"Living A Lie"

The episode of April 1st was interesting for its treatment of "shame." Again Paul Ekman (the resident expert) does not appear to recognize shame as a primary feeling/affect/emotion but here again, the show opens with it as what would seem to be a very definite emotion. As I stated earlier in some of their portrayals their examples of shame are what I and more faithful adherents of Silvan Tomkins would call shame "affect" while other of the examples shown in early shows are not(see above posts for more details). Of course, here I am referring to the two Indian women, and at 6:42 and 6:50(times refer to online version @ http://www.fox.com/lietome/) in the show we see their expressions of shame on their cell phone videos. This is what I would call the shame affect. It is then said that suicidal people do not show shame but anguish.

This leads to a subplot of the episode and the mystery of the reel-to-reel movie of the suicidal patient that seems to turn out to be Lightman's mother. In real life, Ekman did participate in these early studies with patients who were being evaluated for discharge but were at risk for suicide. This is how he starts his book "Telling Lies" and how he discovered micro-expressions. That is by studying one such patient in particular. Suicide too is very close to him because his mother indeed did commit suicide when he was 14 and this was a very strong motivation for his study of human emotion.

In the book, there is a suggestion that such training will help in assessing whether or not to discharge patients. That is signs of "lying" and signs of "anguish" being signs that they are at very high risk of repeat suicidal attempts. One danger here, again, is for anyone to think that these skills are easy for anyone to acquire easily. They are not. And again even if you find "anguish" that is not "innate" "proof" that the person is going to do themselves. It would be a very strong maker to aggressively follow up on.

Finally, it is now interesting, in terms of the relationships that our "natural" Torres and Loker are, for now, "living a lie" within the organization.

This leads to a subplot of the episode and the mystery of the reel-to-reel movie of the suicidal patient that seems to turn out to be Lightman's mother. In real life, Ekman did participate in these early studies with patients who were being evaluated for discharge but at risk for suicide. In fact, this is how he starts his book "Telling Lies" and how he discovered micro-expressions. That is by studying one such patient in particular. Suicide too is very close to him because his mother indeed did commit suicide when he was 14 and this was a very strong motivation for his study of human emotion.

Finally, it is now interesting, in terms of the relationships that our "natural" Torres and Loker are, for now, "living a lie" within the organization.

References