Deceit and Its Meaning

Abstract

When a clinician’s encounter with deception is successfully reconceptualized, every evasion and falsehood undertaken by a patient become an additional point of data through which a deeper and more complete understanding of the patient can be achieved. A clinician wishing to explore patient experience at this level must be curious, supportive, and receptive to self-experience. It is essential for the clinician to clarify emotions and motivational impulses that, if unperceived, may drive non-neutral behavior on the clinician’s part. In contrast to the practice of psychodynamic psychotherapy, an assessment process of this kind takes place in the absence of a clearly defined treatment frame, and in a setting in which the emotional dynamic of the encounter may shift on a moment-to-moment basis, meaning that process of exploring “meaning” must be spontaneous, playful, and provisional. Through such a process, a path to meaning may be traversed.