Free The Carrot and the Stick by C. P. Vanner

shrink was all about, the quick and facile answer no matter how surprising or shocking the question.
    â€˜Could it be that they are angry with women?’ the psychiatrist asked.
    Beth had started to see Dr Susskind immediately after her promotion. It was her reward to herself, a status symbol, a following of fashion. Now that she had a high-powered, stressful job, did not she, like everyone else in her shoes, deserve the mandatory weekly session with a shrink?
    That was how it started, but Beth had come to value their regular sessions. Nothing of much consequence was said, but Beth learned to enjoy the quiet concentration on her, and the things that mattered to her, for an hour at a time, the opportunity to speak only about her free of the charge of egotism, and the chance to speak her mind and vent her frustrations. Sixty pounds a time was a small price to pay for such luxury. With the psychiatrist’s gentle probing, she found the session helped to clear her mind. They had developed a genuine rapport. At the end of each hour, Beth had refreshed her sense of priorities. She found she felt better even though she had not necessarily felt bad beforehand.
    â€˜Seriously, let me answer your question initially with another question of my own,’ the psychiatrist replied. ‘Why do you ask? Has someone been spanking your bottom?’
    Beth reddened. ‘Maybe,’ she muttered after a pause.
    The psychiatrist leaned forward and switched off the tape recorder on the desk. ‘Let me remind you, Beth, that everything we discuss here is confidential. I would not have it any other way. Anything you say will not go beyond these four walls. Now, have you been spanked recently?’
    Beth stuck out her lower lip. ‘Answer my question first. Why do so many men like to spank a girl’s bottom?’
    Dr Susskind smiled at her determination. ‘First it is a question of aesthetics. The female bottom is the most beautiful, the most perfect part of the human anatomy, beloved by sculptors, painters, poets and lechers alike. Secondly, think of where it is situated, of its neighbours. It is the portal to paradise for most males, the entrance to the hidden chambers of pleasure.’
    Beth nodded. ‘But why spank it? Why not just kiss it, or lick it? Why not love it?’
    â€˜That is where aesthetics meet the id, the male id,’ the psychiatrist said. ‘It is to do with power and dominance. The priapic male is the hunter, the submissive female the victim, the more submissive the better.’
    â€˜Oh,’ Beth said, disappointment in her voice. ‘Is that all it is?’
    â€˜Don’t underestimate it, Beth,’ Dr Susskind said. ‘The urge to chastise girls is very strong in the male of the species. It may be a private and personal compunction or pastime but it comes into the open time and time again. You’re too young to remember the spanking colonel.’
    Beth looked puzzled.
    â€˜A few years ago,’ the psychiatrist went on, ‘some old buffer with a boat on the Thames. He used to entice girls on board and spank their bare bottoms. One silly girl complained. It got tremendous publicity. Everyone loved reading about it. A lot of people could see nothing wrong in what he did.’
    Beth giggled.
    â€˜And there’s Hazlitt. William Hazlitt, the essayist two hundred years ago.’ Dr Susskind looked enquiringly and Beth nodded, reminding herself to look up the name later. ‘A most respected and respectable man. He was sitting by himself in a meadow in the Lake District, no doubt deep in profound thought, when a pert local village girl went by. He must have been overcome by an irresistible urge. In a trice he had her over his lap with her skirts up and was spanking her bottom. There was quite a scandal. Hazlitt returned to London that night.’
    Beth laughed. ‘She must have been surprised. I must read Hazlitt.’
    â€˜Surprised, no doubt. Hurt,