No such thing?

I remember the sensation of surprise and disbelief when my otherwise quite capable English teacher returned to me one of my papers with the remark, “There is no such thing as self-deception!”

In one respect she was, of course, right since the word ‘self-deception’ does not exist in English, but that wasn’t her point.

I had translated the German concept of a so-called ‘life-lie’ (Lebenslüge), as ‘self-deception’ in an effort to describe the human tendency to protect one’s peace of mind in the face of adversity.

My teacher insisted, however, that the word self-deception was illogical because it implies a subject and an object in the same person.

Maybe I would have faired better had I proffered more sophisticated terminology like “delusional disorder” borrowed from the abundant chest of treasures of the human psyche. But I wasn’t looking for the extraordinary. In fact, I was trying to describe a very ordinary state of mind.

In post-Nazi Germany one very common ‘Lebenslüge’ was, “I didn’t know that my neighbor was killed by the Nazis, I just took over his store.”

‘Lebenslügen’ can be inconsequential but sometimes they are outright criminal. Either way they are adopted to avoid unpleasant truths. They make one’s life a little easier. They are a common coping mechanism. But like all lies, they usually come back to haunt us in the end.

To this day, I find that English is just a tad bit poorer (and maybe less honest) for its inability to provide or simply adopt a term like ‘Lebenslüge’.

A person can be self-delusional or she can be in denial but neither expression captures the subtle as well as sinister state of mind implied in the German word ‘Lebenslüge’.

But then, language always changes and so do cultures. ‘Schadenfreude’, a German term describing an equally unattractive human quality (i.e., the rejoicing in someone else’s misfortune), has made it into English almost unscathed.

‘Lebenslüge’ should be a close runner-up. After all, just take a look around, it’s everywhere in this best of all possible worlds.