Is this any help? “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, 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 AT 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’ it becomes much less clear about what is going on. In fact it is often the case that the person would absolutely deny any intention to hurt or to deceive anyone. How can this be? It is simply that their shame and guilt is so painful that they feel they must move away form it. I move away from it by avoiding, e.g. I lie. Since my INTEREST was not in hurting you or deceiving you I am SURPRSED 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 sooth 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 where 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 quite 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 through which they continue to seduce others and thus avoid any ‘need’ for facing their own shame. So we call someone that can maintain this constant frenetic activity of avoiding his or her shame- “shameless”. Anyway this is how I see the first part of your question. Thank you for your confidence. Brain Lynch,M.D.
Re:Shamelessness wthin Script theory
Brian Lynch · 12/18/00 at 8:39 PM ET
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