Pathological Lying, Accusation, and Swindling | Page 6

and treatment of our material we have confined ourselves
as closely as possible to the definition first given in this chapter--a
definition that after some years of observation we found could be made
and held to. While we would not deny that some of our cases may
eventually find their way into an insane hospital, still none of them,
except some we have enumerated under the name of border-line types,
has so far shown any indication of this. That some of our cases have
more or less recovered from a strongly-marked and prolonged
inclination to falsify is a fact of great importance for treatment and
prognosis.
We see neither reason for including insane cases nor for overlapping
the already used 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