I did something very dumb in my life and I'm writing this book so others will read it-and won't repeat it. Our family enjoyed a happily married life. We shared unconditional love. But to keep earning that love from his son, his father became obsessed and met his every want. He became spoiled, grew greedy, then slipped into dishonesty. Our son spent the rest of his days taking advantage of our kindness, benevolence, and wealth. It destroyed our family and our loving marriage. The result has been (perhaps deservedly) an old age of poverty. Here is my memoir of that life. Mae Cardinal
"I speak the truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare...."-- Montaigne "All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.'" -- Tennessee Williams Truth and deception--like good and evil--have long been viewed as diametrically opposed and unreconcilable. Yet, few people can honestly claim they never lie. In fact, deception is practiced habitually in day-to-day life--from the polite compliment that doesn't accurately relay one's true feelings, to self-deception about one's own motivations. What fuels the need for people to intricately construct lies and illusions about their own lives? If deceptions are unconscious, does it mean that we are not responsible for their consequences? Why does self-deception or the need for illusion make us feel uncomfortable? Taking into account the sheer ubiquity and ordinariness of deception, this interdisciplinary work moves away from the cut-and-dried notion of duplicity as evil and illuminates the ways in which deception can also be understood as a adaptive response to the demands of living with others. The book articulates the boundaries between unethical and adaptive deception demonstrating how some lies serve socially approved goals, while others provoke distrust and condemnation. Throughout, the volume focuses on the range of emotions--from feelings of shame, fear, or envy, to those of concern and compassion--that motivate our desire to deceive ourselves and others. Providing an interdisciplinary exploration of the widespread phenomenon of lying and deception, this volume promotes a more fully integrated understanding of how people function in their everyday lives. Case illustrations, humor and wit, concrete examples, and even a mock television sitcom script bring the ideas to life for clinical practitioners, behavioral scientists, and philosophers, and for students in these realms.
Duke Wolff was a flawless specimen of the American clubman -- a product of Yale and the OSS, a one-time fighter pilot turned aviation engineer. Duke Wolff was a failure who flunked out of a series of undistinguished schools, was passed up for military service, and supported himself with desperately improvised scams, exploiting employers, wives, and, finally, his own son. In The Duke of Deception, Geoffrey Wolff unravels the enigma of this Gatsbyesque figure, a bad man who somehow was also a very good father, an inveterate liar who falsified everything but love.
Explores the author's theorized evolutionary basis for self-deception, which he says is tied to group conflict, courtship, neurophysiology, and immunology, but can be negated by awareness of it and its results.
In the fourth novel of Delany's acclaimed series, Jessica and Rusakovas are fighting to overcome one of their biggest challenges yet--the possibility of a cure for lycanthropy.
A year and a half after the horrific Masonville High mass shooting, Owen is determined to uncover why the Creepers have converged on his land and the school--a necessary step toward his ultimate mission to drive evil forces out of Masonville.
This book considers the role of deception during adolescence, and explores the factors which underpin adolescents’ choice to deceive, whether these deceptions will be successful, and the ways in which such lies could be detected. While deception is considered to be antisocial or even pathological in some circumstances, the central argument of this book is that lying can be a skilled behaviour which is necessary to allow adolescents to establish autonomy. Deception builds on the recent influential developmental challenge model (Hendry and Kloep, 2002, 2009), exploring how it can provide a useful explanatory framework for the development of the skill of deception in adolescence. Interpersonal and forensic settings for deceptive behaviour are referred to, and illustrated with reference to both published research and new data obtained from a variety of different interviews and focus groups with young people. It also considers how the choice to communicate truthfully is as important as the choice to communicate deceptively in illuminating the developmental process. It concludes with a discussion of how adolescents’ deceptions could be detected and presents a range of strategies to maximize the effectiveness of interpersonal interactions with suspected deceivers. By considering everyday, forensic and clinical deception situations, this book is ideal for academic researchers, practitioners working with children and young people, as well as parents. The observations, interviews and focus groups provide a unique insight into the factors influencing young people’s communication choices, and integrate research from developmental, social and forensic psychology.
When Emma Vaile's parents leave on a mysterious business trip, it gives her the perfect excuse to be a rebellious teen. But then her best friend stops talking to her, the police crash her party and Emma finds herself in the hands of a new guardian, Bennett Stern, and on a plane to his museum-like mansion in New England. After enrolling at Thatcher Academy, Emma settles in by making friends with the popular crowd. She has memories of Thatcher she can't explain and strange visions are haunting her. Emma doesn't trust anyone any more - except maybe Bennett. But he's about to reveal a ghostly secret to her. One that will explain the visions . . . and make Emma fear for her life.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “One of George’s best . . . insightful, tense, and compassionate.”—Entertainment Weekly Balford-le-Nez is a dying seaside town on the coast of Essex. But when a member of the town’s small but growing Asian community is found murdered near its beach, the sleepy town ignites. Intrigued by the involvement of her London neighbor—Taymullah Azhar—in what appears to be a growing racial conflagration, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers arranges to have herself assigned to the investigation. Setting out on her own, this is one case Havers will have to solve without her longtime partner, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley— and it’s one of the toughest she’s ever encountered. For Havers must probe not only the mind of a murderer and her emotional response to a case unsettlingly close to her own heart, but also the terrible price people pay for deceiving others . . . and themselves. Praise for Deception on His Mind “So much fun to read, it’s criminal.”—Newsday “It’s tough to resist the pull of George’s storytelling once hooked.”—USA Today “Falls smartly into place in [George’s] literate, impassioned series, one of today’s best.”—Chicago Tribune “Fascinating . . . there are wrenching stories here, and George conveys them with exceptional grace.”—People
