" Email II"

Brian Lynch

Revised

There is a television show called “Lie To Me.” It is quite remarkable and I have written about it elsewhere. It uses the work of Paul Ekman who is its resident expert and who was mentored in part by Silvan Tomkins my theoretical mentor. The idea of the show is that an Ekman-like character runs a consulting firm that helps solve crime and other cases by figuring out if people are lying based on facial expressions amongst other psychological and physical attributes.

The idea is that in part if you are skilled enough you can tell a high degree of certainty a person is lying by the way they express emotion in the face and by the position of the body and its parts, “tells.” If they are lying it does not tell you why they are lying. They may have a good reason

This is true in other areas of life. Take email for example. In the show they also look for and use other clues, as I have said, other psychological attributes such as tone of voice and body posture. Are they aggressive or evasive? Do they demonstrate guilt in their response?

These fall in what we call the “Compass of Shame.” If you are not familiar yet with it is what Donald Nathanson devised to pigeonhole our four habitual responses to the sting of “hurt” and “confusion.” We can 1) Withdraw from the scene. 2) we can attack or blame ourselves for the situation. 3) We can “avoid” the situation by for example using drugs. 4) We can “attack others” or blame others for the problem. If there is nothing we can do by our hand or mind to raise our self-esteem we will lower the self of someone else. -Nathanson. This of course can trigger a back-and-forth of each trying to win and thus improve their self-esteem.

So it occurs to me that we are getting adept at interpreting all kinds of behavior. So the “Compass of Shame” makes even more clear the tools Dr. Ekman uses and if we were to apply them to email we might all 1) be a lot more aware of what is going on and 2) be a lot more honest in our dealings in email as one’s action in such a direct and personal act are open to direct analysis.

That is to the attack of self and others are pretty oblivious.

What is rampant in email is avoidance. We need connection and yet cannot find a way to converse so we send every manner of creation by others without ever revealing ourselves; jokes, pictures, videos and we will continue to create derivatives. And the easiest avoidance is simply not to answer the question asked, and pretend it never happened. How many pages have I written seemingly to the ‘Gods.’

What is more frustrating than something sent that can be interpreted in various ways by someone that has not revealed themselves to you for a very long time and yet they give no hint of their feelings about the piece or comment written by someone else?

Finally, there is a simple “withdraw.” No response whatsoever. From the beginning of my studies of these issues, it has seemed to me email was an excellent contemporary example to teach the shame response. I invest my “interest” in this project, large or small, and send it out into the world. I “want” and “desire” a response. I either receive one or I don’t. In the case of the former, albeit it might not consciously register we are going to feel at least a twinge of joy and in the latter shame.

Of course, why someone does not respond is another matter. How many times have I thought it was some strange animosity towards someone only to find out to my shame that some misfortune had delayed the other party? Nevertheless, this is by far not the rule.

Brian Lynch