Posted by alexandra_k on January 2, 2005, at 0:01:51
In reply to Re: Punishment is medicine.Aristotle.Nicomachean Ethic, posted by Faradism.net on January 1, 2005, at 23:40:50
But do you have to buy a box? And what is wrong with the old rubber band on the wrist trick? Now my question is probably better stated as the following:
Out of all the people who brought (or were given) the apparatus to do this - how many of them stayed clean for a while. And of course, what I am really interested in is how many said to themselves 'bugger this!'.
Now, I may have some of the details wrong. Please correct me anybody at all.
I once heard a story (in a lecture) that there was a lady who had a baby with a disorder. The infant refused to eat. If milk was placed in its mouth it would spit it out. The upshot was that if something wasn't done then the baby would die.
The lady heard of a behaviourist and went to see if something could be done. Indeed, something could be done. If the spitting out of food were to be followed by a mild shock then the baby would stop doing this and would not die. The woman asked the behaviourist to do this to her baby. The behaviourist said something like: 'In the USA it is illegal to administer (positive) punishers'. He would lose his lisence to practice if he did this to her baby. He would probably lose his lisence to practice if he showed her how (and gave her the equipment) to do this herself. She fought this in court. The baby died.
And that, ladies and gentlemen (according to my appalling memory) is the story of the positive / negative distinction of both punishers and reinforcers. It is okay to put a kid in time out because time out is the removal of something positive (company) not the administering of a punisher (isolation). No no no, there is a HUGE difference, god forbid.
>you might eliminate the spirit of cooperation in some less determined clients.
Yeah, no sh*t! Pain results in lashing out, of both animals and people. I think to call these people 'less determined' may be instructive. Those who succeed in drug treatment may well have succeeded in almost any other variety of drug treatment. You can't say 'but they tried that first and it didn't help' - because maybe they weren't as determined then as they are now.
> A third principle character in the electrical intervention is the significant other or an associated problem such as a court order.
Do you mean it is illegal to administer these shocks to anyone other than yourself?
poster:alexandra_k
thread:436519
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/subs/20041128/msgs/436629.html