Product Description

From the bestselling author of The Dance of Anger and The Dance of Intimacy comes this groundbreaking exploration of the role of truth-telling and pretending in women's lives. According to psychotherapist Harriet G. Lerner, pretending is so inextricably linked with society's notions of feminine behaviour that it is, quite simply, what women are expected to do. Truth-telling, the opposite of this feminine stereotype, is always associated with authenticity, integrity and self-worth. Going beyond conventional distinctions between deception and honesty, between good and bad, Dr Lerner gives a penetrating and humane analysis of what lying represents in a society where women's 'truths' are so often unspoken truths. Exploring the concepts of lying and pretending, of truth-telling and honesty as they are played out both in women's intimate relationships and in society at large, The Dance of Deception offers a convincing and wholly accessible analysis of this unacknowledged part of all our lives.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #635865 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-29
• Formats: Abridged, Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .1 pounds
• Binding: Audio CD

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.

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.

Review
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 serf: 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.) (Kirkus Reviews)