The Impostor Anticipates the Truth of the Other

In this paper, we will elaborate on an article by Helene Deutsch on the psychology of the impostor. The impostor is a specific type of liar who imposes on others dishonest stories about his identity. From a psychoanalytic point of view, identity is by definition fraudulent as there is no real Self. But the impostor duplicates this fraud by presenting dishonest stories about personal attainments, position, or worldly possessions. Referring to Freud's text on 'Two lies told by children,' we will demonstrate that in the neurotic subject (a) the motive for lying is love, and (b) the purpose of lying is to deny symbolic castration in order to preserve an imaginary ideal. The impostor takes this one step further: here the motive is not love but admiration, and the purpose is not denial but disavowal of the symbolic castration. Finally, we will discuss the ambivalent relation of the public towards the impostor that seems all too willing to be deceived. In that sense, the lies of the impostor anticipate the Other's truth about castration.