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Page 1: Truth, lies, and wondering

This article was downloaded by: [University of Cambridge]On: 16 October 2014, At: 06:18Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

Journal of ConstructivistPsychologyPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/upcy20

Truth, lies, and wonderingRichard E. Webb a & Katherine A. Restuccia ba Haverford College , Haverford, Pennsylvania, USAb Widener University , Chester, Pennsylvania, USAPublished online: 24 Dec 2007.

To cite this article: Richard E. Webb & Katherine A. Restuccia (1998) Truth,lies, and wondering, Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 11:2, 117-132, DOI:10.1080/10720539808404644

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10720539808404644

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Page 2: Truth, lies, and wondering

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Page 3: Truth, lies, and wondering

TRUTH, LIES, AND WONDERING

RICHARD E. WEBB

Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania, USA

KATHERINE A. RESTUCCIA

Widener University, Chester, Pennsylvania, USA

The expectation of knowing "truth" leads to at least 3 "tongues" or ways of consid- ering both truth and lies. The rooted tongue reflects the correspondence view and involves the "lie of authority." The unroofed tongue refects the coherence view and involves the "lie of relational totaality." The authors propose that these 2 kinds of lies occur when one gets "tongue-tied" in the face of experience that threatens one's capacity for accommodation and for further wondering. The authors describe a 3rd tongue, the dialectical, which considers the "lie" as a given of any knowledge and thereby supports ongoing openness to "not knowing." An Isak Dinesen short story serves as the fulcrum for discussion.

Ay, would we all have two tones in our speech- One for true dealing, and the other merely To serve occasion; so the lying tongue Might stand revealed beside the tones of truth, And we no more be duped!

Euripides (Hippolyfus, 1957, p. 120)

INTRODUCTION

Euripides's character, Theseus, speaks to the human desire for "known truths. " We long for the constant, the given, the base from which a journey can begin. "To know the t ruth has served as a springboard

An earlier version of this article by Richard Webb, senior author, David Bushnell, and Jane Widseth was titled "Tongues of Truth: A Lie as the Event of Two Different 'Knows"' and was presented at the panel Truth, Lies, and Wondering (R. E. Webb, Chair), at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, Canada, August 24, 1993.

Received 19 May 1996; accepted 1 February 1997. Address correspondence to Richard E. Webb, Psychological Services, Haverford

College, 370 West Lancaster Avenue, Haverford, PA 19041-1392, USA. E-mail: rwebb@ haverford.edu

Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 11 :117-132, I998 Copyright 0 1998 Taylor 8 Francis

1072-0537/98 $12.00 f .OO

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118 R. E. Webb and I<. A. Restuccia

to many a discovery, and the wish to know the answers may be a sustaining influence in our professional studies as psychotherapists; we hope that we will “know” and not be “duped someday when we are the graduate, the doctor, the truly experienced practitioner.

Our desire for truth, however, remains always frustrated. We con- tinue to pursue truth and believe in its accessibility, forgetting that there are not ”two tones” to speech. We fight off this awareness in varying ways according to our constructions of our worlds. Yet what we hear from more than one teacher is that our interpretations, our offered truths, show how much we do not know as much as what we do know. Donald Winnicott (1991) explained, “I think I interpret to let the patient know the limits of my understanding” (pp. 86-87). Wilfred Bion (1967, 1977) said that we should try to rid ourselves of memory and desire so that “not knowing” can guide our work ”The more his [the therapist’s] interpretations can be judged as showing how necessary his knowl- edge, his experience, his character are to the thought as formulated, the more reason there is to suppose that the interpretation is . . . worthless” (1977, p. 105, original italics). According to Jacques Lacan (1968a) what the therapist “must know is how to ignore what he knows” (p. 20, cited in Felman, 1987, p. 81). Thus, it is important that we not be seduced by the client’s belief that “his Truth is already given in us [the professional] and that we know it in advance” (Lacan, 1968b, p. 72).

These teachers draw a significant distinction. Pursuit of truth is different from grasping truth (see Webb, 1994; Webb & Sells, 1995). Seeking truth takes us to areas unknown, but belief in truth‘s know- ability can descend into a heralding of authority and the undermining of truth’s pursuit. As Lacan (1978) argued, ”The truth . . . is that which runs after t ruth (p. 188). Bion (1991), also of this spirit, reminisced candidly: ”All my life I have been imprisoned, frustrated, dogged by common-sense, reason, memories, desires and-greatest bug bear of all-understanding and being understood . . . ‘Why then write?’ you may ask. To prevent someone who KNOWS from filling the empty space-but I fear I am being ’reasonable’, that great Ape” (n.p.). Similar sentiments and ideas within postmodernism appear in a tradi- tion other than the psychoanalytic one of Lacan and Bion.’ Harlene Anderson and Harold Goolishian (1992) advocated a “not-knowing”

‘Given the confusion within the literature between the terms constructionism and constructivism, some authors have decided to use the terms interchangeably (Efran & Clarfield, 1992). We prefer to use the more general term postmodernism, which denotes the questioning of modernist assumptions (i.e., the existence of an “objective” truth and belief in its knowability). For a discussion of the distinction between constructivism and constructionism, see Kenneth J. Gergen and Mary M. Gergen (1991).

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Truth, Lies, and Wondering 119

position, which “requires that our understandings, explanations, and interpretations in therapy not be limited by prior experiences or theo- retically formed truths, and knowledge” (p. 28). William D. Lax (1992) likewise dismissed the notion of the therapist occupying an “expert position.” He stated that the therapist is not privileged to a “metapsition” or a ”metaview” within therapy; ”there is a continual questioning of assumptions on both parts [therapist and client]” (p. Sl)?

Given these stirring, sometimes emphatic, and at other times seem- ingly ” o d d comments regarding truth and understanding, we think it important to wonder again about certain postures we assume toward truth. In doing this, we must also consider the ”lie,” a matter given scant attention in the literature and yet a topic certainly within our personal and professional experiences. Euripides (1957), for instance, went on in his play to say, “Even the beam that bears the roof aloft/ Cannot lie wholly straight” (p. 109). Whereas there may not be (as Euripides said) “two tones in our speech,” lies exist; they are told by all. Truth, the perfectly straight beam, can never be completely known.

What is truth? What is a lie? To explore this, we turn to a short story of Isak Dinesen’s (1988) titled ”The Immortal Story.” We retell this story in some detail. Next, we proceed to use the story as the pivot for our comments. Unlike clinical material, a story, as literature, is available to all for interpretations, explorations, and illuminations. Furthermore, we think the story does what literature is so powerfully capable of doing: informing by evoking. Literature sacrifices concise- ness but always seems to offer more than meets the eye. As Shoshana Felman (1985) stated, paraphrasing and updating Plato: ”For if today’s philosophers think they know that they don’t know, the poets, for their part, know that they do know, but don’t know what” (p. 136).

TONGUES OF TRUTH AND THE LIE AS THE EVENT OF TWO DIFFERENT ”KNOWS”

The expectation of knowing truth and the refusal to see that all beams are ultimately crooked leads to at least three ways of speaking about

21t is interesting to note that both Lacan and Bion hold views on the therapist’s position vis-8-vis “ t ruth that are at least consistent with many of those held by post- modern theorists (e.g., Anderson & Goolishian, 1992; Hoffman, 1992; Lax, 1992). Yet, there is a dearth of bridging in the literature between Lacanian and postmodern ideas, at least as represented in the field of psychology. For example, it is unfortunate that the perspective on truth held by Lacan, as well as Bion, is not recognized by Gergen and Kaye (1992), who seem to contend that all psychoanalysis-in fact, most all exist- ing orientations to psychotherapy-presume that the ”truth is held by the therapist.

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the truth. In this article we call these ways of speaking tongues of truth, and we refer to one as rooted, one as unrooted, and the third as dialectical.

Dinesen’s story speaks these tongues, and following the retelling of her story, we discuss these tongues as they emerge in her tale and illuminate clinical issues. We suggest that the different ways of speak- ing about truth are ways in which all persons are inclined to speak at different times. We propose that whereas the rooted and unrooted tongues speak a kind of truth, each also leads to a corresponding “lie.” As we consider Dinesen’s story, we examine the occasion of these lies. We discuss how these lies emerge when we get “tongue- tied,“ unable to be a linguist-one who is able to speak with multiple tongues or truths at the same time. Akin to Bion (1977), we think this moment of tongue-tiedness and the consequential lie occur as a bar- rier against statements or experience that seem to threaten ”psycho- logical upheaval” (p. 97) or “catastrophic change” (p. 99): a moment when further wondering and not knowing cannot be tolerated. We suggest that acquaintance with the third tongue of truth, the dialecti- cal one, offers another perspective and perhaps some escape from this difficulty.

We realize that these ideas may seem somewhat esoteric in rela- tion to the clinical application of psychology, but we hope as we proceed with a literary ”clinical” example that we are able to make it evident that this is not so (see Hamilton, 1993).

“THE IMMORTAL STORY”

Dinesen’s story begins with Mr. Clay, a 70-year-old merchant who likes the hard edges of facts. He fancies himself emotionally self- sufficient and has isolated himself from all relationships. In his old age, Clay has fallen ill and is unable to sleep. To help him endure his nights, he commands Elishama, a clerk in his employ, to read aloud to him his business account books. He is comforted by the readings, finding in them a basis for admiring himself and a salve for the anxi- ety that he does not exist for another.

Eventually all the ledgers are read. Clay, who has grown ignorant of the external world and its relations, asks what other kinds of books people read. Clay’s question is “uttered out of some deep need . . . with bashfulness and . . . shame” (p. 159).

Elishama offers him the words of Isaiah from a paper he has kept since childhood. Clay disdains Isaiah’s prophecy, saying it is foolish to foretell things that could be and that “People . . . should record things

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which have already happened (pp. 167-168). Clay says, “I know what such a record is called. A story” (p. 168).

Clay now tells Elishama a story which he heard told by sailors some 50 years ago. In it, a rich, old man happens upon a sailor on leave and pays him to spend the night with his young wife so that she might produce an heir. The sailor stays the night with the lady, the 5-guinea gold piece in hand, and in the morning returns to his ship.

This time Elishama plays the role of the dispeller of belief. He challenges the truthfulness of Clay’s story, claiming that “it never . . . happened, and it never will . . . and that is why it is told (p. 173). Elishama says, “All sailors tell it and each of them, . . . wishes that it had happened to him . . . Each sailor] tells it as if it were so” (p. 170). Clay responds, ”If this story . . . has never happened before, I shall make it happen now . . . I shall make this piece of make believe into solid fact” (p. 173).

Clay charges Elishama with the task of finding a woman willing to play the role of the young wife. Elishama finds Virginie, an aging woman who “had been ruined by her amorous temperament and now lived only for passion” (p. 177). Together, Clay and Elishama find a young sailor, Povl, who has recently been rescued from a deserted island following a shipwreck.

Povl and Virginie meet in the dimly lit, opulent bedroom of Clay’s mansion. Povl finds Virginie to be the ”most beautiful girl in the world (p. 216) and believes her to be seventeen, an assumption Vir- ginie does not correct. He falls asleep “with his face bored into her shoulder, breathing deeply and peacefully” (p. 218). In Povl’s mighty grip, she feels a strength she has never known, one which makes “everything else seem hollow and falsified (p. 219), and she remem- bers cradle songs from her childhood. Povl tells her, “I am not going to leave you! . . . I am not going to let anybody in the world part us . . . Never! Never! Never!” (p. 222).

With a dread more profound than even that of death, Virginie realizes that morning light will break the spell of her beauty and the profundity of their union. She knows that in the morning her face will no longer enchant him: “[Ilt will be old, powdered and rouged. An aged, wicked woman’s face!” (p. 221).

As the day begins to dawn, Virginie is able to conceal her face by remaining in the darkened corner of the bedroom. She reminds Povl that they must leave each other. Povl protests but eventually accepts their imminent separation, saying “I shall think of you all my life . . . you are the most beautiful” (p. 224). In the still dawning light, as Povl is leaving, Virginie whispers to him, “Look at my face well, and

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remember it. Remember that I am seventeen. Remember that I have never loved anybody till I met you” (p. 24).

Elishama soon returns to the house, “in order to be, in his quiet way, the full stop, or the epilogue, to the story” (p. 225). He finds Clay asleep, something he never before witnessed. Elishama thinks to him- self that Clay was right; that Clay ”struck on the‘one effective rem- edy against his suffering. The realization of a story was the thing to set a man at rest” (p. 225). As Povl is leaving, Elishama thinks ”he ought to get the attestation of Mr. Clay’s victory from the boy’s own lips” (p. 226), and he comments to Povl, “Now you can tell the story” (p. 227).

The sailor answers Elishama, “But that story is not in the least like what happened to me . . . Tell it? . . . I would not tell it . . . for a hundred times five guineas” (p. 229). The sailor then gives Elishama a shell for Virginie, a shell which he had brought with him from the island. He shows Elishama how to hear its “song.” When the sailor leaves, Elishama raises the shell to his ear and his face takes on the ”attentive” and “peaceful look” that he saw moments ago on the sailor’s face. “The Immortal Story” closes as Elishama holds the shell to his ear, experiencing “a strange, gentle, profound shock, from the sound of a new voice in the house, and in the story. [He says,] ’I have heard it before . . . long ago. Long ago, long ago. But where?”’ (p. 231).

ROOTED TONGUE AND THE LIE OF AUTHORITY

The rooted tongue reflects the correspondence theory of truth. Of this theory, Charles Hanly (1990) wrote, “[Tlruth consists of the degree of correspondence between an object and its description. It assumes that under normal conditions the human mind is able to gain knowl- edge of objects by means of observation and its experimental refine- ment” (p. 375). Truth here is something that can be discovered and firmly grasped. Truth has an existence independent of our perception of it. Barbara Ehrenreich (1991), in an essay, “Science, Lies and the Ultimate Truth,” put it this way:

Through (scientific) research we seek to know that ultimate Other, which could be called Nature if the term didn’t sound so tame and beaten, or God if the word weren’t loaded with so much human hope and superstition. Think of it more neutrally as the nameless Subject of so much that happens, like the It in “It is raining:” some- thing ”out there” and vastly different from ourselves, but not so alien that we cannot hope to know Its ways. (p. 66)

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From this perspective, a lie gathers its conventional, straightfor- ward definition. A lie is that which does not correspond to the truth; it is a deviation from the facts, which are rooted in an outside, inde- pendent reference point. Thus, language can be divided into right and wrong, and those who speak can either “know” or ”not know.” Authority exists and is heralded. Principled moral judgment is pos- sible. A lie, when referenced to what is ”rightly known,” is accord- ingly some kind of refusal, deviation, or insufficiency.

The importance of the rooted tongue should not be underappre- ciated, because it provides the foundation for society’s functioning and allows authority to maintain its position of power. The idea of an independent and objective truth also sustains our pursuit of it. We allow ourselves to embark on a quest for truth only when we are assured that it can be found.

However, does the rooted tongue with its language of morality and authority in and of itself forward therapeutic understanding? Does it open and support greater wondering? We may believe it does if we conceive of our clients’ malaise as being the result of harboring “incorrect truths.” Then, speaking with the rooted tongue, we need only to expose these false truths to the light of the “objective truth,” and therapeutic relief will occur. For example, Young, Beck, and Wein- berger (1993) wrote of the “scientific” approach as being “fundamental to cognitive therapy.” They argued that ”by designing experiments that subject their [patient’s] automatic thoughts to objective analysis, patients learn how to modify their thinking because they learn the process of rational thinking” (p. 251).

Returning to ”The Immortal Story,” we can see an example of the rooted tongue. It is embodied by Clay who likes the hard edge of facts. For our clinical discussion, however, we wish to look to Elishama’s collapse into this tongue. Elishama sits with a distressed Clay as per- haps a therapist might and is at first committed simply to listening with Clay to the evidence of his past successes and robustness con- tained in the ledgers. Clay responds positively to this ”holding” (Ogden, 1989; Winnicott, 1965) and eventually is able to break out of his con- fining perspective to question what others read and think. In the service of this wondering process, Elishama offers a new perspective with his “truth from Isaiah. However, Elishama’s “truth,” his ”know” is not ready to be known by Clay who defensively belittles it: He cannot think in terms of “what could be.’’ Clay is not yet ready for a different tongue, a new language. It is not his, Clay’s “know.” Clay only speaks of “what has been.” Clay then offers his first original creation in their relationship of nightly talks as he tells the sailor’s story.

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Elishama, however, is unable to transcend his hurt at Clay’s rejec- tion of his offering. Elishama does not accept Clay’s sailor story “as told,” just as his own truth of Isaiah “as told has been rejected. He challenges the ”know-it-all” demeanor of Clay by competing with it; he retreats to the rooted tongue that Clay speaks and declares au- thoritatively that the sailor’s story is nonfactual. He attacks the hard- edged Clay with Clay’s own symptom and, in so doing, kills what seemed to be the slow advancement toward Clay’s greater wondering about his life. Clay’s tongue again becomes tied to the quest for right and wrong, truth and falsehood. The continuation of the dialogue now becomes dependent on the determination of what is “true” and what is ”false.”

We are reminded here of the work of Anderson and Goolishian (1992):

Questions that are overly directed by a methodology risk squelching the therapist’s opportunity to be led by the clients into their own worlds. The basis of therapeutic questioning is not simply . . . for validating or supporting hypothesis. Rather, the aim is to allow the client to lead the therapist’s own range of understanding into question. (p. 32)

Elishama’s “methodology” of ”the determination of t ruth does not allow him to “be led“ into Clay’s world or to have his own (Elishama’s) “range of understanding” questioned. Instead, Elishama forces the authority of “truth” onto Clay, resulting in an eclipse of the dialogical process.

Here, in the difference that is now evident between Elishama’s “know” and Clay’s “know,” the lie ensues; we encounter the lie of authority, which drains the lifeblood from the wondering process and allows the “rooted tongue” to become the only tongue. We see the insistence on “knowing and finding facts” that is the consequence of the onset of the rooted tongue, its sequela.

Lacan (1978) warned of the consequences of such a ”lie.” He said that to assume we hold the truth is to degrade the client and that falling prey to such belief or illusion leads to ”objectifymg interven- tion” (1978, p. 142) and to an “aberrant path whose results will be impossible to correct” (1968b, p. 75).

Indeed, this “lie” of which Lacan wrote finds its place in what transpires in “The Immortal Story.” In degrading the “truth” of Clay’s sailor story, Elishama colludes with Clay that factual truth is both discernible and paramount. Elishama and Clay are now tongue-tied; they see no other possible truths than that which is “factual.” Elishama

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must accept the consequences of this limitation: He works now at the bidding of Clay's "illness." Elishama falls into "acting out" the role of supporting Clay's wish to materialize his fantasy. He joins Clay in an "objectifying intervention" (Lacan, 1978, p. 142); he helps Clay make the sailor's story true by rooting it to an independent source. Now the sailor's story stands up against the scrutiny of any "objective analysis."

Is the success of this endeavor the litmus test to Elishama for saving his own truth contained in the Isaiah story? That his childhood story might not be "true" is "upheaving" to Elishama. The sailor's story and Isaiah's prophecy were true to Clay and Elishama at the time of their telling. Now, however, they are degraded, irrelevant truths in desperate search of resurrection, and this eventuates in an ending maybe "impossible to correct" (Lacan, 1968b, p. 75).

In the morning, after Virginie and Povl's night together, Clay sleeps peacefully; his insomnia abated. He is confirmed in his own thinking that he can "know" truth, that his tongue is not of two tones, despite Povl's feeling that the "story is not . . . what happened (p. 229) to him. Clay sleeps, his symptom relieved, but a new perspective is absent. He remains an old man interested only in facts. Further wondering had been foreclosed.

UNROOTED TONGUE AND THE LIE OF RELATIONAL TOTALITY

The unrooted tongue reflects the coherence view of truth. Hanly (1990) explained:

[Tlhe coherence theory abandons objects as they actually are as the grounds of truth for objects as they are constructed or constituted by the belief and theory investments that govern their observation and the way in which they are experienced by observers (p. 375) . . . There are as many true understandings as there are coherent, comprehen- sive, unifed narratives about the motivating reasons (p. 378).

Truth here is elusive. It has no independent existence. As counter- point to the rooted tongue, the truth of the unrooted tongue does not correspond to anything but itself. The rooted tongue's disregard of subjectivity is counterbalanced by the uprooted tongue's immersion in it. Truth is always found mutably within the context of culture and personal relationships. Truth, therefore, changes as culture and rela- tionships change; it changes as the narrative alters.

In effect then, the lie, as it is conventionally understood, does not

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exist in the uprooted tongue. Truth remains relative to the context. So is right and wrong. Clay’s sailor story, for instance, has a truth regard- less of whether it happened “in fact” because it has a truth to him within the context of his talks with Elishama.

If the therapist becomes immersed in this view of truth, is the “wondering process”-and the new vantage points and perspectives which accompany it-once again short-changed?

As already suggested, the impasse between Elishama and Clay is the result of speaking in a single tongue, the rooted tongue. This singularity of speech leads their relationship to enact an “objectifying intervention” (Lacan, 1968b, p. 72): Elishama and Clay must stage the “sailor’s story” and make facts out of what they perceive to be “dis- concerting fiction.” To accomplish this task, they seek out Virginie and Povl.

Povl and Virginie’s evening together exists in the realm of the unrooted tongue, a world that corresponds only to itself. The intro- duction of the morning’s light invites the lie of this tongue. Although one might say of the rooted tongue, with its focus on authority and objectivity, that its truth rests on a denial of relational connectedness and denial of subjectivity, the unrooted tongue is also built on denial: the denial of the ”outside,” of realities independent of the relational system. Such an outside reality-which necessitates the creation of a new perspective-is what intrudes on Virginie and Povl with morn- ing and the dawning light.

Nevertheless, in their night together, Virginie and Povl ignore the world of Clay and ignore both the past and the future. The world outside their relationship ceases to exist; experience of the moment reigns. Within this context, Virginie becomes to Povl the “most beau- tiful girl in the world,” and Povl becomes the occasion for Virgmie hearing within herself the cradle songs of her mother.

Their relational experience, their shared reality, however satisfy- ing, cannot last. Another reality insists on being represented. Virginie, possessing knowledge not available to Povl, has a role ”beyond the moment” to play. As the light of day advances, Virginie dreads the introduction of the “outside.” To Povl, in his circumscribed experience of her, Virginie is a beautiful 17-year-old girl, someone never to be left. Virginie is gratified by this. She still longs for her youthful beauty, and she seeks the passion in her life that Povl has provided. Yet, she fears that daylight will reveal her face to be that of a deceiving “old powdered and rouged . . . wicked woman’s!” (p. 221).

The light of day in the story represents the reintroduction of the rooted tongue. The juxtaposition of the rooted tongue with the unrooted tongue created within Virginie and PovYs night together highlights

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how “truth” is always evolving. The tension between the tongues’ different versions of truth is what sustains the pursuit of new truths and keeps the process of wondering alive. If one speaks in two tongues, one can say that Virginie is beautiful and 17 and one can also say that she is something else. Unfortunately, Virginie fears that this “some- thing else’’ will be dreadful and is thus terrified to allow this other tongue to introduce itself, along with the morning, into her relation- ship with Povl. To preserve the beauty of their night experience, Vir- ginie offers no expanding perspective to Povl of his ”take” on who she is. Virginie, instead, acts to further sustain the coherence of their night; she asks Povl to remember that she is 17. Rather than confront both the truth and the denial that the night was built on, rather than allow the addition of a new and different tongue to speak in her relationship with Povl, Virginie becomes tongue-tied. She refuses to be a linguist and chains herself to one truth.

We hope it is clear that we are not suggesting that the unrooted tongue is without value or purpose. Far from it. In the denial of the world outside their relationship, Povl and Virginie are able to create a vibrant, living reality outside of the bidding of Clay. This unrooted truth can be as important as any rooted one.

Nonetheless, the richness of their experience together does not lead to new wondering, which the introduction of a different tongue might have given them. Instead, Virginie and Povl continue to speak only one tongue together, an unrooted one, and what then ensues is the lie of this tongue: the lie of relational totality with its consequen- tial “freezing” or fixing of truth. Their relational truth is not the total picture and never can be. Virginie’s ”know,” that she is playing a role for both Clay and Povl, is different from PovYs “know” that she is youth and beauty. The lie occurs at the intersection of his ”know” and her “know,” different ”knows” that can only be joined by the over- riding wish to find coherence and by the refusal to allow a new day‘s light to dawn.

In Lacanian terms, we might suggest, the relationship between Virginie and Povl exists within the “imaginary ~ r d e r . ” ~ Within this realm, desire is limited to the fantasy that completion of all inner feeling of lack or absence is found in the relationship to an-”other.”

31t is not possible to offer one best source from among Lacan’s writings to explain this concept or any of the others to which we refer in this article. Lacan is notorious for not writing in a linear fashion or for defining his terms. The interested reader should begin with reading Lacan’s books: Ecrits (1977) and The Four Fundamental Con- cepts of Psychoanalysis (1978). A very good secondary source is Malcolm Bowie’s book, Lacan (1991).

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Lacan referred to this "other" with a small "o." This state of self- referential totality, however, cannot remain unintruded on; the unre- lenting dawning light of another reality presses on the coherence of this union. Virginie struggles to remain in this state for she fears the relationship will dissolve with the recognition of another truth. She, in the parlance of Lacan, refuses "Other" (with a capital "0) which developmentally, according to Lacan, is ushered in by the introduc- tion of a third consciousness into the coherence of the relationship between the infant and the primary caretaker. Lacan referred to this "third as the "Name of the Father."

With Virginie's refusal of the "Name of the Father," words are now called on to fix and to capture their experience of the night. He promises he will name his boat after them, and she instructs him to look at her face one last time so as to remember always that she is 17.

What Virginie does not see with her refusal of "Otherness" is that the relationship created between her and Povl contains its own truth - o n e that could have remained even in the presence of the dawning light. The introduction of the Symbolic order would break the self- referential totality of the Imaginary. However, the Symbolic would not eclipse the existence of the Imaginary order but instead sit beside it, allowing the co-existence of both. Then, the relationship could have grown and developed into something new in the space created by the tension between the Symbolic and the Imaginary. This, however, would require that the two lovers recognize the entry of another truth and speak with a "dialectical tongue."

DIALECTICAL TONGUE AND THE TRUTH OF LIES

Lacan offered a third perspective (see Webb, Bushnell, & Widseth, 1993) on the issue of truth. He portrayed neither truth as a situation of "correspondence" (where there exists an "objective standpoint from which to determine what is true) nor "coherence" (where truth re- sides in what is constructed by language).

In contrast to the coherence view where language constructs the truth, in Lacan's thinking "the meanings we create through language are inevitably built upon misnamings, misrecognitions that we rely upon to create the illusion of understanding" (Ogden, 1992, p. 523). Put simply, "Truth" can never be captured in language. In a sense, one might say that the Lacanian truth is a situation of "noncorrespon- dence." As Lacan (1978) said, "All I can do is tell the truth. No, that isn't so-I have missed it. There is no truth that, in passing through awareness, does not lie. But one runs after it all the same" (p. vii).

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However, Lacan’s statement that truth, passing through language as it must always do, is a lie is a comment that must be recognized as relegating “lie” to a status different from the one conventionally understood. It is a lie that must be enclosed by quotation marks, because it is the lie that is a given of the human condition, not simply what is created as distinct from “truth.” In a sense, Lacads (quotation- mark-enclosed) “lie” is where the truth lives.

In contrast to the correspondence view, in Lacan’s theory the “truth,” a “real,” can never be known. Truth to Lacan exists but always is ultimately inaccessible. Therefore, all one can do is “chase after it.” Truth may be glimpsed or hinted at like a far-off, forgotten melody but never possessed. Lacan (1978) stated, ”The truth . . . is that which runs after truth” (p. 188).

Lacan was not simply putting humanity on a treadmill to chase after that which can never be reached. Instead, he argued that the “real,” the truth outside of the intersubjective context, can only be approached dialogically, in an intersubjective context. This truth can never be fixed or stated “objectively”; it cannot be reified or owned. Truth is only glimpsed through the process of searching for it. In a sense, truth may be thought of as two lovers lingering in eternal foreplay, never knowing that climax will always be just beyond their reach.

Lacan’s thinking offers little comfort to those who wish to dis- cover truth and hold on to it, possibly offering it to their clients in an effort to dispel “irrational” beliefs. Lacan’s thoughts also offer no shelter for those who wish to abandon any journey toward truth and stay within a comfortable “coherence.” Yet, if one thinks this idea through further, one may discover that Lacan is giving a far greater gift. Lacan invites one to wonder whether there may not be some- thing liberating, some freedom contained in the idea that one can neither possess truth nor abandon the search for it.

What Lacan does is to suggest that in therapeutic work a lie is not a statement by one to another but rather a breakdown in the process of pursuing truth; it is a breakdown in ongoing speaking to other about ”Other,” Other being the always unrealizable real or truth that is beyond grasp. A lie is the failure, in the language of this article, to be a linguist, to be multitongued. It is the breakdown in what Lacan (1982) considered the essential feature of psychoanalysis, that of being “u diulectical experience” (p. 63, italics in original).

To Lacan, a lie occurs at the intersection or conjunction of two ”knows” whose “difference” cannot be tolerated. Referring to the Greek myth of Acteon and Artemis in speaking of his attempt to speak truth, Lacan (1978) wrote: “When I find the goddess’s hiding place, I will no

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doubt be changed into a stag, and you can devour me” (p. 188). Here, he suggests, if one thinks he or she has found the truth, found the goddess’s hiding place, then that is the beginning of the end, the moment of being changed into a stag that will be devoured.

Playing on this metaphor of Lacan’s and weaving in his sense of the dialectic involved in pursuing truth, we say that the lie occurs when either client or therapist fears the ongoing process of truth de- vouring itself and then being devoured by the next emergent truth. Appreciation of this process is why we think Bion (1977) used the dramatic words about fearing “psychological upheaval” or ”catastrophic change” when speaking of the moment of lying. Similarly, Adrienne Rich (1979) wrote: “The liar fears the void (p. 191).

In Lacan, one finds the seeds of many of the ideas with which those in the postmodern dialogue resonate. Truth is hinted at in the ongoing process of creating and deconstructing and creating again. With each shift of ground, new figures emerge. The client and the therapist continually risk the void throughout the process.

It may appear tempting to say then that one should note and categorize how one develops the “healthy or “functional” creations. In this way, we, as professionals, can “facilitate” the development of those “healthy” stories or constructions and plot the untimely death of those which we see as “problematic.” This tendency may be what Ken Gergen and John Kaye (1992) criticized when they wrote about the “modernist” tendencies inherent in many ostensibly “postmodern” dialogues. Truth is not to be found in the correctness or healthiness of what is co-created in therapy. Indeed, the determination of what is ”good” and ”bad” implies that the therapist holds some “objective standard against which the client’s construction is measured. Truth is found in the process of allowing new and different creations to emerge-however they take form-and allowing those creations to die and be reborn. In our therapeutic work then, the process of pursuing truth is what is sustained. We are not to determine which creation is the good and the bad but to allow all to emerge in their richness.

“The Immortal Story” is “immortal,” because it tells of a process of creation that is without end. With each dyad-Elishama and Clay, Virginie and Povl, and Povl in his final dialogue with Elishama-new truths are created. In the first two dyads Dinesen shows how new truths can both emerge and then become stuck when curiosity is curtailed and ”not knowing” is frightened off. Her endorsement of the elusiveness of truth and yet the importance of the ongoing pursuit of it through wondering is seen in the last dyad where Elishama inter- views Povl in the morning after seeing Clay peacefully asleep. Elishama,

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still tied to his rooted tongue, expects that the ”attestation” of the victory of factual truth is forthcoming. He comments to Povl: “Now you can tell the story . . . the whole story” (emphasis added, p. 228). Elishama is now taken with Povl’s “curious capability of collecting . . . his great strength, and of turning it toward the person with whom he spoke, like some threatening, like some formidable weight, which might well make the other feel in danger of his life” (p. 228). Whereas Elishama is not actually frightened, Dinesen tells us he was ”stirred.” We might wonder if Dinesen is hinting here of a transformation that Elishama has undergone, perhaps a transformation similar to that of Acteon to a stag. One stag, one truth, is about to die to make room for another and another and another.

Povl now gives to Elishama the gift of the shell for Virginie. Elishama lifts the shell to his ear as Povl had. Elishama takes on the “attentive, peaceful look” (p. 230) that Povl had had when he listened to it, and as he, Elishama, listens to it he also experiences a ”strange, gentle, profound shock, from the sound of a new voice in the house, and in the story” (p. 231). Elishama ends the story saying, “I have heard it before . . . long ago . . . But where?” (p. 231). Elishama cannot make what he hears “correspond with anything he can put in words, but it is somehow familiar. Perhaps there is a truth to Isaiah that is not factual or understandable yet somehow recognizable. He may be hearing the faded, dusty melody of a truth.

Adrienne Rich is fittingly evocative as an ending to our com- ments. She wrote (1979):

We begin out of the void, out of darkness and emptiness. It is part of the cycle understood by the old pagan religions, that materialism denies. Out of death, rebirth; out of nothing, something. The void is the creatrix, the matrix . . . if we can risk it [not lie], the something born of that nothing is the beginning of our truth. (p. 191)

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