The Psychological Aspect of Punishment – SnowdropExplodes
I think it makes sense to look at different types of punishment and look at what the psychological element is in each.
Physical punishment, which is basically pain punishment (for non-masochists) and conceivably also hunger or exhaustion (e.g. “run 10 laps!”) punishment, is the most direct and least psychological form. The psychological element is just in understanding why the punishment is being given.
Denial punishment, for example, “You shall not watch your favourite television programme this evening”, or “You shall not have any orgasms for x amount of time”, works because it cuts off a source of pleasure, and therefore the punished person feels that as a loss.
Tedium punishment involves setting a boring and/or repetitive task (for example, writing lines). This is very much psychological because the punishment is all about the induced mental state of tedium.
Ordeal punishment is where a difficult and/or unpleasant task is demanded – the earlier response about humiliation from going to the bank dressed as a street sexworker is an example of ordeal punishment; in a recent relationship, I knew that setting the task of writing a poem was an ordeal punishment because I knew my sub found poetry very hard to write. I think ordeal punishment can be very risky (the example in the OP of someone afraid of the dark being locked in a dark closet, I think, illustrates this because such things can induce very bad or harmful mental states, like panic attacks, if care is not taken). I think it is important to be sure that the person being punished can actually succeed in the task set. Ordeal punishment type situations are becoming a staple of quiz shows and reality game shows (I’m also thinking of the situation in India Jones and the Temple of Doom where the woman afraid of creepy-crawlies has to reach into a hole full of them, in order to save Jones’ life from the deathtrap).
However, I think the purest of all psychological punishments that a Dominant can ever give to a sub/slave is simply to say, “I’m disappointed in you.” In my experience, it is this subtext that above all provides the psychological dimension of any punishment meted out to a sub, and as I understand it, the feeling of having failed or let one’s Dominant partner down is often felt to be the worst feeling of all.
Republished with permission from the very insightful author SnowdropExplodes. Click Here to read more interesting Articles form This Writer and Practitioner of BDSM
