I'm not a psychologist, nor do I play one on IRC. Still, rituals are very important in most aspects of human life, and therefore of great interest to a majority of people, whether they recognize it or not. Corporal punishment has its own collection of rituals. In fact for many people with what I like to call a "more than academic interest" in corporal punishment, the ritual/psychological aspects of the punishment are more compelling and attractive than the punishment itself.

Rituals vary in scope and complexity from the simple greeting to someone who is well known to the greeter, all the way up to the full blown coronation/inauguration of a head of state. No matter what their level of complexity or specific purpose, rituals share the goal of making life easier for the human beings involved by lending an air of familiarity to situations that bring change. Human beings fear change, or at least avoid it whenever possible. Almost any change brings mixed emotions to those people effected by it.

Okay, so an inauguration is more of a ceremony than a ritual. But what is a ceremony if not a complex set of related rituals? Rituals help to comfort people by bringing a semblance of order to a world filled with utter chaos. This is ironic considering that most rituals actually preside over change (e.g. weddings, funerals). It is the old "the more things change, the more they stay the same" illusion. For example, when an elderly lady attends the wedding of her granddaughter, she harkens back to her own wedding, and to the wedding of her daughter. These memories help ease her sense of loss over the fact that her "girls" are no longer the pigtailed little innocents she cuddled all those years ago. The continuity represented by the ceremony also helps granny cope with the spectre of her own swiftly approaching mortality.

The level of formality in rituals is closely related to the perceived importance of the change being celebrated. Importance can be measured in various ways such as permanence of the change, level of pain (or joy) for those involved, the scope of people effected, etc.

Permanence
Permanent changes usually demand more ritual than temporary ones. When a couple gets engaged, there might not be any witnesses to the actual event itself. Friends and family are often notified after the fact, although that was not always the case. A wedding can be ridiculously formal or very simple. But even the simplest wedding requires an officiant, there to confer the blessing of church or state on the union, and two witnesses. (These are the requirements in most of the United States. Marriage ceremonies may have differing minimum requirements in other parts of the world, but the point is that the presence of someone other than the couple being married is required for a wedding to be recognized in almost every human culture.)

The same is true in the field of corporal punishment. Minor punishments administered in a domestic or scholastic setting usually involve simple rituals (or occasionally none at all) and often lack witnesses. More serious punishments are often moved to a different venue (sent to the principal/headmaster's office), or even a specified time (weekly punishment time). Even when there are no direct witnesses, just about everyone knows what is going to happen.

Judicial corporal punishment always entails ceremony, at least in the determination of the penalty. Said ceremony is set down by law and/or regulation. The pinnacle of corporal punishment rituals is reserved for the queen of corporal punishment herself, capital punishment. Execution, that most permanent of penalties, is also the most ritualized punishment technique. Virtually everything that happens to the condemned during the last hours and minutes of his life is firmly established by law, regulation, and tradition. The mode of death, the number of required witnesses to the event, who may actually be a witness, and the disposition of the remains are just a few of the very rigid formalities.

Pain and/or Joy
The more painful the change, the more inflexible the ritual. Modern weddings often make use of customized vows and/or venues that suit the happy couple. Funerals allow much less latitude for changes due to the supportive/cathartic nature of the ceremony. Add to this the fact that funerals are usually planned on a much tighter schedule than weddings. For a real interesting time (in the full Chinese sense of the phrase) try arranging a double funeral for your parents on four days notice. You can take it from me that the relatively narrow range into which most of the available choices fall is a real sanity saver.

When it comes to corporal punishment (CP), greater pain (or at least greater implied severity) demands greater ritual. A simple over the knee (OTK) spanking, where bare hand meets bare backside, requires little ritual other than untrussing, bending the recipient over the knee, and applying the conveniently located palm to the logical place.

More serious punishments such as caning, birching, or strapping require more formality. For starters, the safety of the recipient must be assured. There is little chance of a bare, open hand accidentally hitting some critical area, like the small of the back, in such a way as to cause significant damage. As soon as an implement is introduced, added caution must be exercised. These things can injure people if applied to the wrong place.

My favorite example of this is from the anti-CP literature. A teacher paddled a child at school for some infraction. The child's mother was horrified by her "little angel's" mildly bruised buttocks. The mother went to the school, confronted the teacher, and ended up hitting the teacher in the head with the paddle! The irate mother (and the anti-CP activists) were incensed when she ended up in jail charged with aggravated assault. Of course she did! Anyone who hits another person in the head with a paddle (or any similar instrument) is committing aggravated assault. If the teacher had done something like that to a child (or anyone else), she should have ended up in jail, not to mention unemployed. Instead, the teacher applied a reasonable punishment to a naughty student and ended up with stitches in her head from an assault by a lunatic parent.

When a punishment session is expected to be severe and/or lengthy, the recipient must be placed in a position that will offer reasonable comfort (other than the planned discomfort, of course). The culprit may also need some support, or even restraint, in order to withstand the punishment without sudden movement, which could again lead to injury should the implement strike some critical, unintended place. All these safety concerns have evolved over the years into rituals involving placement of the culprit, clothing worn by (or removed from) the culprit during punishment, sanctions against attempting to evade the punishment (with penalties added as necessary), and other aspects of the situation.

Scope of the Change
The more people affected by the change, the greater the ritual that is required. When the new mayor of a small town takes office, the ceremonies are usually rather spartan (with local, colorful exceptions, of course). When a new head of state takes office, the festivities include a great deal of pomp and circumstance.

When multiple punishments are to be dealt out at the same time, at least a bit more ritual is required than with solo chastisements. Culprits may be allowed (or even required) to watch the current operation while waiting for (or recovering from) their own turn as the center of attention. Sometimes these unwilling extras are kept in a room or hallway adjacent to the execution site. The sounds emanating from the chamber of torment will often play on the minds of those waiting their turn even more than the actual sight of the punishment in progress. Conversely, the presence of witnesses to punishment can cause additional stress in the mind of the recipient.

Despite the fact that rituals in CP are often present for the ostensible benefit of the recipient, they can also serve to increase the punishment by whole orders of magnitude due to their psychological dimension. A few of the stronger psychological aspects of CP are:

Embarrassment
Mark Twain once said that "man is the only animal that blushes... or needs to." Shame and embarrassment are tremendous psychological weapons in the arsenal of CP.

SCOLDING: dressing down the culprit is always good for increasing the suffering before bringing on the pain. Recounting all the gruesome details of the reason for the punishment is good. Making the culprit do it is even better.

PUNISHMENT DRESS: In cases where nudity is a problem during punishment, special punishment dress is often provided to the condemned. The purpose here is twofold: 1) To maintain modesty at local cultural standards while providing the least protection to the area to be chastised. 2) To shame the culprit by making it plain to everyone that punishment is in this person's immediate future. This second purpose can be enhanced by forcing the condemned to change into punishment dress well before the scheduled time of execution.

UNBREECHING: The flip side of punishment dress, this involves removing clothes already worn by the condemned. The object again is twofold: 1) To reduce or eliminate protection afforded by clothing to the area to be chastised. 2) To shame the condemned by allowing the executioner and witnesses (especially those of the opposite sex!) to see the condemned person's undergarments and/or naked body.

POSITIONING: This involves placing the culprit in a position most suitable for administering the punishment. The position chosen is usually a submissive, helpless one. In the case of a culprit who has been stripped naked, the genitalia are often exposed in the most humiliating manner possible.

WITNESSES: The presence of the executioner is bad enough for most culprits. The additional of an audience, especially one of mixed gender, is a sure-fire way to magnify the effects of the other shame-inducing methods. It is especially useful when dealing with proud, boastful miscreants.

INCONTINENCE: Some culprits have difficulty controlling their bodily functions during the process of waiting for or receiving punishment. Few things are more humiliating to persons beyond diaper-wearing age than a loss of bladder/bowel control resulting in soiling their clothing and/or the floor. Scolding the person for his infantile behavior and forcing him to clean up the mess are sure to magnify the humiliation to a very effective level. Denial of toilet access to culprits awaiting their fate is one of the most fiendish supplemental punishments available in the psychological arsenal. It is not recommended, though, if you have nice carpets in the waiting and/or punishment area.

Apprehension
Apprehension is the psychological trump card in spanking/CP. Making the condemned wait for execution is one of the most exquisite tortures invented by mankind. Whether the execution in question involves a few swats on the posterior or a noose around the neck, "waiting for it" is at least as bad as "getting it." (Well, okay. So we don't really know if this is the case when it comes to capital punishment. Suffice it to say that this is one mystery I have no urge to investigate myself.)

The human mind is a strange thing. Anticipation of pleasure is one of the great joys in life. Still, it so often turns out that having the pleasurable thing is not nearly as much fun as anticipating having the pleasurable thing. The imagined benefits exceed all reality. The mind treats anticipated painful events in the same way, only with greater magnification.

Humans may be the only animals on Earth that recognize their own mortality. As prices for intelligence go, this one's pretty steep. About the only imaginable thing worse than knowing with certainty that you will definitely die some day is knowing the exact date, time, place, and mode of your death. The human mind just wasn't designed to cope with such information.

Although uncertainty brings anxiety, it also enables hope to spring eternal. Sure, you know you shouldn't smoke so much, but you can always quit tomorrow. Besides, maybe the Tobacco Institute researchers are right and the Surgeon General isn't. (Sure, and maybe you'll win the lottery this weekend.) But no matter how hopeless the situation, humans can always find (or at least rationalize) some way out. The mere fact that it won't work does not daunt them in the least.

Now imagine you know you're going to die. You know the date. You know the time. You know where and how it will happen. Okay, you'll just take a nice trip somewhere (anywhere!) else during that time frame. Wrong. Armed guards are going to make sure you're there at the appointed place on the appointed date and time. There is nothing you can do, nothing you can say that will change your fate. What do you do now?

First you take a shower and put on some unsoiled pants. Then your mind starts to really have fun with you. The anxiety will build steadily every minute of every hour of every day. Sleep is the only refuge - except for the nightmares, and the fact that you really can't sleep. Loads of fun, right?

It works exactly the same way with less permanent forms of CP. Even if you've experienced the precise level and mode of punishment a dozen times before, your mind can't let you forget that this time will be worse. Because those other dozen times are only a distant memory and this time the pain will be real and immediate. If this will be a mode or level of punishment you've never received before, so much the better. Your imagination shifts into high gear, conjuring up images of just how truly horrible it will be.

The more unknown variables involved, the more diabolical the agonies you will imagine for yourself. Olympian heights of apprehension can be reached when you know what will happen to you, but not when. Every time you hear someone approach your cell, or your corner, you think that they're finally coming for you. Your stomach churns. Your bladder demands relief. Then the steps fade, and you fall back to waiting...until the next time you hear the steps approach.

The absolute best part of apprehension, at least from the point of view of the executioner/punisher, is that it costs nothing but time. There are no props to buy (or hide from prying eyes). Simply give the information (or at least some of it) to the condemned and allow him plenty of time to stew in his own juice.

"Corner Time" refers to the venerable practice of placing a miscreant in "the corner" either before or after punishment is administered. The idea is to give the culprit time to "reflect on the error of his ways."

Corner Time can combine the best components of embarrassment and apprehension. It can serve as the sole punishment, or you can allow it to remain open ended. Let the culprit stand there and wonder if he will interviewed and released, or if this is just the start of something big... and ominous. Meanwhile, everyone who sees the culprit in the corner knows the person is in disgrace. The culprit may be unbreeched or in punishment dress for Corner Time. This readily adds to the embarrassment of the situation.

Note that the "corner" in Corner Time does not have to be a corner in the classical sense (i.e. the part of a room where two walls come together). The culprit can have his nose pressed against the wall of a hallway or corridor, or be placed in a closet. Whatever the physical nature of the corner, it should be consistent - acting as a symbol of the power the punisher has over the culprit.