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This is something which is so obvious it almost doesn't need to be said. Yet it does need to be said. In fact, the need is especially strong because as of today, January 10, 2009 there is no other use of these three words on the entire Internet, according to Google.com. Here is the Google search. And here are the results as of today:
I thought of this when I made the connection between someone who has been punished and someone who has trouble sleeping at night. When I am feeling worried about something, or afraid of something or feeling threatened, I also have trouble sleeping. I believe this is normal. If I smelled smoke in my house it would certainly be healthy for me to wake up, no matter how physically tired I was since there is an immediate threat of fire taking my life. If I knew someone was planning to kill me, or hurt me, I would also have trouble sleeping. In my work with abused teenagers I have learned that one thing they have in common is that they frequently have trouble sleeping at night, which makes sense since they are living in near constant fear of being hurt or abused again in one way or another. They are also afraid of reporting the abuse, as I have noted on this page. Since punishment is the intentional use of pain to try to change or control someone's behavior, punishment is definitely a form of hurting someone. And the fear of punishment is obviously a threat. Any form of threat leads to feelings of insecurity, so therefore, punishment itself creates insecurity. You could also say that punishment leads to insecurity or punishment breeds insecurity. I tried these two additional searches today and also found no results. I don't believe this is because I am wrong, but rather I believe that it is such a simple truth it is actually too simple for psychologists to have come up with themselves, since they often make things more complicated than need be. In any case, please think about this yourself and think about how insecure many people are in the world today. And about how punishment and the threat thereof is so widely used as a means of control in many schools. S. Hein |
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