One Guideline

• Thoughts and Questions about Backed-up Affects by Jim Duffy, 3/9/97
  
  

I wondered in the above posting if we had guidelines to distinguish authentic from pseudo-affect (backed-up affect). I ran across this relevant passage by Tomkins (AIC III, p.15): "...a face with lips tightly pressed together and with clenched jaws will be assumed to be an angry face. But this is not an angry face but one in which anger has been backed up. An angry face would be one with mouth open crying out its anger loudly."

It appears, too, that Tomkins believed that only with respect to the affect of anger are we most likely to get confused about whether the affect is authentic, backed-up, or even simulated. The "anger" one usually sees, says Tomkins, is not authentic but rather backed-up BECAUSE of the society's great interest in the socialization of what is regarded as a potentially dangerous affect. In a footnote on page 15 further Tomkins stated his prediction that an investigaion using observers of cross-cultural facial expressions would show universal confusion between innate and backed-up anger only. His prediction, moreover, was even more specific in supposing that innate anger would not be recognized as anger at all, and backed-up anger would be mistakenly judged as authentic anger.

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