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The
Dance of Deception
Truth telling is the central challenge in women's lives, the foundation
of intimacy, self-regard, and joy. At the center of a woman's life
is the quest to discover, speak and live her own truth, to cease
living a life dictated and defined by others.
Drawing on more than two decades of clinical experience, Dr. Lerner
articulates her rich philosophy and thoughtful guidelines about
speaking out and holding back. She shows us how honesty can sometimes
impede truth telling—and how "creative pretending" can be a bold move toward the truth, rather than a misdirected flight from it.
From sexual faking to family secrets,
readers will be rewarded with important insights and guidelines for widening the path to truth-telling with the key people in our lives.
Praise
"The best of the author's 'dance' trilogy.
. . A remarkable, beautifully written book, illuminating ways for
women to find integrity, courage, and voice in a world that rewards
female silence and pretense."
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Carol Tavris, Ph.D.
Author of Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)
"There's
not one false note in this brilliant investigation of what we conceal
from ourselves and others -- and why it matters."
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Holly
Near
"Stunning
in its impact . . . This is a book to be read and reread."
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Betty Carter, M.S.W.
Director,
Family Institute of Westchester, New York
Reviews
From Kirkus Reviews
The author of The Dance of Anger (1989) and The Dance
of Intimacy (1990) completes her trilogy. But this new volume--
unlike the first two--isn't a self-helper but, rather, a freewheeling,
feminist contemplation of truth telling and deception, privacy and
secrecy, and honesty and pretense in women's lives. Lerner (a staff
psychologist at the Menninger Clinic) focuses on how these qualities
function in relationships, and also in a woman's relationship to
herself. She postulates that our culture is a patriarchy in which
women are deterred from expressing thoughts or feelings that might
disrupt the harmony of relationships. Consequently, privacy becomes
necessary (speaking out exposes women to emotional and physical
harm) as well as dangerous (privacy isolates women, keeping them
trapped in false myths about female experience). Lerner views truth-telling
as a process that requires women to be in the kind of conversation
with other women that allows each woman to be herself and to explore
that self: Only then can women identify what unites them and construct
"more complex, encompassing, richer, and accurate'' truths
about themselves. Honesty, Lerner says, isn't always the best policy,
for unconsidered honesty can create an atmosphere of anxiety in
which real truth telling cannot occur. She believes that pretending
can be both destructive and constructive, for living a lie blocks
one from self-knowledge, yet pretending to possess certain qualities
can lead to actual possession of them. These moral ambiguities are
explored in case studies and through personal anecdotes that reveal
the impact of secrecy on family relationships and the many ways
in which women deceive themselves and others...
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