The most influential person in my life was someone I never met. I didn't even know his name until I reached high school and had to read his novel Walden Two. I am talking about B. F. Skinner.
B. F. Skinner was a behavioralist in the grand tradition of Ivan Pavlov. You know, the guy who rang a bell and made the dogs drool. What both of them had in common was that neither one cared about motivation. All they cared about was results.
Based on his work with laboratory rats, Skinner came up with something called "behavior modification" which was all the rage back in the 1960's. It was a carrot and stick method of training difficult children such as myself. Since I didn't really understand what was being asked of me (and wasn't interested in their rewards) more often I got the stick. This ranged from taking away "privileges" to being confined in an isolation box. For someone with an already strong tendency to self-isolate, this taught me that when you are punished, withdraw physically or if this is impossible, withdraw mentally. And of course there were the drugs: good old Ritalin. This drug is still being prescribed despite the fact that there have been no long-term studies of its effects either in animals or humans that I am aware of. What kind of health problems await down the road? We don't know. Needless to say, it was not considered necessary to seek my consent to this experiment.
Furthermore, whatever I learned at school was reinforced at home, either by confining me to my room (and you must remember that back then there was no Internet or cell phones so it truly was solitary confinement) or by corporal punishment or both. My parents kept a wooden "spanking stick" about 10 inches long and 1/4 inch thick in a drawer, and yes, they used it, and no, that was not child abuse by the standards of the day.
I will never forget the day my father punched me in the stomach so hard it knocked the wind out of me. I must have been about 7 or 8. I don't remember what I said or did but one minute I was standing upright and the next minute I was gasping on the ground. I had never had the wind knocked out of me before and it was utterly terrifying. From that moment on, I became wary of him and by extension all male figures in authority. Again, this wasn't child abuse. This was parenting.
So, between home and school and my own Asperger's, I developed into a very rigid, black and white, no shades of gray person. I learned to keep a close eye on authority figures. They were to be feared. If there was a conflict between the demands of my peer group and the demands of whoever was in authority, guess who won hands-down. It is still like that. Paradoxically, this sort of training helped me to survive in an abusive job situation. What others saw as intolerable, I saw simply as life as usual.
I still bear the psychological scars of my "lab rat" conditioning even though the details are mercifully fading away. I still have a strong tendency to self-punish and isolate. Forgiveness? That was a word heard only on Sundays, and even then the message was that even though you go to Confession and do penance you will still have to pay for what you have done in Purgatory. I do have to admit, I'd take Purgatory over Calvin's total depravity doctrine any day. Neither one is very fun, and I heartily wish that those who preach such things would stop and think of their effects on sensitive young minds. But they won't.
B. F. Skinner was a behavioralist in the grand tradition of Ivan Pavlov. You know, the guy who rang a bell and made the dogs drool. What both of them had in common was that neither one cared about motivation. All they cared about was results.
Based on his work with laboratory rats, Skinner came up with something called "behavior modification" which was all the rage back in the 1960's. It was a carrot and stick method of training difficult children such as myself. Since I didn't really understand what was being asked of me (and wasn't interested in their rewards) more often I got the stick. This ranged from taking away "privileges" to being confined in an isolation box. For someone with an already strong tendency to self-isolate, this taught me that when you are punished, withdraw physically or if this is impossible, withdraw mentally. And of course there were the drugs: good old Ritalin. This drug is still being prescribed despite the fact that there have been no long-term studies of its effects either in animals or humans that I am aware of. What kind of health problems await down the road? We don't know. Needless to say, it was not considered necessary to seek my consent to this experiment.
Furthermore, whatever I learned at school was reinforced at home, either by confining me to my room (and you must remember that back then there was no Internet or cell phones so it truly was solitary confinement) or by corporal punishment or both. My parents kept a wooden "spanking stick" about 10 inches long and 1/4 inch thick in a drawer, and yes, they used it, and no, that was not child abuse by the standards of the day.
I will never forget the day my father punched me in the stomach so hard it knocked the wind out of me. I must have been about 7 or 8. I don't remember what I said or did but one minute I was standing upright and the next minute I was gasping on the ground. I had never had the wind knocked out of me before and it was utterly terrifying. From that moment on, I became wary of him and by extension all male figures in authority. Again, this wasn't child abuse. This was parenting.
So, between home and school and my own Asperger's, I developed into a very rigid, black and white, no shades of gray person. I learned to keep a close eye on authority figures. They were to be feared. If there was a conflict between the demands of my peer group and the demands of whoever was in authority, guess who won hands-down. It is still like that. Paradoxically, this sort of training helped me to survive in an abusive job situation. What others saw as intolerable, I saw simply as life as usual.
I still bear the psychological scars of my "lab rat" conditioning even though the details are mercifully fading away. I still have a strong tendency to self-punish and isolate. Forgiveness? That was a word heard only on Sundays, and even then the message was that even though you go to Confession and do penance you will still have to pay for what you have done in Purgatory. I do have to admit, I'd take Purgatory over Calvin's total depravity doctrine any day. Neither one is very fun, and I heartily wish that those who preach such things would stop and think of their effects on sensitive young minds. But they won't.
