Pathological Lying, Accusation, and Swindling | Page 6

classifications which are based on more vital facts than the symptom of lying. Our use of abnormal cases in our chapter, ``Illustrations of Border-Line Types,'' will be perfectly clear to those who read these cases. They represent the material not easily diagnosed, sometimes after long observation by professional people, or else they are clearly abnormal individuals who, by the possession of certain capacities, manage to keep their heads well above the level of social incompetency as judged by the world at large.
We have introduced only the cases where we have had ample proof that the individual had been given to excessive lying of our peculiar type. In the court room and working with delinquents outside the court, it is in rare instances totally impossible to know where the truth finally rests; such have been left out. Then, too, we omit cases in which false accusations have about them the shadow of even a suspicion of vindictiveness. False accusations of young children against parents would hardly seem to have such a basis, and yet in some instances this fact has come out clearly. Grudge-formation on the part of young individuals has all through our work been one of the extraordinary findings; capacity for it varies tremendously in different individuals.
Several forms of excessive lying, particularly those practised by children and adolescents, are not discussed by us because they are largely age phenomena and only verge upon the pathological as they are carried over into wider fields of conduct. The fantasies of children, and the almost obsessional lying in some young adolescents, too, we avoid. There is much shading of typical pathological lying into, on the one hand, the really insane types, and, on the other hand, into the lying which is to be explained by quite normal reactions or where the tendency to mendacity is only partially developed.
It has been a matter of no small interest to us that in planning this monograph we conceived it necessary to consider part of our material under the head of episodic pathological lying and that later we had to omit this chapter. Surely there had been cases--so it seemed to us at first--where purposeless lying had been indulged in for a comparatively short time, particularly during the adolescent period, without expression of a prevaricating tendency before or after this time. When we came to review our material with this chapter in mind we found no sufficient verification of the fact that there was any such thing as episodic pathological lying, apart from peculiar manifestations in cases of epilepsy, hysteria, and other mental abnormalities. A short career of extensive lying, not unfrequently met with in work for juvenile courts and other social agencies, seems, judging from our material, to be always so mixed up with other delinquencies or unfortunate sex experiences that the lying, after all, cannot be regarded as purposeless. It is indulged in most often in an attempt to disguise undesirable truths. That false accusations and even self-accusations are engaged in for the same purpose goes without saying. The girl who donned man's clothes, left home and lived for months a life of lies was seeking an adventure which would offset intolerable home conditions. The young woman who after seeing something of the pleasures of the world was placed in a strict religious home where she told exaggerated stories about her own bad behavior, was endeavoring to get more freedom elsewhere. A young fellow whom we found to be a most persistent and consistent liar was discovered to have been already well schooled in the art of professional criminalistic self-protection. So it has gone. Investigation of each of these episodic cases has shown the fabrications to emanate either from a distinctly abnormal personality or to partake of a character which rules them out of the realm of pathological lying. In our cases of temporary adolescent psychoses lying was rarely found a puzzling feature; the basic nature of the case was too easily discoverable.
A fair question to ask at this point is whether pathological lying is ever found to be the only delinquency of the given individual. We should hesitate to deny the possibility of its being the sole offense, but in our study of a long list of cases, and after review of those reported by other authors, it seems practically impossible to find a case of this. The tendencies soon carry the person over to the production of other delinquencies, and if these do not come in the category of punishable offenses, at least, through the trouble and suffering caused others, they are to be regarded essentially as misconduct.
The reverse of the above question deserves a word or two of attention; are there marked cases of delinquency which do not show lying? Surveying the figures of Ferriani[6] who enumerated thousands of lies, belonging