Pain Healer

As I reflect on my therapy work I've realized that it can be divided broadly into two - behaviour change and personality change. I have alluded to the behaviour change aspect several times already in this blog - in the therapy world it is the domain of CBT, and in the D/s world it figures prominently in the training that goes on in the relationship between a Dom and a sub. Behaviour change is very effective for dealing with many of the common psychological problems that afflict us, such as fears & phobias, OCD, social phobia, impulse control problems. It is about changing what we do, and very often it is enough to change the things we do to bring about big change in our lives and how successful we are. Some proponents of behavioural therapy proclaim that it is all that is needed, but this is not true. Personality change is about changing who we are as opposed to what we do . Personality is partly from our genetics and partly from life experiences, and of cours...

Some exchanges I've had on another site have made me think more carefully about behaviour modification - what it is, how it works, and it's place in my two main themes - therapy and D/s. Behaviour modification uses the scientific theory of operant conditioning which was developed by E.L. Thorndike and B.F. Skinner. It describes how a desired behavioural response can be reinforced either by giving a pleasant, rewarding stimulus or by removing an unpleasant, aversive stimulus. An unwanted behaviour can be reduced by punishment (an aversive stimulus) or by withdrawal of a pleasant stimulus (frustration). Thus there are four ways of changing behaviour through operant conditioning. Behaviour modification has a wide range of applications - for a fuller description there is an online book at http://uwf.edu/wmikulas/Webpage/behavior/intro.htm . There is nothing particularly esoteric about behaviour modification- we all do it and experience it all the time, as we try ...

One of the areas where psychotherapy strays very close to the arena of domination is in the subject of behaviour modification. This derives from behaviourist theories of operant conditioning, in which behaviour is modified by rewarding desired behaviours and punishing undesirable behaviours. A mainstream book on Cognitive behaviour Therapy by Jaqueline Persons (1989) has some interesting quotations. First a basic introduction: "Rewards and punishments have powerful effects on behavior, and can be used in many ways in therapy. The use of rewards and punishments to accomplish behavior change has its origins in operant learning theory. Thorndike's (1935) Law of Effect states that behaviors that are followed by satisfaction are likely to be repeated, whereas those followed by discomfort are not likely to be repeated." (p82). She goes on to give some examples of punishments, applied to patients who break the therapist's rules by activitie...