Stephen J. Costello - The Truth About Lying: With Some Differences Between Men and Women

A few years ago a friend phoned me to relate the following incident: Stephen, you wont believe what happened. Its right down your street. I was lying in bed last night beside a girl, just after, you know Anyway, the phone rang. It was my girlfriend! She asked me what I was doing. I said, Just lying in bed. Talk about a Freudian slip! Indeed. He was telling the truth while lying in bed

This book is on the philosophy and psychoanalysis of lying, and especially how men and women lie in different ways. Its about lies, love, language and logic. Its also about desire and deception, especially in our love relationships and in our loving-friendships.

How many lies do we tell? Can animals lie? Is deception detectable? Can psychotics lie? When do children start to lie? Why do we lie to ourselves? Do we need to lie? What about the people who enjoy lying? Above all, how do men and women lie differently? These are some of the questions I hope to answer.

Drawing on philosophical and Lacanian psychoanalytical insights, I am going to tell you the truth about lies.

A lie distracts, detracts from the truth. You lie if you dont want people to become aware of the truth. Total truth who would want it? is problematic. We are at home with lies. Lies can take place around the locus of the other persons desire or ones own ego. Some people like to be lied to; others need to be lied to. There is a difference between how men and women lie and to what end; this is centrally what the book is about, after certain other topics are also addressed.

When do we lie? Why do we lie? How do we lie? These questions will guide our applied enquiry and will be the subject matter of this brief book. In The Magic Lantern, Ingmar Bergman, the famous Swedish film-director , observed: Sometimes I have to console myself with the fact that he who has lived a lie loves the truth. Achilles, the truth-sayer, and Odysseus, the liar, abide in us all.

We lie best in front of potential partners or to close business deals. We show off with stories. Not quite a lie, then, just a slight embellishment and so it begins . You cant have a completely truthful conversation with friends, parents or lovers. Isnt there always something that is kept secret, that isnt shown, that cant be said or spoken? Isnt intimacy based not only on what we share with, but on what keep from, each other? We lie (or dont tell the truth) for different reasons , to different people in different ways, for different reasons.

If truth-telling is sometimes harmful, is it true that we harm ourselves when we lie? Michel de Montaigne, the French philosopher, thought so: I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do to him of whom I tell a lie. And Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American philosopher, writes similarly: Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society. A private lie can have public consequences. But Graham Greene, the British novelist, was more realistic: In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths. Lies of kindness, so.

If the truth is simple, it does not follow that it is easy to tell the truth. It may follow that it is difficult to lie well. Lying can be complicated. Samuel Butler, the English novelist, put it thus: Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well. Lying can be learnt. It is a language-game like any other after all. It takes practice.

What follows are some observations on the act and art of lying a breviary of sorts. This type of terse writing has been present in the history of ideas from philosophers such as Heraclitus in the fifth-century BC to Theodor Adorno in the twentieth-century AD, which doesnt mean it works. Still, Im optimistic.