檳榔嶼

- Although lying is commonplace in both personal and public - especially political - life, the label of "liar" is a profound condemnation in our culture, bringing to mind pathology and sin.
  - So heavy are the negative associations of intention and character that it is difficult to think lovingly, or even objectively, about the role that lying plays in the lives of children and adults.
- In psychoanalysis - as in the rest of life - insight and self-understanding do not flourish in an atmosphere of self-depreciation or blame.
- An observer might say, "One lied because that's how she/he is. She/he is a liar, out for herself/himself, that sort of child". Or a psychological interpretation might be based on a particular notion about human behavior : "Because she/he is insecure, she/he needs to manipulate and control - that's why she/he lies".
  - In the absence of context, we tend to view particular behaviors as fixed "traits" or as "personality characteristics" that exists within us, rather than as part of a dance between and among us.
- Context allows us to put lying - or any other behavior - into perspective. By broadening our view, we are challenged to take a more complex reality into account, to ask questions (rather than provide answers) about where lies begin.
  - Did it begin with my parents, unable to address, even with each other, a terrifying illness, then handed down as a death sentence?
  - Did the lie begin under the hand of patriarchy, with the male-dominated medical system withholding facts from my mother, mystifying and falsifying her experience, denying her deepest instincts, protecting her from essential knowledge "for her own sake", creating for her a situation of unutterable loneliness?
- Deception is larger than the particular individual responsible for it, larger even than a family. We can never know for sure, where a lie begins, with whom it originates, or the many factors that sustain it.
- We can, however, move toward an increasingly accurate and complex understanding of ourselves as we widen our view of a lie, secret, or silence - or any deceptive behavior, for that matter.