Buzz, Balls & Hype : The Doctor is In

May 11, 2006

The Doctor is In

Every Friday I turn my blog into a couch and invite Dr. Sue to offer up some writerly therapy. If you have questions for her, please write her at Dr.Sue at Mindspring.com. And also, when you have a chance, please check out Julia London’s backstory on Backstory. MJR

I occasionally give workshops and seminars in my Brooklyn Heights office on topics of interest to writers. If you would like to be notified about upcoming events, email me at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com.

PERSONAL REVELATIONS ON MEMORY, CREATIVITY, AND LYING

No, MJ is not converting her blog into a supermarket tabloid. I just think there is more to say about the topic of truth in autobiographical writing, and judging from my email, others do, too. In keeping with the topic, I think the place to start is with myself. (Plus, I wanted to get your attention.)

I had hoped that last week’s column would spark a discussion in the comments section. A few writers did leave terrific comments, but others have chosen to email me privately to chide me for, on the one hand, encouraging and enabling liars, and, on the other, naiveté or willful ignorance of the nuances of artistic composition.

I realize that coming out publicly on either side of the question of truth in memoirs (and, yes, I do understand that there is more than one “side” and that such classification is an example of the worst kind of dichotomous thinking, thank you) can put a writer at some peril. If you defend creative license, you risk being labeled a “Frey,” and if you take too hard a line against bending the truth, your own essays are vulnerable to uncomfortable scrutiny. I would remind you, though, that you have the option of posting anonymously or under a pseudonym.

Of course I have both of the concerns described above. I have published several essays, and if it were possible to compare them to a videotape of the actual events, I’m sure that major discrepancies would surface. As I mentioned last week, my brother remembers an incident in one essay as having occurred in a completely different way. He has convinced me that if one “right” version exists, well, it isn’t mine—at least as far as the chronology is concerned. Was I “lying” when I wrote it? Without doubt, my memory was influenced by my conception of the conflict I was attempting to capture, and by my desire to tell an engaging story. Is that lying?

If so, we all lie, nearly all the time—social lies, CYA lies, make-a-better-story lies. In order to be coherent at all, we must edit out extraneous information. Otherwise, we would have to include every stray thought or remark, every ring of the telephone, every trip to the bathroom. And it’s natural that while we’re editing anyway, we tend to construe “extraneous” as meaning “that which contradicts the point I’m trying to make.” We deny having noticed that our friend’s hair is falling out, or that our attention wandered while he was relating the story of his grandmother’s death. We assure our supervisor that we are on top of projects we had completely forgotten about.

These lies, or distortions, are not comparable to, say, lies about WMDs, or military service, or any number of atrocities that the public is less worked up about than how much jail time James Frey actually put in. But does that mean they’re not important? If they don’t signify, then where is the boundary between a white lie and a seriously misleading essay?

I ask this in another capacity, as an enthusiastic consumer of memoirs and autobiographical essays. I live with a chronic autoimmune disorder with an uncertain prognosis. My husband has diabetes. Our son was recently diagnosed with ADD. Some of my clients have mood disorders; some have been sexually abused; and others have been political prisoners who survived or witnessed torture. Naturally I read as much medical and psychiatric literature about these issues as I can find and understand. But I rely on personal essays to comprehend, from the inside, how people actually learn to live with these conditions and their aftereffects; how they experience the struggles and pitfalls; what gives them hope. If the writers of these essays are fabricating in a significant way, they are betraying me, and others like me, who look to them for inspiration and guidance. And why should I apply a different standard to my own essays?

But not only is the truth elusive, our understanding of it changes. Sometimes the catalyst for transformation is the act of writing itself, but at other times the revelation comes on reading the finished product in print, when it dawns on us that what we described as (and believed to be) our loving and accepting response to a partner’s transgression was actually fraught with masked fury that anyone could see but us; that the nostalgia-laced reminiscence of Dad waltzing into the dining room with our fifth birthday cake omitted the next scene, the one where he staggers drunkenly and drops the cake facedown on the floor; that we delivered the stinging, deserved comeuppance to the class bully only in our imagination and memory. There is nothing to do about these awful moments except learn from them and go on. We did the best we could, in the moment of the telling, and that is all anyone can ask.

So I think that, while we should expect honesty from memoirists, and demand it of ourselves, we need to cut everyone some slack. We need to recognize “the Truth” as an ideal we aspire to, even as we let ourselves and others off the hook for mistakes of omission, commission, and even self-aggrandizement. We are, after all, writers and readers because we are human, and these are very human flaws. But, as humans, we also strive to better ourselves and our efforts.

I am a psychologist, not an ethicist. My skills are in raising questions and delineating their gray areas, not in answering them definitively. I know that others have more forceful and definite opinions, because I’ve been hearing them. Please have at it. Don’t give me the last word.

Susan O’Doherty, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself, she specializes in issues affecting writers. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com.

May 11, 2006 9:05:26 PM

26 Comments

Dear Sue: The original question put to you was framed in the context of a person who made it clear she was lying in the writing of her essays:

"every time I sit down to write a personal essay I find myself being untruthful in large or small ways. Maybe this doesn't matter to readers, if my essay is interesting and serves the purpose at hand, and is essentially based on true things, but to me it feels wrong."

Her question to you was: "How can I either learn how to stay on the truthful path or get more comfortable when I veer off into the underbrush of creative, very creative, nonfiction?"

I don't hear any indication of the kinds of things you mentioned above. I hear someone asking for help on how to tell the truth when she KNOWS she is having a lot of trouble doing it and doesn't feel good about it.

I don't hear her saying that she has trouble remembering an incident clearly nor do I hear her saying that her own need to color things more postively has made her unaware that that is what she is doing.

I don't hear this being a "white" lie to protect a friend from the brutal truth, nor do I hear it being a matter of minor omissions of each and every detail in the recalling of a personal story.

The realm you are speaking of in your comments above seems to be the shadowy domaine between conscious and unconscious motivation--and how we may "forget" or repress an unpleasant event or detail because it is too painful to tell ourselves the truth. Again, this is not really what the issue is, as I read it, with the questioner at hand.

Since, like you, I work with people everday telling me stories with various degrees of "faking good" or "faking bad" involved, I certainly understand and appreciate your concern with the grey, murky area where we are not quite sure what is truthful and what isn't.

I think where you point to something important is (in my words) the everyday narratives we all tell ourselves about ourselves and our world to help make sense of it and make our way in it--and how our ego, needs, defenses, biases, and inner conflicts create narratives that we can live with but that might not always have much to do with the "objective" truth if it were played back for us in the video we watch when we are in Judgement City and forced to defend our actions.

For me, the crucial issue posed by the questioner was the full, conscious awareness of lying and how to deal with it. And, despite the fact that it might make for a "more interesting" essay, I come down squarely on the side of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth when one is engaged in essay writing. I do not want to support giving "creative license" when there exists a conscious, purposeful and morally uncomfortable awareness of lying.

Posted by: Steven Hendlin, Ph.D. | May 12, 2006 at 03:23 AM

Steve, thanks for your comment. I believe I did address the writer's question in my initial answer: The writer felt wrong because what she was doing--consciously altering the truth to make a better story--is, indeed, wrong. My advice was Be as truthful as you can, and if you find yourself veering from the truth in significant ways, decline the essay and write the story as fiction. I don't see how this could be clearer. However, as any writer can tell you, the process of essay writing is fraught with small artistic decisions that can cross over into ethical ones in confusing ways.

Today's column is a response to the email I've received more than to the initial question. Thanks for helping me to clarify that.

Posted by: Dr.Sue | May 12, 2006 at 07:51 AM

Steve, I think that the original writer of the letter might have brought up a broader issue than the issue of "telling the absolute truth" vs lying, and an issue that more directly relates to the particular climate we, as writers, are living in. That is: a growing culture of melodramatic confessional talk shows which seem to reward writers for stretching embellishing, and often quite ruthlessly spilling out very personal information, quite knowingly aware of whom it may hurt in real life. Frey, caught at it, has thrown us all into a rthinking of our culture, made us painfully cognizant of where this culture is taking us, as artists, as writers, and as people. I think, Sue was pointing out quite lucidly how murky the area between creating (in a craft-sense) an excellent essay for a public now being weaned on such talk shows and sensibilities and staying true to "facts" which is in itself a very complex balance of ethics, actual and immediate certainty in a personal whirlwind of thoughts, impressions and guesses, and just being a good, compelling writer. This balance has become very difficult for the writer these days. Facing questions both artistic and moral. How to write when embellishment, soap opera simplicity, and fake certainty seem to be the norm? On top of this, what is the truth anyway? As history has shown us, truth is often in the eye of the beholder So how does each writer face this responsiblity? This seems to be an important question, one well worth airing. A question not of knowing the moral difference in telling a lie and the "truth" but in making writerly choices when our world is cast in such blaring hype by so many sources. It was clear the original letter writer was battling her conscience, but Sue was focusing on this broader issue, this darker question. And it's an important question to make us all think about.

Posted by: Leora Skolkin Smith | May 12, 2006 at 10:33 AM

Leora, thank you. I knew that more experienced writers would be able to articulate this issue, and you have done it magnificently.

Posted by: Dr.Sue | May 12, 2006 at 10:46 AM

I agree--there is no question the culture rewards us for “stretching” the truth until it damn near shatters into a million little pieces.

Perhaps the difference in our views is that I write primarily non-fiction and have not found it all that difficult to stay clear on when I’m telling the truth “as I know it” and when I’m creating a fanciful story.

I never said that grappling with how much one wishes to bend the truth in service of capturing the lickety-split attention span of the Dr. Phil nightly confessional crowd is not worthy of discussion. I agree with you that it is.

Believe me, I have been part of the academic/professional, journalistic, popular magazine, and major trade publishing worlds long enough to understand the pressures faced by writers of all kinds not to get lost in the fray.

I so understand that publishers are desperate to get their share of a shrinking market, as they lose ground to all the other forms of entertainment media that are more intense, immediate, and often more compelling than even the million little lies that Frey foisted on his unsuspecting drug recovery population of readers—along with all those looking for a tale of woe and redemption to give them hope.

I mean, howya gonna compete with the adrenaline rush of watching a “Mission Impossible” ?

I also understand the temptations of writers at all levels to embellish in order to keep pace with the growing sense that nothing is too far out, too wild, too gross or too bizarre as long as it gets us that publishing contract and a juicy advance.

Thanks for your response.

Posted by: Steven Hendlin, Ph.D. | May 12, 2006 at 12:00 PM

Thanks, too, Steve. All important points to remember, I agree.

Posted by: Leora Skolkin Smith | May 12, 2006 at 02:20 PM

I am again struck by the way you, Steve, call the writer of the original letter a liar and are quick to characterize writing that he or she described as "essentially based on true things" as lying.

I am a novelist and an occasional writer of personal essays. The difference between these two kinds of writing I do feels very small to me, and emotional authenticity is to me a far more significant kind of truth-telling than is the kind of testifying under oath truth telling that you would seem to require of anyone writing a personal essay or memoir.

Posted by: Katharine Weber | May 12, 2006 at 09:14 PM

Paleeeze, Ms. Weber, lying is lying--its not all that tough to use this label when the writer herself said that's what she was doing!

As far as your statment,
"emotional authenticity is to me a far more significant kind of truth-telling than is the kind of testifying under oath truth telling that you would seem to require of anyone writing a personal essay or memoir."

Well, that sounds like the exact same rationalization (read: excuse) Oprah used to initially justify her support of the psychopathic liar Frey, who now confesses that he also faked his next book. Big surprise.

And it's the same rationalization that Frey himself used to justify his "as I know it" version of the truth.

You want to write "truth-as-I know-it emotional authenticity" ? Fine. That's why they call it fiction. But when your personal essays end up not feeling much different than your fiction, it may be because "emotional authenticity" ain't the best criterion to be using when you're trying to tell the truth.

The Buddhists have a little precept they call "Right Speech." It doesn't say "speak and write what feels emotionally authentic to you." It says, "tell the truth."

I'll tell my truth, you tell yours.

Just make sure when the Judgement City jury reviews your "emotional authenticity" justification when you're before them arguing to move on to the next level, like Meryl Streep, you end up in the nice hotel with the chocolates on the pillow.

Posted by: Steven Hendlin, Ph.D. | May 13, 2006 at 09:52 AM

God what a load of crap! What Frey did was very wrong, despicable and disgusting, and that case has never for one second been about about fiction versus nonfiction. The Frey mess is entirely about honesty versus dishonesty.

I have no idea what sort of extra special high moral authority you possess that allows you to read the minds of others, know so well what authorial intention is, and be so utterly certain that lines have been crossed of which you do not approve (but when this happens you threaten writers accordingly, with ultimate judgments) -- but your sanctimonious wisdom and instructions are duly noted.

Posted by: Katharine Weber | May 13, 2006 at 11:13 AM

did I call what you wrote "crap"? why do you feel the need to call names? I tried to be respectful of your thinking and simply told you that emotional authenticity is no substitute for the truth--this is not such a radical notion and not deserving of name calling.

Do you know what I'm refering to with Judgement City? You do realize this is a comedy, a movie I'm talking about, right? Where is your sense of humor?

Did I personally attack you by what I wrote? Against my better judegement and only because you found it necessary to dangle your bait a second time, did I respond to you at all.

Using the reference to a movie was my way to make a point in a humorous way...Go watch Defending Your Life and maybe you won't be so angry.

This discussion with you is now over. And thank you for reminding me why I usually refrain from getting into blog dialogue posts with strangers. I'm sure you'll want the Last Word, so go ahead and have it. Perhaps your "emotional authenticity" will require calling me more names.

Have a nice day, Ms. Weber, but you''ll have to excuse me, as I've got to go jump on my High Horse now and Read Some Minds and Dispense Sanctimonious Wisdom.

Posted by: Steven Hendlin, Ph.D. | May 13, 2006 at 11:53 AM

Steve, I'm confused. Are you saying that writers who stray from the truth are going to hell? How do you know this?

I do understand that you are an experienced nonfiction/self-help writer. Personal essays, though, are a different animal. They are expected to carry the emotional and artistic weight of the best short stories, yet never to deviate from the truth. That is a very difficult task, and one that probably even the most accomplshed memoirists have not achieved. Everyone else struggles. The letter writer was detailing her struggles, asking for help, and opening the door to a larger discussion. I don't see where judgment and condemnation are appropriate or helpful.

Posted by: Dr.Sue | May 13, 2006 at 12:04 PM

Yes, Sue, that's it, now you've go it! ALL LYING WRITERS ARE GOING TO HELL!!

How do I know this? Because I've already been there in my last life, and, as I best as I can remember it (and I'm doing my best to preserve my emotional authenticity here) there's this special room. The door leading in says:
**RESERVED FOR WRITERS WHO LIE**

Inside, over in one area are lying writers having a bar-b-que with George Bush, who has returned to his youthful ways, and is now heavily drinking again...Laura Bush is making pot deals over in the corner, and lying writers of all stripes are forced to read and re-read Sartre's "Being and Nothingness."

In another corner, some lying writers are strapped in and forced to view a 64 inch high definition LCD monitor with Dolby stereo and-- here's the good part>> whatever their most hated film is, that's what each lying writer sees on the screen! For 10 days they must watch this movie!

Then, if that's not enough torture, all lying writers are again strapped in their chairs and forced to watch the re-make of The Poseidon Adventure with the sound turned like really loud!

Following three days of this, all lying writers are then forced to listen to a special lecture series, entitled "May You Frey in Hell" on the differences between writing for the silver screen versus memoirs and personal essays.

But, you know, like the really bad part is that you never get to fall asleep, it feels like some sort of Twilight Zone episode, where all kinds of ugly hallucinations keep popping up before you and everyone you look at his just so freakin' ugly!
Kinda like a really bad acid trip that just never ends, you know?

But the part I remember being the worst about it was that every lying writer was forced to see his or her name mis-spelled on the cover of their previous publications and all they did was laugh at you when you told them it was wrong! This seemed even worse for them to handle than having to walk over the like really hot coals--coals that they were being raked over because they were LYING WRITERS IN HELL!!!

(soon to be published as a seething memoir by Simon and Schmooster)

Posted by: Steven Hendlin, Ph.D. | May 13, 2006 at 01:02 PM

Wow. Do your patients have internet access?

Your hostility and contempt for writers, in all its myriad manifestations, is breathtaking.

Posted by: Katharine Weber | May 13, 2006 at 03:17 PM

Ah, now I understand why Katharine Weber posted on Readerville, asking others to join the "rather unusual" discussion over here - she was trying to summon the forum's flying monkeys to come to her aid. "Unusual" indeed.

Posted by: Mikey | May 13, 2006 at 10:57 PM

What I find utterly fascinating about this discussion is that exemplifies some of the issues at hand very nicely: Are people in this discussion embellishing or distorting what others have written? If so, is it deliberate (i.e., lying) or simply a difference in perspective? Truth is often slippery.

Posted by: Serafina | May 13, 2006 at 11:33 PM

Serafina,
Good point--although this discussion doesn't seem to be doing anything very "nicely."

When I begin writing an essay, usually there are parts that don't feel right--they may not be lies, but an easy gloss on something that bears further examination. When I probe those areas and try to confront what I've been avoiding, it always improves the essay.

There are different kinds of essays. Every part of an essay doesn't have to be literally true unless you are claiming it is--there are ways to incorporate fiction into an essay that clearly set it aside from fact. But exactly where you draw the line is not always easy to determine, because your reader may infer something that you did not mean to say.

It sounds to me as if the letter-writer knew she was crossing that line but, because there's a sense that "everybody does it," she wanted either support to resist it or encouragement to continue.

I didn't find anything inflammatory in Steve's original comment, but I think he's fallen into the danger of humor via email--it may not be read as such. Also, not that many people have seen that movie.

Posted by: Jennie | May 14, 2006 at 12:35 PM

Where did the letter writer say a word about "everybody does it"?

Posted by: Katharine Weber | May 14, 2006 at 12:54 PM

Steve, I'm not sure I understand how emotional authenticity as a barometer isn't a useful tool for sincere truth-telling. It does not imply embellishment or lying, or it wouldn't be emotionally authentic for the teller. It speaks to the problems inherent in delineating what is truth. And presents the issue with some greater complexity. I don't think Frey was at all emotionally authentic, he was anything but emotionally authentic. Perhaps the terms by which we are measuring what is true, what isn't are more complex and perhaps that's what was meant.

Posted by: Leora Skolkin Smith | May 14, 2006 at 02:16 PM

meant to add, Just for the sake of robust debate, here is the dictionary definition of "truth:
the quality of nearness to the true value" and "conformity to reality or actuality", so "emotional authenticity" could be a means by which one can approach facts which are not immediately able to be verified as facts, I think. And it is the opposite of what Frey did which was clearly just the opposite, he falsified, and neared only a false value...

Posted by: Leora Skolkin Smith | May 14, 2006 at 02:28 PM

Before I comment I want to make sure I understand.

Am I reading you right - Leora, Katharine? Are you saying that as long as you are emotionally authentic it's okay to bend the reality of the facts in the essay?

Posted by: MJ | May 14, 2006 at 07:48 PM

No, no. I'm not saying that, MJ. I'm saying that in the search within onself, since memory and other things can cloud and obscure what really happened, sometimes relying on one's emotional authenticity is a tool to get to a truth, a factual truth. There is no suggestion of "bending reality" in this assertion.

Posted by: Leora Skolkin Smith | May 14, 2006 at 08:36 PM

For example, let's say I was in a car accident twenty years ago and I'm writing an essay about the experience. I had been traumatized, the facts are distant from me, I could use what "feels" authentic as a barometer, what is emotionally true might get me closer to what actually happened-- it's better than a guess or an embellishment and it is not bending reality, Through sense memory and other working tools it might enable me to write more truthfully about something around which there was much trauma and therefore distortion,

Posted by: Leora Skolkin Smith | May 14, 2006 at 08:44 PM

I was once goaded into a schoolyard fight -- by the entire class. It was a ritual of the New Kid, and I was the New Kid. This was in Falls Church, Virginia, in about 1968 or thereabouts.

As soon as the resident strong kid/bully faced off with me, I let him take me down in about a second. I didn't intend to get physically hurt (4th grade!) in a ritual I didn't even understand.

Objectively, I lost the fight and that's the fact. About 30 witnesses -- if they ever recalled this -- might say, "Doug lost a fight to the reigning champ of 4th grade while we all formed a circle around them on the blacktop during recess."

My emotional truth -- and my memory of this -- are that I was bewildered. I did not want to hurt even the guy who wished to hurt me (weirdly, we became close friends right after this and played basketball together a lot.)

So I chose to let him win quickly so no harm was done. He grabbed my arm, twisted it behind my back, and I just dropped to the pavement and looked up at all my new classmates whose strange ritual was satisfied by this and it was over.

My ego was pretty strong in terms of not really giving a flyer if I was seen as a non-champ of the classroom. I knew -- from looking into the faces of my new classmates -- that they didn't see me as a person or even a kid. They saw me as the fresh meat of the schoolyard and they wanted to see if I was a threat to their "class" status or not.

And yet, this pushed me a bit further back into myself after a fairly traumatic move from one neighborhood to another, one school to another -- after some personal trauma that had occurred not eight or nine months earlier.

So to me, my truth was not necessarily the "fact." But it was truth, inside me. And there are no lies in this story.

Having said that, I did think Steve's jokes about the movie Defending Your Life were meant to lighten his storytelling -- and I suspect anyone who hasn't seen the movie would wonder what in heck he was talking about. But I know I'm probably Albert Brooks and not Meryl Streep.

I also think this is the problem of the personal essay. Is it the singular viewpoint of the essayist coloring the event or events with emotional depth and breadth, or is it the surface of objectivity -- what actually happened and could be observed by everyone in the room?

This certainly has kept me at times from writing publishable personal essays or memoirs, because I know there are three to three thousand ways to recount an experience or a memory.

I think these are the two poles of understanding experience: what happens, and what is experienced by an individual when something happens.

Cheers,

Doug

Posted by: Douglas Clegg | May 14, 2006 at 10:36 PM

I do not endorse deliberate distortions of facts in a piece of writing that is meant to be a memoir, which is to say, a personal narrative based on experience.

I do object vehemently to the condescending and sanctimonious tone with which Steven Hendlin, PhD, advice-giver to writers (and to other psychotherapist-writing advice columnists), first instructed Sue O'D to "nail" writers who stray from his absolute standards of truthtelling, and then labelled writing which may not match his standards for what he calls truth as "lying." The astonishing assumptions about motive and character don't help.

Posted by: katharine weber | May 15, 2006 at 02:34 AM

It's all about honesty in labeling, for me. When I buy food, I want what's in the package to be true to what's on the label. Same with reading material. If I pay for something as "fact" I want it to be fact. I'd have no problem with Frey if he'd marketed his book as a "fictionalized" account of his life. But "memoir" defines for me what the person actually experienced. I don't have a problem with a memoir exploring the kinds of deeper meanings inherent in fact that Douglas Clegg mentions (great story, by the way). But I want it to also be inherently honest.

Posted by: Barbara W. Klaser | May 16, 2006 at 04:35 PM

Posted by: JEROGatch | September 05, 2006 at 06:41 AM

The comments to this entry are closed.

Buzz, Balls & Hype

Because there are over 750,000 self-pubbed and 250,000 books published a year and they won't all get reviews in the NYTBR. Authored by M.J. Rose

May 11, 2006

The Doctor is In

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