True stories about untrue stories people tell themselves

November 10, 2014 5:46 PM

There's a story in this week's TAL about a woman who was an alcoholic by the time she was 13, then successfully went sober and centered her life around her identity as an alcoholic, to the point of becoming a kind of AA mini-celebrity, only to realize after twenty years that the real story of her childhood had actually been completely different and she was never an alcoholic at all. I found this fascinating. Please point me to more true stories (podcasts, memoirs...) of people whose most basic beliefs about who they are turn out to be flat-out wrong.
posted by zeri to Human Relations (19 answers total)

See this article about Dave Pelzer (the author of, A Child Called 'It').
posted by alex1965 at 5:53 PM on November 10, 2014 [9 favorites]

I recently watched The Woman Who Wasn't There, about a woman who claimed to be a 9/11 survivor and widow. Spoiler in the movie title.
posted by i_am_a_fiesta at 5:57 PM on November 10, 2014 [4 favorites]

There is of course the Jack Nicholson one.
posted by rhizome at 6:03 PM on November 10, 2014

I never read any of the abuse-sploitation bestsellers by JT Leroy, and I still found this piece on the real author, Laura Albert, fascinating.
posted by Juliet Banana at 6:13 PM on November 10, 2014 [3 favorites]

This American Life has a whole show from 2000 on Hoaxing yourself. Synopsis: "Stories of people who tell a lie and then believe the lie more than anyone else does. In other words: Stories about people pulling hoaxes...on themselves."
posted by tangaroo at 6:18 PM on November 10, 2014 [3 favorites]

[On preview...another TAL example!] In the Prologue to "My Experimental Phase," This American Life producer Nancy Updike describes how she convinced herself iafter graduating from college that she was actually a lesbian...until two years later when she realized she wasn't attracted to women and had to come out again, this time as straight.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 6:21 PM on November 10, 2014 [4 favorites]

Nancy Updike, who did the story you heard, has this prologue about herself from an old TAL.
posted by clavicle at 6:21 PM on November 10, 2014

aw man
posted by clavicle at 6:24 PM on November 10, 2014 [13 favorites]

TAL has done quite a number of these about parentage in addition to the items mentioned above (Go Ask your Father, Switched at Birth, The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar).

Even though the original post was deleted, there are a few stories in the comments of this Reddit thread about ancestry.
posted by phoenixy at 6:41 PM on November 10, 2014

Yet another TAL one, this one extremely germane to the topic: Emir Kamenica tells the story of how a stolen library book he plagiarized from set him on the path to Harvard, only to meet one of the principals in his story years after the fact and be told plainly that he has the entire thing wrong.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:45 PM on November 10, 2014 [12 favorites]

"Stories of people who tell a lie and then believe the lie more than anyone else does."

I'm currently trying to do this to myself in a religious context (sort of an experiment), but it's a lot harder than I'd originally thought. According to what I've been experiencing (and have read), personal identity and belief is fairly resilient once you're an adult; most of your worldview seems to have solidified and takes a lot of effort to start making fluid again.

Might that be related to how a lot of these examples seem to have taken place as adolescents or young adults, when we're more likely to have deep questions about who we are and where we're headed?
posted by The Zeroth Law at 6:53 PM on November 10, 2014

The story of the big eyed children paintings might be of interest.
posted by The Deej at 7:54 PM on November 10, 2014 [15 favorites]

"A million little pieces" comes to mind, though I've never read it...
posted by treadstone11 at 8:26 PM on November 10, 2014

The thing that comes to mind was the big controversy about the false memories that were planted during therapy for this woman (Nadean Cool) who was made to believe that she was brought up in a satanic cult. I read a book about it a long time ago but don't remember what it's called. I understand it was a huge deal when we came to light.
posted by patheral at 8:28 PM on November 10, 2014 [2 favorites]

The article about the big-eyed children paintings mentions that Walter Keane - the person who claimed to have made the paintings - was diagnosed in court as suffering from Delusional Disorder - I mention this as an aside because it is a relatively rare condition that nevertheless probably effected quite a large number of the people mentioned above.
posted by rongorongo at 3:10 AM on November 11, 2014

There's a book called The Night of the Gun, in which a now-sober journalist (David Carr) investigates his own past as a drug addict, and he compares his memories against the reality of what actually happened when he was in the throes of his addiction. This example may not fit your criteria exactly, but it's close.

Another example comes to mind. There is an excellent documentary called, Harvard Beats Yale 29-29, about an infamous Ivy League football game that was played in 1968. The documentary features interviews with some of the players from the game. One of the players is a Yale alum named Mike Bouscaren. He recounts, with great gusto (and in some detail), how he made a tackle in a crucial play of the game. But then the documentarian shows the play in question, and the video reveals that Bouscaren was nowhere near the action when the opposing player was tackled.
posted by alex1965 at 4:27 AM on November 11, 2014

Remembering Satan by the always excellent Lawrence Wright.
Marjoe was about a child evangelist who was a scammer.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 4:31 AM on November 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

Possibly/probably the confessors to murders in Iceland in the 1970s had nothing to do with them.
posted by plonkee at 1:52 PM on November 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

There's a very compelling "Snap Judgement" segment about a man who, as an 18-year-old, loses all his memories in a motorcycle accident. He doesn't recognize anyone, including not remembering his own name, except his identical twin brother. Over the next few years his brother helps him cope and fit back into his life by filling him in on his own childhood, which sounds pretty idyllic. It's not until many years later, and therapy, that he discovers that he and all of his siblings actually suffered terrible abuse at the hands of their late mother and that his siblings' omission of this, and filling in with happier details, were an attempt to give him the childhood they never had. A transcript and audio of the segment, called "Fill In The Blanks," are here, and the brothers apparently wrote a book called "Tell Me Who I Am."
posted by spelunkingplato at 7:41 PM on November 12, 2014 [1 favorite]