How do you think emotional punishments compare to corporal punishments?

Talking about corporal punishment earlier today, made me think back to my childhood. Confronted with someone referring to my likely having endured corporal punishment.

Although I have never received a single spanking, my mother did different things that I would call emotional punishments or even emotional harm, for lack of a better word.

Anybody having seen “Das Weisse Band” (The White Ribbon) will know what I mean, but let me give some personal examples:
* She would for instance say things as ‘you are just like your father’, if I forgot something I promised. (Mind you that my parents were divorced and she hated my father.)
* Or she would not speak to my sister for a period of over two weeks when my sister had failed a grade.

I personally think that these kinds of mind games are extremely dangerous to the well being of children. What do you think?

Do you ever play them, do you know people that do?

How should you deal with parents that play these kinds of games. My mother still does, for instance, and I am quite a grown man already.