Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site gargoyle.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.kids
Subject: Re: corporal punishment
Message-ID: <177@gargoyle.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 5-Sep-85 13:34:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.177
Posted: Thu Sep  5 13:34:24 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Sep-85 05:36:56 EDT
References: <974@uscvax.UUCP> <695@rduxb.UUCP>
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 44

Steve Henning writes:

>Dr Spock was the man who single handedly dethroned
>the saying, "spare the rod and spoil the child."  

If only this were true.  "Spare the rod --> spoil the child" is
completely wrong but many parents still accept it.  One of the
problems with raising a child this way is that the child, when he or
she grows up, tends to become an adult whose inability to empathize
with feelings of weakness and helplessness is illustrated in the
following exchange:

> > Funny, I got the paddle several times in jr. high school and I
> > NEVER DESERVED IT. 
>
>Poor baby.   Everyone send sympathy cards.

I'll bet my next paycheck that Mr. Henning received corporal
punishment fairly often as a child and that he experienced it at the
time as undeserved and unfair.  Rather than blaming Mr. Henning for
his lack of sympathy I would attribute it to his childhood
experiences, since his attitude as expressed above is typical of
those who received corporal punishment.  Such a child learns to
repress (i.e. dismiss from conscious awareness) his feelings of
helpless vulnerability, so that when he becomes an adult and someone
(usually a child) experiences and expresses those feelings of
weakness, the feelings threaten to return to conscious awareness and
reactivate the pain on account of which they were repressed.  So
the adult defends himself against reexperiencing these feelings,
perhaps with a sarcastic dismissal of them:  "Poor baby.  Everyone
send sympathy cards."

Extreme examples of this kind of personality can be found in many of
the Nazis, nearly all of whom received "strict" upbringings complete
with corporal punishment.  Their childhood experiences, I believe, go
a long way to explain their lack of sympathy with their weak and
helpless victims on whom they imposed undeserved suffering.  Adolf
Hitler, BTW, was beaten constantly and severely as a child.  This is
not to say that the beatings were the *sole* cause of his later
actions.  There some other factors in Hitler's case, including the
fact that he had no children of his own, who otherwise might have
served him as victims instead of the Jews.

Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes