The best way I’ve found yet to learn how to detect liars.
I watch Dr. Phil. Actually, I’ve followed him since he was first on Oprah. He’s certainly not perfect, and I don’t at all like some of the grand-standing he’s done. But like Oprah, he has done a tremendous service to people everywhere in de-mystifying therapy and the getting-help process.
What I have learned inadvertently from watching Dr. Phil is how to detect liars better. Phil is particularly good at seeing through crap and pinning liars to the wall. And watching him at it, day after day, has been like a graduate seminar in how not to fall for the ways liars usually evade detection.
The “best” of liars are entirely believable, and therefore the most dangerous. In mental health terms, they are character disordered. People who are character disordered are extremely hard for “the rest of us” to understand and detect. The short definition of character disorder that works for me is that “normal neurotics,” folks like most of us, feel too much responsibility and too much guilt. Those who are character disordered don’t feel enough responsibility or enough guilt. The jails are full of character disordered folks: they swear “I didn’t do it.” Higher functioning character disordered folks can do very well in professions like politics or sales. We normal neurotics do not have a natural understanding of the character disordered personality. We can’t understand how a person can do what a character disordered person does because it is so far out of our realm of gut-level understanding. Character disordered folks don’t feel guilt, or at least, not enough to stop them.
You can watch a character disordered guy in action on a recent Dr. Phil show. Fred Brito (the liar in question) is so good that it is worth buying the tape. The show was titled “Faking it?” and appeared on December 31, 2007. Fred Brito is so slick that even his appearance on the show was an attempted con, to sell books he hasn’t really written. Watch carefully to see a skilled liar in action, how he evades to avoid getting pinned down, tells partial truths to avoid telling the whole truth, denies a tiny part of a largely true accusation of misbehavior as if it was all false. Phil does pretty well keeping up with Fred, but you can ell that Fred simply doesn’t get Phil’s side of the discussion, he is so character disordered and convinced of his view of the world. Watch it. Watch it over and over. And if you can’t find this particular Dr. Phil show, then just Google “Fred Brito.” There’s plenty out there to see.
The show with Fred Brito is not the only example you can see by regularly watching. Phil has liars on almost every day, and they exhibit the same behaviors as Fred does, though usually less skillfully than Fred Brito. As you watch show after show, you will find yourself starting to easily pick up on the liar’s techniques.
For dramatic contrast, stay tuned for the second guest on the show with Fred: Linda. While Linda too is a con and deeply disturbed, she is not character disordered. She knows what she does is wrong, feels guilt, and wants to change. Far different than the way Fred presents. As crazy as Linda’s behavior is, you can feel some empathy for her.
Not Fred. People like Fred make the rest of us feel crazy. They are master manipulators. Watch Fred carefully to see how a facile liar puts one over.
