A DIFFERENT KIND OF LIE!
Nothing reveals our truest nature and our deepest psychological struggle than the lies we tell. Most times, the lies tell themselves with or without our permission....
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Lies come in different colors and shades. They are as diverse and dynamic in their manifestations as crackling fireworks. Every individual appears to evolve, in the course of their development, a unique style of lying which is perfectly in sync with their personality and adequately advances their intrapersonal, interpersonal, and social goals. Lying is our common human heritage, and as much as many would like to crusade against it and see it eradicated, it is as eternal and essential as its inseparable counterpart - truth. Lies are functional in the sense that they help us burnish our imperfect personalities and give us the tool with which we can bridge the gap between the internal reality as known and experienced by us and the external reality as shared with and perceived by others. It is such a vital resource that it is difficult to imagine life being interesting without its levers. I believe it has even been codified and canonized in psychological science as defense mechanisms, or implicit bias and priming, should your conceptual sensibility recoil at the psychoanalytic terminology.
There is, however, one particular form of lie and lying that has beautifully impressed itself on my mind. This species of lie is so fascinating that one is often left speechless (even amused) when in close contact with it. And I, like many others, have always known it, but haven't always recognized it for what it truly is - I hope the twisted irony here is obvious? That is, even a lie can be true! Not in substance but in form. In fact, all lies are true to the extent that they reveal something about the psychology of the ‘teller’.
This lie, of which I'm writing, is neither semantic nor literal in its form, and so could easily pass for a truth and conveniently go unchallenged. And even if suspected, cannot be confronted using verbal logic. It is, in a manner of speaking, a trans-logic lie. It's a lie well adapted to serve human beings’ insatiable thirst for the hyberbolic and the dramatic, hence its credulous and entertaining factors respectively. And because it is more of a performative lie than a narrative or reportive lie, it is never better exposed than with an equally performative logic. In other words, this lie, born of drama, can only be unraveled with drama, however, of a more mellowed sort.
Here is a crude illustration of this lie; let's say that B asked to quickly borrow A's car for a few hours, and A replied matter-of-factly with these exact statements: "I'm sorry B. The last time I let you 'quickly' borrow my car you did not return it till the following day." Then, of course, B tried to appeal and apologize and argue that it'll be different this time. And, of course, A was resolute as well. B got angry and decided to go vent to C. So, the following face-to-face exchange ensues between B and C:
B: C, you won't believe what A did today!
C: What?
B: I asked to use A's car to run a quick personal errand but you won't believe what he said.
C: What?
B: A told me “The last time I let you quickly borrow my car you did not return it". (And then B follows this faithful reportage with a long but therapeutic tirade about A's selfishness and insensitivity.)
At first (and second and third and …) reading, you would observe that nothing is logically wrong with B's report of what A said. For you to see what's wrong with it, you'd have to have witnessed the two scenes: the one between B and A, and then between B and C. But to give you an idea, for those who are yet to discern what actually transpired between B and C; go back and re-read the above exchange between B and C, but this time as you're reading it, picture B as agitated, constantly shifting her posture, gesticulating wildly, face contorted into nervous frenzy, voice above its usual decibel, and eyes somewhat teary. Then ask yourself if B could ever have done justice to A's statement while in such a state.
If anyone challenged B's account, B would sincerely swear that she was TELLING the truth. She would even dare you to go ask A yourself. If you have ever wondered how a lie can become a righteous truth in a person's mind, this is just one mechanism by which such transmutation takes place. When a lie is achieved by merely dressing the truth in a different narrative garb, it becomes difficult to tell the two apart. There remains hope for this distinction being made if the lie is perpetrated against another. However, such hope is almost nonexistent in cases where the lie is perpetrated against the self, because the victim and the perpetrator are one and the same. This is the ultimate tragedy of the hysteric: she knows not how to protect herself against the same lie she performs against others.
Technically, B has not TOLD a lie against A. So, challenging the verbal integrity of her account would only rightly trigger her righteous indignation: you become the cruel accuser and she becomes the victim twice over. However, what B has done is to PERFORM a lie against A such that what A said was reduced to a mere script in B's theatrical delivery. Hence, a deadpan statement, uttered with no malice, was transformed into something oozing insult and condescension.
B's talent (or genius, if you like) is in injecting A's statement with a new emotional undertone while retaining its outward semantics. She has learned in the course of her hysterical career that drama trumps pragma; a lie dramatized (through emotional modulation) has a far more visceral and indelible impact than a truth dressed in nothing but candor. (This is one reason why hysterical and histrionic personality often make the best actors, and the hysterical role is the most difficult in a dramatic set and is often the best proof of performance range and, consequently, of theatrical genius.)
However, B also knows very well that if she’s ever going to successfully perform the lie against A, it must, as a rule, be first done in the absence of A. At the first performance, it is absolutely essential that A is not there to defend himself, otherwise he not only threatens to dampen, but also sabotage, the original effect of the lie. It is for this same reason that B abandons herself when she turns this hysterical device against her own self – self-awareness of such self-directed over-performed factoid has the same effect as the presence of A.
But, in a twisted sense, every lie that proceeds from the ego’s need to defend itself against humiliation and condemnation is also a true lie, in so far as it reflects something true about the liar’s psychology. It is for this reason that some liars could tell or perform their lies with a sense of righteous reportage. They simply know not that they lie because the line between truth and lie has been effectively blurred! In fact, in their psychology, such line does not exist since the need to avoid psychic pain is a valid survival goal. And from the vantage point of consistency, such lies are the most potent and stable. Hence, those who lie consciously must perform twice the work put in by those who lie unconsciously.
Truth and Lie are the twin towers of creativity: a mind bold or naive enough to tell irreverent truth, and a mind cunny and sophisticated enough to weave elevated lies, are both minds capable of creative self-expressions. Suffice to say, that some of humans' finest institutions today would not exist but for our capacity to tell sophisticated lies which in turn stimulates us into creative means of exposing them. And the existence of such lies has had an elevated effect on the evolution of our truth-detecting capacity, as our judicial and rational faculties strive to device ever more sensitive mechanisms to catch up with the slippery genius of the motivated liar.
Yet the judicial, the academic, and the confessional methods, as sophisticated as they have become, are still often unequal in penetrating the emotional façade that may conceal or distort the truth as presented in hysterical speech. Their limitation, in the case of hysterical lying, lies in their directness and over-reliance on the devices of logic. The method of psychotherapy is, however, different in that it is capable of employing counter-logic. How should you handle a client suspected of being overly colorful with the fact? By completely accepting his fact as the truth (at least for as long as this is needed) while keeping in mind the possibility that the ‘truth’ may indeed have been given a too colorful a rendition. This obviously, at first, seems counter-productive. However, the hysterical lie is perhaps the highest realization of the art of lying: the hysterical/dramatic/performative liar adopts the style of lying he is known for because he knows that a simple presentation of the fact will never do justice to the emotional dimension of that fact, both on himself and others. And more than the fact, it is the emotional impact of the event that he wishes primarily to leverage, emphasize, and communicate. Any attempt, therefore, to make him re-examine the facts without first recognizing and accepting his feelings relative to the fact, will only stir him to more fury, resentment and effort to double down on the lie.
Much more than they are perhaps ever given credit for, this class of people are actually capable, in certain circumstances, of later recognizing and acknowledging that they might have overstated the truth. But just as the moon remains invisible as long as the sun is shining, and only becomes visible when the sun sets, the truth contained within the hysterical narrative cannot emerge unless the flaming sun of the hysteric’s rage and sense of offense is successfully massaged to sleep.
If you’re a lover of satire, you may want to complement this essay with MARK TWAIN’s On The Decay Of The Art Of Lying. And for something more empirical, check out OLIVER SACK’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat.
NB: lying, in itself, is not a sign of psychopathology, but compulsive lying or inability to lie (neither of which  was treated in this essay) may signal some form of mental, neurological, or psychological deficit or dysfunction.