Are Lies Ever Therapeutic?

the complicated moral of the story

And the lie in words is in certain cases useful and not hateful; in dealing with enemies—that would be an instance; or again, when those whom we call our friends in a fit of madness or illusion are going to do some harm, then the lie is useful and is a sort of medicine or preventive. - Socrates, in Plato’s Republic

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It can feel awful to realize someone is lying to us, and awful to be the one lying. But Socrates is right, not all lies are bad. I feel apprehensive about saying this out loud, though most of us know this is true. (Except of course for Kant and Kantians. Kant argued that lying is always wrong.) So let’s look at lying, keeping in mind how it comes up in helping relationships. In this context, a lie is therapeutic when, as Socrates argued, it serves as “good medicine or a preventive.”

I’ll start where I left off at the end of last week’s note, with the moral of the story about my dog Aktis’s refusal to be on friendly terms with our neighbor. Telling the moral—morals, really—of this story will shed light on lying. But first, a recap: my German shepherd Aktis didn’t like our neighbor. He wasn’t mean or threatening, but his cool aloofness made his feelings perfectly clear. My partner and I figured he didn’t like her because he sensed we didn’t like her. But unlike us, he wasn’t willing (or able) to pretend otherwise.

What’s the moral of this story? Well, that depends on whether the social lie of pretending to be friendly with someone you don’t like is therapeutic or hateful. Before saying how I see it, let me clarify a philosophical point. Along with Socrates, and contrary to Kant, I do not think we can know whether a lie is good or bad unless we’re aware of the specific ethos in which we find ourselves. (Ethos in the Greek originally meant the character, or gist, of a situation or place.) For example, Socrates would say that if your neighbors have been fighting and one comes over in a fit of rage and asks whether you have an axe, it’s probably therapeutic to lie. On the other hand, if she just wants to chop wood, well, that’s a very different ethos! The point is that when it comes to lying, we’re not going to be able to escape thinking about the specifics.

From my point of view, then, the moral of the story is that Aktis accurately detected an incongruence between the reality and the appearances, and understandably (if not helpfully) aligned himself with the reality of our feelings as he sensed them. Now, had he been a human friend, we could have appealed to his reason and probably persuaded him that sometimes a little lie is good medicine. In this case, it’s neighborly and fosters community. Tolerating people we don’t especially like means we’re likelier to be part of gatherings. When we can be an agreeable guest, we get more invitations to dinner parties where we might meet people we really like. This is the kind of lie that Socrates called medicinal, even noble, inasmuch as it serves a greater purpose (community), while causing little or no harm.

But what if we were deceiving ourselves? What if my partner and I were actually diminishing the chance for real connection by participating in a charade, instead of being honest and either avoiding our neighbor, or finding our way to liking her—which might include confronting some of her off-putting behavior.

I do think our social lie was justified, but the point here is that for a lie to be therapeutic you have to know what you’re doing and why. This is where Aktis’s animal sensitivity, and our own—if we can access it—can be of help. For the first step is to become aware of what’s going on—the ethos. To detect this, we need our instincts, gut feelings, our read of someone’s vibe. We can also benefit from the intuition of a friend (whether it be a dog or a human) who kickstarts our awareness. As in, Ugh, you’re right, Aktis. We don’t like her…maybe we should say “no” more often to her invitations.

Even when our gut feelings (or our dog) isn’t persuasive, still it’s worth being sensitive enough to recognize what they’re telling us, if not in so many words. This brings me back to the theme of this series of notes, namely, how the medium of connection affects the quality of our connection to one another. As I’ve noted, a consequence of lopping off our senses—of leaving the dog-like parts of ourselves out of the picture, as we do when we’re on the phone or texting—is to diminish our ability to recognize what situation we’re in. This includes recognizing whether we’re being deceived, or might need to do some deceiving. The moral of this story is the many advantages of having the full use of our senses.

In the big picture, when we seek to be helpful to others, it’s useful to harness our inner Aktis and sense as much as we can about what’s going on. But whereas Aktis didn’t resist reacting to what he sensed, we can think and choose how we respond to what we perceive. As therapists, we can think feelingly about why someone may be omitting or misrepresenting or deluded about the truth, rather than immediately moving to bring their attention to it, or correct them. We can think about what useful purpose a lie or misdirection may be serving. On the other hand, should a therapist or ever lie to a patient? Parents lie to young children as a matter of course, and Plato among others has a lot to say about the reasons this is therapeutic. But can they ever be therapeutic in relationships among consenting adults? Therapists and others in helping relationships might ask yourselves whether you’ve told lies you regarded as therapeutic. I don’t know about you, but even the question makes me uneasy. As Kant thinks it should.