>>I regret that the human emotional system seems to be designed so that high
>>levels of stress are needed to really grow up.
>
>Well you better get that level of stress just right: the recent Society for
>Neuroscience meeting suggests that childhood abuse (emotional not physical)
>may lead to permenant brain damage:
>
>http://biomednet.com/biomednews/conf/sfn98/Monday/story_2.html
>
>ciao, patrick
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Patrick Wilken http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~patrickw/
>Editor: PSYCHE: An International Journal of Research on Consciousness
>Secretary: The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
>http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/ http://www.phil.vt.edu/ASSC/
I have long suspected this to be true. It led me to wonder . . . If we can confirm this and it becomes accepted as fact, will verbal and emotional abuse be punishable by the same laws which deal with physical abuse? I used to work in a domestic violence shelter and it seemed odd to me that someone could be arrested and jailed for beating someone but there was no penalty whatsoever for verbal/emotional abuse. Would you have to have a way to verify that neural damage had been inflicted?
Scott