"On Lying"

So I say above "Reasonable people can disagree, I hope, without the intention of humiliating or attacking which leads to a lot of other issues concerning interest and shame which I will explore later."

And so I will say a little about "Affect Psychology" in terms of some of how we see it as explaining the whole person. Again we think that it all starts with "feeling" and that the face is essential in understanding anyone's emotional life.

Where Shame and Interest become so important is as such:

We say that shame is a consequence of having our interests blocked or interrupted. I want or desire something and I am not reaching my goal. This we say is a feeling of shame. If you don't like that word starts with using "hurt" or "confusion". If you don't get what you want you feel a sense of confusion or you feel hurt. At least momentarily?

It can be a slight feeling of confusion or a gigantic one. I go to the icebox and all the ice cream is gone. Or I go to work and get fired.

Now what do we do when we feel this pain of confusion/hurt/shame?

Donald Nathanson summarized Tomkins' work by saying that we only have five actions we can do in response to such pain. We can:

Withdraw (run away)

Attack Ourselves ( blame ourselves)

Avoid ( addictions )

Attack Others ( blame others )

Or we can face the hurt/pain/shame/confusion and confront the problem and try and come up with a solution.

Now where does lying fit in?

Much lying is due to shame. It is an avoidance of shame.

Someone asked me this once:

"I have a question about lying. Why does a person have to lie and how is a lie shaming? Do shamelessness people lie pathologically? And why?"

I think pathological liars must be managing a great deal of negative affect(feeling) principally shame. What is the purpose of a lie? To avoid punishment? To seduce? The place where I have experienced this most is in the realm of money. Someone borrows money or solicits investment money. Money is to be repaid on x date and it is not. The investment money is going to come next week but it never does.

Now like many words we have always used and thought we knew what they meant Affect Psychology brings us to examine everything. I would suppose that 100 percent of people would at first blush always import to the liar a conscious willful attempt at deception. But if we look at it as a "Script"[ a "habit" or automatic response.] it becomes much less clear about what is going on. It is often the case that the person would deny any intention to hurt or deceive anyone. How can this be? It is simply that their shame and guilt are so painful that they feel they must move away from it. I move away from it by avoiding it, e.g. I lie. Since my INTEREST was not in hurting you or deceiving you I am SURPRISED when you say I hurt you by lying. I am genuinely surprised, as my whole intent, my real INTEREST, was to avoid more guilt and shame and pain within myself. I do something to soothe the pain and I am so confused at that moment I am not aware or I make up any story available to deny that you were hurt or that I meant to hurt you. Of course, a great many people will demonstrate shame if you call them on this activity for now, in a more quiet moment, they realize what they have done. But I now also feel that we should certainly make no mistake that there are not millions of people that are so defended against shame that they are extremely dangerous. They have thousands of sophisticated scripts, and habits, through which they continue to seduce others and thus avoid any need for facing their shame.

So we call someone that can maintain this constant frenetic activity of avoiding his or her shame- shameless. When it is just the opposite they are "simply" avoiding massive shame.

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