The Dance of Deception: A Guide to Authenticity and Truth-Telling in Women's Relationships [Paperback]

Harriet Lerner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 20, 1994

When The Dance of Deceptionwas published, Lerner discovered that women were not eager to identify with the subject. "Well, I don't do deception" was a common resonse.

We all "do deception", often with the intention to protect ourselves and the relationships we depend on. The Dance of Deceptionunravels the ways (and whys) that women show the false and hide the real -- even to our own selves. We see how relationships are affected by lying and faking, by silence and pretending and by brave -- but misguided -- efforts to tell the truth.

Truth-telling is at the heart of what is most central in women's lives. It is at the foundation of authenticity and creativity, intimacy and joy. Yet in the name of "honesty", we can bludgeon each other. We can approach a difficult issue with such a poor sense of timing and tact that we can actually shut down the lines of communication rather than widening the path of truth-telling.

Sometimes Lerner's advice takes a surprising turn -- for example, when she asks us to engage in a bold act of pretending in order to discover something "more real"; or when she tells us not to parachute down on our family to bring up a "hot issue" without laying the necessary groundwork first.

Whether the subject is affairs, family secrets, sexual faking or the challenge of "being oneself", Lerner helps us to discover, speak and live our own truths.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Faked orgasms, family secrets and an exaggerated sense of privacy prevent women from embracing their own identities, evaluating their relationships and assuming fuller roles in society, avers Lerner ( The Dance of Anger ), a psychologist at the Menninger Clinic. She notes how secrets create insiders and outsiders within families and give secret-keepers inflated notions of power and/or guilt. Addressing the issue of whether to confess to infidelity, Lerner advocates telling so that weaknesses in the primary relationship can be faced. This insightful feminist treatise focuses most on deception in marriage and families; a wider examination of how exaggeration, lies and secrecy operate in other arenas of women's lives would have bolstered Lerner's contention that the deceptions described here are related to the lower rung women occupy in society.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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. Low on organization but high in appeal, particularly to feminists. (For a less gender-specific--and sharper--discussion of the relative morality of truth-telling, see David Nyberg's The Varnished Truth, p. 124.) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (January 20, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060924632
• ISBN-13: 978-0060924638
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #170,403 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Harriet Lerner, Ph.D., is one of our nation's most loved and respected relationship experts. Renowned for her work on the psychology of women and family relationships, she served as a staff psychologist at the Menninger Clinic for more than two decades. A distinguished lecturer, workshop leader, and psychotherapist, she is the author of The Dance of Anger and other bestselling books. She is also, with her sister, an award-winning children's book writer. She and her husband are therapists in Lawrence, Kansas, and have two sons.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Necessary reading for everyone, not just women, January 29, 2000

By 

"trix4kids" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dance of Deception: A Guide to Authenticity and Truth-Telling in Women's Relationships (Paperback)

Though this book is not new, I just discovered it. Having read it, I now take a different perspective on how 'honest' I am, and how I can approach more honesty - in healthy ways - in all of my relationships. I am not the typical image of 'feminism', in the negative ways the word has come to represent, but I do know that being a woman is an experience to be conscious of. Though it has a heavy feminist bent, one of the best things about this book is that it addresses more than just women's concerns. It tackles the many ways that we all deceive ourselves, and those we come into contact with. It addresses the issues of secrecy within families, 'faking' orgasm, playing out the scripts that we are given for life, and the important distinction between pretending and lying. I appreciated the suggestions about laying groundwork with others before approaching hard truths, and the concept of 'trying on' a different behavior in order to find out where our truths really are.

As a fair assessment, I would say that it takes a while to get into the style or format of the book. It's not laid out in sequential order, so it took a few chapters to get totally engrossed. But the case studies, and her responses, rang true so many times, that I got to the point of almost being late for work because I couldn't put it down.

I am married and work in a small non-profit with 3 men. I've shared several of my discoveries from the book with them, and had meaningful discussions with all. My ED even photocopied a few pages to share with his wife - another testimony to the concepts presented. You do need to be ready to read the book with an open attitude toward your own behaviors and ways of dealing with others. It's not always easy to admit to things we do, but don't want to claim. I would recommend this to anyone trying to sort out the best path to a whole, healthy, happy life.

38 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A rhumba of rationalization, August 20, 2001

By 

"pangloss_" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dance of Deception: A Guide to Authenticity and Truth-Telling in Women's Relationships (Paperback)

Full disclosure: I'm a guy, and I read this book at a time when, in my early 20's, I was trying to understand, and come to grips with, my perception that several of my relationships with women (some strictly platonic, some not) were crippled by a certain lack of honesty. So feel free to discount my reaction to this book by whatever degree you feel appropriate, based on the perspective I brought to it. That said, I was disappointed and frustrated by what I found to be Lerner's somewhat shallow and defensive treatment of the topic. I'm oversimplifying a bit, but Lerner's basic philosophy, as presented in the book, seems to be: Dishonesty is often a good thing because not sharing hurtful truths can help you avoid hurting someone's feelings. E.g., not telling a friend that you think certain behavior patterns are harmful or unpleasant serves the "greater truth" that you nevertheless care about her and think she's a good person. Therefore, Lerner suggests, women who deceive the other people in their lives often aren't "really" lying, they're just being kind. Lerner doesn't really confront the ultimately circular nature of this argument. Nor does she provide any reasoned way of distinguishing between innocuous applications of this "if you mean well, it isn't really a lie" approach and more problematic ones. Telling a friend that you really like her disastrous new haircut, about which she's feeling self-conscious and vulnerable, is one thing. Not telling her that you've been deliberately excluding her from certain social situations because your other friends find her manipulative or overly critical is something else entirely. Nor does Lerner, IMHO, deal meaninfully with the question of whether deception that we rationalize on the grounds that it protects a friend from unpleasantness is not often, in reality, an attempt to protect ourselves from the emotional messiness of communicating hard truths. These aren't easy issues, and I don't claim to know the "truth", or even that there is a single correct approach to dealing with them. But I was disappointed by Lerner's failure to grapple honestly with them.

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A little circular, yes. But somewhat helpful., January 19, 2002

By 

E. Haynes "eek35" (Austin, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Dance of Deception: A Guide to Authenticity and Truth-Telling in Women's Relationships (Paperback)

Wow. I consider myself to be a truthful, honest person. I hate liars and hypocrites more than I hate anything else in the world. So I had to take a really deep breath and really THINK when I finally woke up to the idea that truth and honesty are not always what they should be. I took a good, long, ugly look at myself and realized that I use truth as a weapon, rather than as a tool. I am not always honest with people because I want to create a better relationship. I am sometimes honest just to be hurtful, to shock people, or to get attention away from whoever is monopolizing the conversation at the moment. Hm. Ugly!

The problematic relationship (s) in my life are like cans. I can pick up a big ol' truth-sledgehammer and knock the heck out of that can, or I can use truth gently, like a can opener and let that can open up and get to what's inside.

One option gives me the satisfaction of 'letting so and so have it' because I'm darn tired of biting my tongue and pretending that things are OK when they're NOT. And the other option lets me be honest, but gives the other person (the can) the chance of telling truth back to me, too.

The feminist rhetoric falls short, as it always does with me. If you don't want to hang out in the kitchen and pop out babies, for heaven's sake, DON'T. But don't blame men if that's what you decide to do with your life and then change your mind later. Don't you think men change their minds about wanting to be married daddies sometimes, too? There is too much blaming going on. People need to own their lives. If you know your situation is messed up, you know enough to change it.

Also, the whole thing about minorities and tokens rings very false when Lerner presents the statistic in her final chapter that women actually outnumber men in the world. So, hello? How can we consider to whine and consider ourselves a token or a minority when we are numerically superior? I don't really get that at all.

Anyway. 4 stars. It's an eye-opener!