Shunning, Shunning

Those subject to the practice respond differently, usually depending both on the circumstances of the event, and the nature of the practices being applied. Extreme forms of shunning have damaged some individuals' psychological and relational health. Extreme responses to the practice have developed, mostly around anti-shunning advocacy; such advocates highlight the detrimental effects of many of such behaviors, and seek to limit the practice through pressure or law. Such groups often operate supportive organizations or institutions to help victims of shunning to recover from damaging effects, and sometimes to attack the organizations practicing shunning, as a part of their advocacy.

The effect of shunning can be very dramatic or even devastating on the shunned, as it can damage or destroy the shunned member's closest familial, spousal, social, emotional, and economic bonds.

When used by church members and member-spouse parents against excommunicant parents it contains elements of what psychologists call parental alienation. Extreme shunning may cause traumas to the shunned (and to their dependents) similar to what is studied in the psychology of torture.

Former Amish woman Ruth Irene Garrett tells the story of Amish shunning in her community from the shunnee's perspective in Crossing Over: One Woman's Escape from Amish Life . Amish shunning is also the subject of popular fiction novels about shunning. Amish differ considerably from community to community in the severity and strictness of the shunning.

Since shunning damages and often destroys the excommunicant's closest bonds, it has been called "one of the cruelest punishments known to man" by a shunned Mennonite excommunicant and "a living hell of torture" by a shunning Mennonite member and father-in-law (see Delivered Unto Satan below).

Source: Wikipedia > Shunning