Book Review: A Necessary Pain in the Heart

Abstract

Reviews the book, Why we lie: The evolutionary roots of deception and the unconscious mind by David Livingstone Smith (2004). David Livingstone Smith's book, sets out to achieve an adaptationist decomposition of at least one aspect of our unconscious psychology; that which delivers/underlies social manipulation. The first half of the book is an introduction to evolutionary psychology and to theories of deception and self-deception. It is from this half that the book gains its title. For those well versed in evolutionary approaches to the behavioural sciences this can be skipped: however, for those who are not, its light touch and pace will bring them rapidly to a point Smith's core thesis can be digested. Although the book is well written and engaging, it is not entirely clear how to relate the discussions of deception with the discussion of unconscious influences on our narratives. One possible link is through the discussion of self-deception, in which Smith outlines the familiar argument that the best way to deceive others is by deceiving ourselves. In this way we are so certain of the untruth that we will not give away any 'tells' that might undermine the necessary deception. Such an idea is clearly an aspect of the relationship between personal- and sub-personal-level interactions; but functionally this is quite distinct from the indirect signalling functions of our narratives. At most, all that can be said is that both deception and indirect signalling are about social manipulation, but this is too coarse-grained analysis to yield a useful evolutionary psychology. Instead it seems that Smith has discussed two aspects of the evolutionary Freudian project. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)