The Anatomy of a Lie: The Truth About Lies and Why Good People Tell Them Explores Public and Private Motives

Long before the “Starr Report” and alleged presidential perjury were the topic of the day, Yale pediatric oncologist Dr. Diane Komp decided to explore the issue of lying: why people do it and whether lies are ever justified. Her just-published book on that topic, “The Anatomy of a Lie: The Truth About Lies and Why Good People Tell Them,” makes only one small mention of President Bill Clinton and the “Lewinsky affair,” yet the fact that the book’s release coincides with the release of Ken Starr’s report couldn’t be more appropriate, says its author.

While Americans and their political leaders debate the proper course of action regarding their president, they would also do well to examine their own truthfulness in their daily lives, says Komp, who invites her readers to do just that in “The Anatomy of a Lie.”

It was her own soul-searching, in fact, which inspired Komp to write her book, which was published by Zondervan, a HarperCollins imprint. She began to examine her personal standards of honesty after she came upon a memoir by American Civil War veteran H. Clay Trumbull titled “A Lie Never Justifiable.” In the work, Trumbull, a Yankee chaplain, describes his inability to lie to his Confederate captors in order to win his freedom, saying that while he could justify killing his enemy on a battlefield, he could not tell an enemy a lie. In fact, claimed Trumbull, no lie is ever justified.

Somewhat perplexed by Trumbull’s reasoning, Komp began to question whether there are, at times, good reasons for lying. While she examined examples of other people’s dishonesty, the Yale physician also kept track of her own “white lies” in a journal.

While doing so, Komp couldn’t help thinking about the paradox that, while the world condemns dishonesty in our political leaders, police officers, doctors and others in whom we expect to have trust, many of us pay little heed to the impact of our own falsehoods.

“I began to wonder about the possibility that my own seemingly harmless white lies had an impact on the world, that maybe, instead of there being a trickle-down effect when people in exalted positions or in public life lie, there is a trickle-up effect,” Komp explained in a recent interview. “In other words, maybe the cultural trend in lying begins with those of us who are not in positions of power, rather than the other way around. Maybe the ‘trivial’ lies that most of us tell without any real pricks on our conscience do matter.”

Komp wrote the book, she says, for the “average person” as a way to provoke thought about this issue. “I am not a professional ethicist,” emphasizes the Yale physician, “and I didn’t write the book to point fingers. I wrote it as a way to be honest with myself about my own conduct, and as invitation to others to do the same.”

The work is the oncologist’s fifth book; three of her earlier books have dealt with the subject of children who have cancer and have been reissued as a series titled “Children Are Images of Grace: A Pediatrician’s Trilogy of Faith, Hope and Love.” Her fourth work, “Breakfast for the Heart,” is a daily inspirational book.

In “The Anatomy of a Lie,” Komp outlines several reasons why people tell lies: to protect themselves from punishment or embarrassment, to protect their own fantasies about themselves, and to protect the feelings – or, in extreme cases, the lives – of others Regardless of the purpose, “the desire to assume control over another human heart is the basis of most human lies,” the physician writes in her book.

Komp notes that the most common kind of lies people tell are much like some of the untruths that she herself has told and which she recounts in her book. She recalls the time that, in her haste to catch an overseas flight, she told a kennel worker that her dog was vaccinated when it was not, and of the time she was not entirely forthright with the mother of one of her young patients. To spare the mother the bad news that her son’s cancer treatment had no positive effect, she instead passed on only the “good news,” that her son’s tumor had not grown.

These admittedly human lies nonetheless preyed on her own conscience, notes Komp, who says that her own Christian faith demands greater honesty. Yet, she says in “The Anatomy of a Lie,” she believes there is a middle ground between those who, like Trumbull, claim that a lie is never justified, and those who practice “situational ethics,” who believe that lies that are motivated by love or compassion are harmless.

“I…believe that there is no such thing as a lie that is only a private matter. When we lie, we always lie to someone or about someone, so every lie has the potential to hurt another person,” says Komp.

It is for this reason that the Yale physician questions Clinton’s invocation of privacy in regards to the Lewinsky scandal, she says. “Clinton’s lie about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky has impacted much more than his own life or that of his family,” she comments. “It’s also affected the stock market and brought Congress to a screeching halt. And concerns about his leadership have international repercussions.”

Clinton might have been able to divert the crisis, she says, if he had said from the beginning that his sex life was a private matter and that he would refuse to comment on it. “One of the things that really struck me was that when Clinton wagged his finger at us and said ‘I did not have an improper relationship with that woman,’ the way his body language and words worked together suggested that he was telling the truth,” comments Komp. “But in his Aug. 17 speech, when he revealed the truth, his body language was like that of someone lying. He was far more nervous and shifty-eyed. I couldn’t help but think that this is a man who is more uncomfortable telling the truth than when he is lying.”

Komp, who recently discussed her new book on the NBC-TV “Today Show,” says she is less concerned about the President’s admitted dishonesty than she is about the public’s reaction to it. “I have felt enormous dismay about the fact that the public essentially expects that its leaders will lie, that people responded initially by saying ‘everybody lies,’” Komp says. “It only confirmed for me that there is no moral leadership from the grassroots up.”

She adds, “My hope is that, as we work our way through this, we will someday be able to have faith in the words of our leaders. Perhaps all of our reflection on it will cause us to begin speaking the truth ourselves.”