[jsaund22]

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This is coming up because we just started a psych. unit in medical school, but I started discussing this with several colleagues/friends and was kinda of interested by the results.

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I'm not a doctor. I don't play one on TV. I didn't even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. But here's my thoughts:

I was spanked as a child. Never hit in the face, but belts, hands, wooden spoons, "switches" ("Boy, go cut me a switch to spank you with!"), and even a 1/4" thick plastic paddle my dad made especially for tanning my rear-end when I screwed up.

I'm not scarred, and I'm not a sociopath. I have a close relative my age who was never spanked, and he's the one who ended up as a drug dealer and in prison for assisting with hiding a body after one of his buddies executed someone.

I'm an IS professional, and I think you'll learn the same thing that I learned not too long after I got out of school -- reality and theory are very often mutually exclusive. The theory is that spanking kids will cause them to become violent, aggressive, out-of-control psychos. Reality is a different story, however.

Take a good look around at one of the most visible segments of society -- the celebrity. You have people like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears who have probably never been disciplined at all showing their ass (both literally and figuratively). Now look at people like country music stars. I'm not a fan of country music, but you pretty much know that these people were disciplined as kids, simply because of the culture they're part of. Very rarely do they do something incredibly stupid. Paris and Britney? Stupid on a daily basis.

As I said, reality and theory differ wildly, and I think you are smart enough to be able to separate theory from reality.