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Is lying ubiquitous in human relations or an aberration, a behavior observed only in those devoid of conscience? However much Freud noticed the importance of our attachments, he harbored no illusions about our selfishness and capacity for inhumanity. He famously claimed that “man is a wolf to his fellow man” (1930/1975, p. 111) to underscore the other's role as a source of temptation, someone to be deceived, coerced, humiliated, tortured, even killed. Desire is rapacious and insatiable; whether animated by love or hate, it is a force that can be appeased, but never sated.
Akhtar and Parens's new book, Lying, Cheating, and Carrying On, pursues the implications of Freud's thinking. It offers a broad psychoanalytic perspective on deception as an unconscious compromise in which self-interests prevail. Too little restraint leads to recklessness; too much to frustration and resentment. Neither permits conflict to be comfortably entertained. When moral implications are readily discounted, treated as if they are not really real, deception and transgression are likely consequences.
With the exception of the introduction, conclusion, and two discussion pieces, the chapters of Lying, Cheating, and Carrying On were originally presented at the 39th Annual Margaret S. Mahler Symposium of Child Development in 2008. With the exception of these two discussion pieces, each paper is followed by original essays that elaborate and expand on its themes. The result is a comprehensive examination of deception, one that addresses its developmental, psychological, and cultural implications. I shall take up three broad themes that the papers raise collectively.
Akhtar aptly distills the central thesis of this book: “lying invariably involves a self-object scenario” (Akhtar & Parens, 2009, p. 3). He regards it as taking place always within an interpersonal context and motivated by self-interests, however much they may be concealed. More broadly, deception reflects th