Telling a lie to catch a lie

Post Reply New Topic

To me, if someone is using deceit to try and catch someone else in a lie, that makes you more untrustworthy than the person you are trying to catch. I honestly feel if a Psychiatrist or Psychologist/therapist does this they should have their license removed. This is manipulation, which is far worse than lying, IMO.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/let ... t-question

You don't distinguish between different types of lies?

I was referring to the example in the article of the movie theater incident, but I have a sister who does that with her BF. She is convinced her bF is cheating on her so she tells him things that I know are not true trying to bait him into exposing some untruth he has fed to her. I watched their relationship come completely unraveled because of this behavior.

Personally, I don't think any lie is necessary, but most especially lying to and misleading a child to expose a lie they have told, or a suspected lie.

I don't think adult human beings should knowingly be involved in the practice of deception and manipulation.

I still don't understand if you do or don't distinguish between different types of lies. I think that intent matters.

I don't think that they type of lie described in the article matches what your sister does, primarily because the article makes clear that you can only use that tactic on rare occasions. Society holds parents responsible for what their children do, and parents trying to discover what children do only makes sense. Children hiding things from their parents helps them develop valuable skills, too.

Any sufficiently robust system of rules will contain inconsistencies, and no non-trivial system of rules can achieve perfection. Keep that in mind before you give in to black and white thinking.

I understand what you are saying. I have no children and do not interact with any of my siblings grandchildren so I have no background from which to formulate and informed response. I am only familiar with adult deceit and manipulation.