Pathological Lying, Accusation, and Swindling | Page 5

but from the standpoint of modern psychopathology it does not
adequately cover the ground.
[1] Ferriani, Lino, ``L'Enfance criminelle.'' Milan, 1894. (Trans.
Minderjahrige Verbrecher. Berlin, 1896.)
[2] Duprat, G.-L., ``Le mensonge.'' Alcan, Paris, 1903.
[3] Hall, G. Stanley, ``Children's Lies.'' Amer. Journal of Psychology,
Jan. 1890; pp. 59-70.

The fabrications, often quite clever, of the clearly insane, which in
earlier literature are confounded with pathological lying, we have
discriminated against as not being profitable for us to discuss here,
while not denying, however, the possibility in some instances of lies
coexisting with actual delusions. We well remember a patient, a
brilliant conversationalist and letter writer, but an absolutely frank case
of paranoia, whom we had not seen for a period during which she had
concocted a new set of notions involving even her own claim to royal
blood, confronting us with a merry, significant smile and the remark,
``You don't believe my new stories, do you?''

A short statement on the relation of lying to delinquency may be of
interest here. Ferriani's discussion[4] of the lying of 500 condemned
juvenile offenders, with classification of their lies, ranging from
self-defense, weakness, and fancy, to nobility of purpose, does not
include our field. Nor does he leave much room for appreciation of the
fact we very definitely have observed, namely, that plenty of young
offenders are robust speakers of the truth. Our analysis[5] of the
delinquencies of 1000 young repeated offenders carefully studied by us
does not tell the proportion of truth tellers as distinguished from liars,
but it does give the number in which lying was a notable and excessive
trait. The total number of males studied was 694, of females 306. Ages
ranged from 6 to 22; average about 16 years.
[4] loc. cit.
[5] Vide p. 140, in chapter on Statistics, William Healy, ``The
Individual Delinquent.'' Little, Brown, and Co. Boston, 1915.
MALES FEMALES
Lying--counted only when excessive and a 104 80 notorious
characteristic of the individual, (15%) (26%) False accusations--only
recorded when of an 5 16 excessive and dangerous sort, (.7%) (5%)
The exact number of pathological liars is not determinable in our series
because of the shading of this lying into other types. It would be safe to
say that 8 or 10 of the 1000 were genuine cases of pathological lying
according to our definition, that 5 more engaged in pathological false
accusations without a notorious career in other kinds of lying.
Examples of borderline mental cases showing fantastic lying and
accusations are given in our special chapter. Some of the cases of
pathological lying given in this work do not belong to the series of
1000 cases analyzed for statistical purposes. The extraordinary number
of times several of these individuals appeared in court (resembling in
this respect the European case histories) shows that the total amount of
trouble caused by this class is not in the least represented by their
numerical proportion among offenders.
We have purposely limited our own material for presentation. Here, as
elsewhere, we insist on the value of genetics and consequently have
busied ourselves at length with those cases where we could gain
something like an adequate conception of the antecedents in family and
developmental histories and where some measure of the psychogenetic

features could be taken. Cases of older individuals with their prolonged
and often picturesque careers, equivalent to those recounted in
European literature, we have left strictly alone. One ever finds that the
older the individual the less one can learn satisfactorily of beginnings
of tendencies, just on account of the unreliability of the principal actor
in the drama. The cases of older swindlers at first sight seem to offer
much for the student of criminalistics, if only for purely descriptive
purposes, but in the literature we have failed to find any satisfactory
studies of the formative years of such careers. By taking instances of
younger pathological liars, such as we have studied, the natural
progress into swindling can be readily seen.
In court work we have been brought face to face with many cases of
false accusation and, of course, with plenty of the usual kind of lying.
Where either of these has been entered into by way of revenge or in
belief that it would aid in getting out of trouble, no further attention has
been paid to it from the standpoint of pathological lying. Our
acquaintance with some professional criminals, particularly of the
sneak-thief or pick-pocket class, has taught us that living conditions for
the individual may be founded on whole careers of misrepresentation
and lies--for very understandable reasons. Self-accusations may
sometimes be evolved with the idea of gaining directly practical results,
as when a lover or a comrade is shielded, or when there is danger of a
larger crime being fastened on the self-incriminator.
In selection