The Truth about Lying

by Stephen Costello

  After this, the girl fell into despair, which shook up her mother. The mother tried everything to console the girl but this once self-confident and wild child had become shy and timid. She herself described this event in her life as a ‘turning-point’. Years later, when she was engaged to be married and her mother purchased her furniture for her she flew into a rage, which at the time she didn’t understand. She had feelings that it was her money and no one else ought to buy anything with it. As a wife she was reluctant to ask her husband for any money for herself and made an unnecessary distinction between his money and hers.

  During the course of her psychoanalysis, her husband’s money was delayed in reaching her and as a consequence she was left without resources in a foreign city. Freud made her promise him that if this happened again she would borrow from him (can’t see any analyst I know doing this). She promised to do so but when she was again in a state of ‘financial embarrassment’ she pawned her jewellery instead. She said she couldn’t take money from Freud. Her analysis progressed and revealed some interesting facts.

  Sometime before she went to school she played a similar prank with money. A neighbour had sent the girl out with some money in the company of her own boy, who was younger, to buy something in the shops. She was bringing the change back home but when she met the neighbour’s servant in the street she flung the money on the pavement. When, in analysis, she recalled this, the thought of Judas occurred to her, who threw down thirty pieces of silver, which he had been given for betraying Christ. But how did she identify with Judas?

  When she was a little over three years of age she had a nursemaid of whom she was exceedingly fond. This girl had become involved in an affair with a doctor whose surgery she visited with the child. The child had witnessed various sexual proceedings. It wasn’t certain if she saw the doctor give the girl – the nursemaid – money but it was certain that the girl gave the child some money in order to buy her silence. It is possible that the doctor also gave the child money. However, the child betrayed the nursemaid to her mother out of jealousy, we are told. She played with the coins in such an obvious and ostentatious manner that the mother became curious and enquired about the coins and the nursemaid was dismissed.

  So, to take money from anybody meant, for her, an erotic relation and to take money from her father was equivalent to a declaration of love, Freud contended. The phantasy that her father was her lover was so seductive that her wish for paints for her Easter eggs put itself into effect despite the parental prohibition. She disavowed the fact that she had appropriated the money because her motive (unconscious) for the deed could not be admitted. Her father’s punishment was a rejection of her love, a humiliation that ‘broke her spirit’. Freud tells us that during the treatment a period of severe depression occurred when on one occasion Freud was obliged to reproduce the humiliation by requesting that she not bring him any more flowers.

  The second case involved a woman who was very ill because of a ‘frustration’ in life. We are told that she was truth-loving, serious and virtuous in her earlier years and became an affectionate wife (interestingly, Freud had inserted ‘and happy’ at this point but then had taken it out).

  Earlier still, in the first years of her life, she had been a wilful and discontented child and though she had changed into a good girl, there were occurrences in her schooldays that caused her guilt. Her memory told her that in those days she had often boasted and lied. Once she told a classmate that they had ‘ice’ at dinner, ice, in fact, every day. In reality she didn’t know what ice at dinner meant. She only knew ice from the long blocks in which it was carted but assumed there was something ‘grand’ in having it for dinner.

  When she was ten years old she had to do a free drawing of a circle in one of her drawing lessons but she used a pair of compasses instead and produced a perfect circle and boasted to everyone about it. This incurred the questioning of the girl by the teacher but she ‘stubbornly’ denied what she had done and took refuge in ‘sullen silence’. No further steps were taken in the matter.

  Both the above lies were instigated by the same complex. As the eldest of five children the girl had developed a strong attachment to her father ‘which was destined when she was grown up to wreck her happiness in life’. She couldn’t escape the discovery though that her beloved father was not such a great person as he was inclined to think. He had to struggle with money difficulties and he wasn’t so powerful or distinguished as he imagined. But she could not tolerate this departure from her ideal. ‘Since as women do, she based all her ambition on the man she loved, she became too strongly dominated by the motive of supporting her father against the world. So she boasted to her schoolfellows, in order not to have to belittle her father. When, later on, she learned to translate ice for dinner by “glace”, her self-reproaches about this reminiscence led her by an easy path into a pathological dread of pieces or splinters of glass.’ (The German glas, like ‘glass’ in English, has a similar sound to the French for ‘ice’ – glace).

  Her father was an excellent draughtsman and had excited the admiration of the children with exhibitions of his skill. It was an identification of herself with her father that she had drawn the circle at school. It was as though she wanted to boast, ‘look at what my father can do’. The sense of guilt that was attached to her excessive fondness for her father found its expression in connection with her attempted deception; an admission that was impossible for the same reason that was given in the first example – it would have been ‘an admission of her hidden incestuous love’. Despite the psychoanalytical intricacies of these case histories, Freud showed the importance of the unconscious in the life of the human person and that the truth can come out in our lies, slips, symptoms, bungled actions, jokes and dreams at night. The unconscious betrays us daily. Yes, we lie all the time. But the truth can be rediscovered in these formations of the unconscious.

  The neurotic (that’s us by the way, well, most of us) represses the truth, which can be all too ugly, altogether too grotesque. In psychoanalysis, the patient promises to tell the truth, however, even as he lies on the couch but the full truth can’t be spoken. The unconscious bars such knowledge. We forget, fail to recall correctly, omit. Nobody can promise to speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Let us hope, therefore, that we are not taken to court. Of course, law is not justice.

  Even when we are lying we are operating in the domain and dimension of the truth. Truth and lying are two sides of the same coin, of a ‘Moebius strip’. In an early work by Freud, entitled The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901), Freud said this:

  ‘It may, in general, seem astonishing that the urge to tell the truth is so much stronger than is usually supposed. Perhaps, however, my being scarcely able to tell lies any more is a consequence of my occupation with psychoanalysis.’

  Perhaps the consistency of lies changes during the course (curse?) of an analysis? Maybe they become lighter to bear. Perhaps the lie (as if there were just the one) permits the patient to avoid or evade suffering pain? There are different faces of lies: little lies and large lies, to begin with. We need to distinguish between them.

  Big Lies and Little Lies

  Let us designate little lies as ‘lies’ and large lies as ‘Lies’. The former are understandable, permissible and I would say creative – there is great originality in lying after all. Big lies are problematic and can be dangerous; the lie can become the truth in society. We saw in the last century how this led to Nazism and the horrors of the Holocaust. We were told that Jews were not people; on the contrary, they were vermin who had to be exterminated. This was the ultimate lie spoken in those dark and dreadful days. The Russian writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who experienced the inside of a Gulag, understandably exhorted ‘live not by lies!’ But this was the big Lie that became a society’s truth. It was pernicious propaganda that spread throughout the derailed and distorted society that was Hitler’s Germany. But it was a lie believed by a large portion of
the people – for a while, at least (they wanted to hear the lie). Truth, though, won out in the end because whatever about lying to others we can’t continue to lie to ourselves; at some point we must face the fact that the lie we created, that is, the Jew as less than human, is an act of collective scapegoating and psychological projection.

  Isn’t a falsity the lack of truth, of authentication, the lack of harmony between words, ideas and things? In logic, truth is the correct fit between a thought and a reality; falsity is its unsuitability. To lie is to induce a falsity, to make something look like something else. (Jews portrayed or depicted as less than human). Jeering Pilate asked Jesus Christ, ‘what is Truth?’, but didn’t wait but for an answer. Some people just don’t want to hear the truth. (And there Truth was, standing before Pontius Pilate Himself: ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life’.) Truth, in logic, is the correspondence of a statement and that to which the statement refers, to the reality it names. Isn’t the Truth unknowable? If it is, any formulation of this truth made by a human being would thus be a falsity. A falsity would, therefore, be the only possibility the human mind has of stating and communicating the truth. The lie transforms the truth. In order to lie, one first must have been in touch with the truth. The lie would seem to be a normal part of our mental functioning. Perhaps lying is a way of preventing us from becoming mad. And who hasn’t lied? Babies who haven’t yet learnt language. Speaking of silence, of lying silence, imagine this. Your friend or lover goes to hug you and you say: ‘I really love you,’ and they say … nothing. Isn’t this the ‘sin of omission’? ‘According to Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish novelist:

  ‘The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his mouth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.’

  Below is an example from Woody Allen of all the things we keep concealed but think about, even as we speak.

  Lying With Woody Allen

  In his film Annie Hall, Woody Allen has a conversation with Ms. Hall. As they are talking to each other, each of them is thinking something that they are not saying (lies of silence/sins of omission). They may not be literally lying but they are not telling the truth. The conversation goes like this:

  Allen: ‘So did you do those photographs in there or what?’

  Hall: ‘I sort of dabble round’. (She thinks: ‘I dabble? Listen to me – what a jerk’.)

  Allen: ‘They’re wonderful; they have a quality’. (He thinks: ‘You’re a great-looking girl.’)

  Hall: ‘I would like to take a serious photography course’. (She thinks: ‘He probably thinks I’m a yo-yo.’)

  Allen: ‘Photography’s interesting – it’s a new art form, and a set of aesthetic criteria has not emerged yet’. (He thinks: ‘I wonder what she looks like naked?’)

  Hall: ‘Aesthetic criteria? You mean whether it’s a good fake or not?’ (She thinks: ‘I’m not smart enough for him. Hang in there.’)

  Allen: ‘The medium enters in as a condition of the art form itself.’ (He thinks: ‘I don’t know what I’m saying – she senses I’m shallow.’)

  Hall: ‘Well, to me, I mean, it’s all instinctive. I mean I just try to feel it, try to get a sense of it, not think about it so much.’ (She thinks: ‘God, I hope he doesn’t turn out to be a shmuck like the others.’)

  Allen: ‘Still, you need a set of aesthetic guidelines to put it in social perspective.’ (He thinks: ‘Christ, I sound like FM radio. Relax.’)

  This is typical of friends and lovers (in the above, Allen and Hall lie out of anxiety) and is illustrative of at least two things: 1) the missed encounter between two people, who 2) don’t say what they really mean. It is typical of communication, which operates by way of miscommunication. Don’t we speak in order not to be understood? If we were so completely understood by each other there would be no need to speak. Ethical lying: to save some good. Golden silence: born of fear.

  Later, Annie Hall asks Woody Allen does he love her. He says love is too weak a word and jokingly elongates the word: ‘I loove you’, etc. In other words, he doesn’t answer. So quite obviously he doesn’t reciprocate her feelings for him. But he doesn’t say this. He realises the truth is hard to hear and handle so he fudges the issue and avoids the answer. He commits an act of ‘bad faith’, as Sartre would have it. Bad faith or good intentions? Don’t all lovers lie? And commit acts of bad faith? Let’s see what Sartre says on the subject. I warn you, dear reader, this section requires some concentration as it is a bit convoluted. It’s not for the faint-hearted. So pour yourself a stiff drink and take a deep breath. Another one. Ok, let’s continue. Or you may want to skip this Sartrean section. I won’t mind. Seriously.

  Self-Deception

  According to Demosthenes, ‘Nothing is easier than self-deceit’. Dostoyevsky says:

  ‘Lying to ourselves is more deeply engrained than lying to others … The important thing is to stop lying to ourselves.’

  Yes, but how? Frequently Sartre’s idea of mauvaise foi or ‘bad faith’ – sometimes translated as ‘self-deception’, as I have said said – is identified with falsehood. We say that a person ‘shows signs of bad faith or that he lies to himself’, as Sartre says in the section on ‘bad faith’ in his magnum opus, Being and Nothingness. Bad faith is a lie one tells to oneself. There is a difference, though, between lying to oneself and lying in general. For Sartre, ‘lying is a negative attitude’. He explains:

  ‘The essence of the lie implies in fact that the liar actually is in complete possession of the truth which he is hiding. A man does not lie about what he is ignorant of; he does not lie when he spreads an error of which he himself is the dupe; he does not lie when he is mistaken. The ideal description of the liar would be a cynical consciousness, affirming truth within himself, denying it in his words, and denying that negation as such…. The liar intends to deceive and he does not seek to hide this intention from himself.’

  This is the ideal lie but often the liar is the victim of his lie – ‘he half persuades himself of it’. The lie is a normal phenomenon, an inevitable product of our ‘being-with-others’ (as existentialist philosophers are wont to say) in the world. In other words, the lie presupposes the existence of the Other (person). The lie, so, is stitched into the very fabric of social life. All lies are societal, to some extent at least.

  In bad faith the one to whom the lie is told and the one who lies are the same person. This means that I am aware, as deceiver, of the truth which is hidden from me in my capacity as the one deceived. I know the truth very well in order to conceal it so carefully. But there is a problematic present. I know I am committing bad faith. I am conscious of my being in bad faith. So I must be in good faith to the extent that I am conscious of my bad faith. Get it?

  Sartre gives many examples of people who are in bad faith. A girl goes to the doctor and cries, not because there is anything wrong but so that nothing may be wrong, in order not to have to talk to him (see Sartre’s Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions).

  Many attempts are made to escape from (the embarrassment of) bad faith: one is psychoanalysis, the other is religion, according to Sartre (who believed neither in God nor in unconscious mental processes). In psychoanalysis one has recourse to ‘the unconscious’ to escape and avoid responsibility, according to Sartre. Psychoanalysis would have us believe that the human subject deceives himself about everything. For example, an act of stealing is seen no longer as a simple act of stealing but as evidence of an unconscious act of self-punishment, for example. In psychoanalysis, so, there is no bad faith; what we now have, according to Sartre, is the idea of a lie without a liar.

  I can, therefore, understand or appreciate how I can be lied to without lying to myself. Psychoanalysis puts no person in possession of himself. My ‘superego’ (Sartre said he didn’t have one) or conscience censors the truth about myself but the censor must know what it is repressing for repression to take place, Sartre maintains. The censor must ch
oose and must, so, be aware. It (consciously) comprehends the drives that are to be repressed (unconsciously). One knows and knows that one knows, says Sartre. ‘All knowing is consciousness of knowing.’ So the censor is conscious of itself when it is ‘doing’ the (unconscious) repressing. It involves consciousness of being conscious of the drive to be repressed in order not to be conscious of it. This means, Sartre concludes, that the censor is in bad faith. Id, ego and superego become ‘mere verbal terminologies’. Ultimately, bad faith is, for Sartre, what the unconscious and the censor are for Freud.

  Next, Sartre enquires: ‘What must be the being of man if he is to be capable of bad faith?’ He gives an example by way of illustration. A man invites a woman out to dine. They are in the restaurant. She knows his intentions; she also knows that she is going to have to choose one way or the other. She doesn’t know what she wants and treats his word and sentences, for example, ‘I find you attractive’, as mere words and mere sentences; she disarms them of their sexual connotations and background. She is aware of the desire she inspires, excites, ignites. She wants, though, to be recognised and appreciated in her full freedom, that is to say, in her complete subjectivity. Now suppose he grasps her hand. This risks changing the situation since something has happened and it requires, necessitates, an immediate decision on her behalf. To leave the hand there is to consent to flirt; to withdraw it is to break the charm and harmony of the hour. Her aim: to postpone the moment of deciding for as long as is possible. What happens next? She leaves her hand there but isn’t aware she is leaving it there. At that moment ‘she is all intellect’. Sartre unravels it thus: ‘She draws her companion up to the most lofty regions of sentimental speculation; she speaks of life, of her life; she shows herself in her essential aspect – a personality, a consciousness. And during this time the divorce of the body from the soul is accomplished; the hand rests inert between the warm hands of her companion – neither consenting nor resisting – a thing’ – a thing resting. This woman is in bad faith. She uses various devices to maintain this bad faith.