link to it somewhere and I was no longer happy with the basic structure of the presentation. It felt a bit stilted to me. This is the first major re-write in more than 5 years.

The topic of punishment is a common one in BDSM community discussions. People debate all aspects of it from the definition of the term itself to whether or not it has any place at all in a relationship. Clearly I am one of those who think that punishment does have it’s place so this will be a discussion of how and why I feel that way.

The community debate rally’s around several lines of argument that come up over and over. Before we look at those it makes some sense to get our definitions and terms clarified.

Definitions

• Punishment (noun): Suffering, pain, or loss that serves as retribution.
• Reward (noun): A desirable or pleasurable stimulus or outcome.
• Correction (noun): Punishment intended to improve or rehabilitate. Correction is punishment with a specific goal.
• Response (noun): The reaction of an individual to a given situation or stimulus.
• Conditioning (noun): The process by which a subject comes to associate a desired response with a specific stimulus. The primary tools of conditioning are punishment and reward.
• Reflex (adjective): An automatic or involuntary response to a stimulus. In this discussion we will lump those literal reflexes of the human animal in with acquired reflexes and what some call “pattern generators”.
• Discipline (noun): Actions designed to produce a specific pattern of thought or decision making. Alternately discipline is used to refer to the result of such training.
• Training (verb): To discipline or condition another to conform to a set of desired responses.

With these definitions in mind, we can go on to look at the debate within the community about whether any of this is needed at all.

• Part 2, The Debate!
• Part 3, How people respond and act
• Part 4, Punishment and Reward
• Part 5, The importance of consistency

note: It is important for you to be aware that I have no special training in any formal sense about these topics. I hold no doctorate degree in psychology or neurobiology; I am not a therapist nor am I an education professional. What I present here is the result of my research and my experience as a trainer and a teacher over the years.

Image note: The associated image is used under the Creative Commons license at this link, and was taken by Alex Lines and posted on Flickr.