The Dance of Deception CD: Pretending and Truth-Telling in Women's Lives
From sexual faking to family secrets, Dr. Harriet Lerner reveals how the struggle toward truth-telling is at the center of our deepest longings for intimacy, authenticity, and self-regard. Drawing on more than two decades of clinical experience, Dr. Lerner articulates her rich philosophy and thoughtful guidelines about speaking out and holding back. With the passion, humor, and clarity that have become her trademark, Lerner unravels the lies, secrets, and silence -- our own and others' -- that affect our lives and teaches us how to widen the path to truth-telling for everyone.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
From Kirkus Reviews:
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.
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.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherHarperAudio
- Publication date2004
- ISBN 10 0060726644
- ISBN 13 9780060726645
- BindingAudio CD
- Rating
(No Available Copies)
Search Books: Create a WantIf you know the book but cannot find it on AbeBooks, we can automatically search for it on your behalf as new inventory is added. If it is added to AbeBooks by one of our member booksellers, we will notify you!
Create a Want