The Dance of Deception
Pretending and Truth-Telling in Women's
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
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.
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.
