This page is part of the Auxiliary section of the Beginner's Course of the
D.S. Dog Training Workshop, - an element of the Dog Science Network
The Relationship of Punishment to Psychological Trauma
One of the greatest misconceptions about the use of aversives is the notion that punishment necessarily causes psychological trauma. While it is true that unavoidable punishment can cause psychological disruption, punishment properly administered causes no such problems. Let's take a look at how that works.
If you put your hand into a fire, your response will be followed by a punishing aversive (you will be burned). So nature punishes us for touching fire, but we are not psychologically traumatized by the experience because fire is predictable. We know what it will and won't do and so, by adjusting our behavior, we are able to avoid being punished by fire by simply not making the response that triggers the punishment.
I once kept a Labrador Retriever for a few weeks while his owners were out of town. For the first two weeks the dog and I spent almost every minute together and in all that time I never struck him, despite the fact that we were doing obedience work and interacting very intensely. I guess he had come to believe that I would never smack him under any circumstance.
Then one day we were wrestling around when we moved into a posture where we were positioned face to face, sitting on the floor. In the excitement of the game the dog nipped me in the face. He only meant it in a playful way and he didn't bite hard enough to leave more than a tiny mark that quickly faded away, but any sort of facial biting is just too dangerous to tolerate. It is my long standing policy to swiftly punish even playful facial biting so, much to the shock of the dog, I bellowed, No, and a split second later gave him a smack. The startled dog yelped in surprise and dodged away as though he thought I might strike him again.
A couple days later it happened again. We were wrestling around when we moved into the same face to face posture while seated on the floor. In his excitement the dog forgot himself and playfully nipped me in the face for a second time. I shouted No, and landed another two-fingered tap that made him yelp with surprise, just as he had before. But this time the dog didn't move a muscle. The fact was that there was no possibility I would strike him again unless he nipped me again, and he obviously knew that, because he sat right there in the same position and his body language and facial expression clearly said, "I'm really having fun. Let's keep wrestling." So we immediately resumed wrestling and, I might add, we wrestled long that day as we did on many subsequent occasions and he never again nipped me in the face.
The point of the story is that the dog knew exactly why I smacked him and he also knew that it was entirely up to him whether or not I did it again. He realized that, in a sense, he had smacked himself just as surely as you burn yourself when you put your hand to a flame. He had no fear of my lashing out again because he understood what he had done to trigger my response. Now, if I smacked him periodically no matter what he did, that would traumatize him. But mild punishment that can be predicted and avoided is not psychologically traumatic.