“Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire” by Anna Solomon in New York Times raises the question of why someone would have a history of lying since childhood.

Anna Solomon says she has been a liar since childhood, but now limits her lying to her work as a novelist:

“When I was a kid…I told flat-out lies, and I told them with some frequency…But I knew I was lying. And I seemed to be getting better at it…So now I have a problem. And now you know: I’ve still got the instincts of a liar. The difference, I like to think, is that I’m in control of those instincts now. I’ve become a novelist, which is to say I make up people and worlds and describe them in such detail that my bunk and fudges become believable” (1).

But is she telling the truth about her history of lying? In what sense did she always know when she was lying? For if she had always known it, and she had childishly lied simply to gain some minor advantage, but she is now grown up, why is she still concerned that her lying could get out of control and that it needs to be channeled into her writing?

Maybe she had known she had lied, not because she could always remember what had happened or what she had said, but because she was highly intelligent and could usually infer the truth from circumstantial evidence. This might be the case if, like many other novelists, she had a normal version of multiple personality. To quote a textbook on multiple personality:

“Adult multiples will often recount that they acquired a reputation as liars in childhood…Multiples are perceived by other people as lying when they deny doing things that they were seen to do. In most instances, this is because the personality that is denying the behavior is amnesic for the actions of another personality who actually performed the action” (2, pp. 78-79).

Another scenario is that the lie is a fantasy that is sincerely believed in as being true by one of the alternate personalities. But the regular personality always knows that the fantasy is not true. However, since the regular personality is not aware of the existence of the alternate personality, and does not remember what the alternate personality has done or said, the regular personality believes that she, herself, must be a liar.

A third scenario is that an alternate personality tells lies as a prank to cause the regular personality embarrassment. [added 7:27 pm]

Search “lying” in this blog for previous posts about other novelists.

1. Anna Solomon. “Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire.” New York Times, October 19, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/books/review/writer-writer-pants-on-fire.html

2. Frank W. Putnam MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.