Emotions & Affect

Shame

Shame is a feeling of embarrassment or humiliation that arises from the perception of having done something dishonourable, immoral, or improper. When shame is chronic, it can involve the feeling that you are fundamentally flawed.

Shallow Affect

A person with shallow affect will feel little emotion about situations that would expect to elicit specific feelings. Shallow affect has a similar meaning to blunted affect, but it is often used to describe the emotional experience of persons with psychopathy.

Negative Affect

The internal feeling state (affect) that occurs when one has failed to achieve a goal or to avoid a threat or when one is not satisfied with the current state of affairs.

https://dictionary.apa.org/negative-affect

Labile Affectivity

A labile affect refers to unpredictable, uncontrollable, and rapid shifts in emotions.

Emotional Dissonance

Example: e.g. envy. But to admit it they have to admit the person is better. Grandiosity is this dissonance - it's temporary, I've been provoked, my envy and jealousy is part of a bigger picture, there's no contradiction, or denial.

Includes: - Axiological dissonance - Attitudinal dissonance - Executive dissonance

Narcissism remains ego syntonic, they see nothing wrong with it.

Paradoxical Warmth/Cold

Cold sensation causes hot. Skin is giving the wrong information. Cognitive dissonance is like this, it's misreporting. The narcissist resolves this by saying the paradox isn't one.

Paradoxical thinking brings about a light bulb moment. Dissonant thinking preserves the thinking.

In therapy the therapist encourages undesirable behaviour to show the client he has control over it. Paradoxical intervention. Magnify the fear and exaggerate it.

Narcissist does the same - people are criticising me for my actions? I'm going to double down. Defiant, in your face - prolonged shame. These are the pillars of grandiosity. The narcissist administers therapy to himself this way. It's disguised psychosis, reversed psychosis, you are coping with their psychosis as their partner.

Théodule Ribot

French psychologist who studied affective memory, the idea that emotions leave traces that can be reactivated.

He influenced The Stanislavski System, a systematic approach to acting developed by Russian theatre director Konstantin Stanislavsk (actors should experience genuine thoughts and emotions). Examples include what would I do in this situation, what are the character's objectives in the scene.