Pathological Lying, Accusation, and Swindling | Page 8

the characteristics of young children's
testimony. Perhaps it is sufficient to say that the ordinary individual
recalls voluntarily or upon questioning upwards of 20 items, and does
not give incorrect items to any extent. On questioning he may perhaps
accept one or two of the seven suggestions, but when details in general
are asked for he does not add fictional items more than are accounted
for by some little slip of memory. One can find definite types of
intellectual honesty, even among children of 10 or 12 years of age,
when there is no tampering with the truth; if an item has not been
observed, there is no effort to make it seem otherwise. For discussion
of the results on this test among our pathological liars we refer to our
chapter on conclusions.
[7] ``Tests for Practical Mental Classification,'' by William Healy and
Grace M. Fernald, Monograph No. 54. Psychological Review Pub. Co.,
1911, Princeton University, Princeton, N. J.

The short summary of causative factors given at the end of the case

study deals only with the factors of delinquency. To avoid
misinterpretation of the coordinated facts, what they are focused upon
should ever be remembered. The statement of these ascertained factors
brings out many incidental points which should be of interest to
lawyers and other students of criminalistics.
It should be needless to state to our professional readers that the
personalities represented in our case histories are entirely fictitious, but
that alterations have been made only in such facts as will not impair
scientific values. We confess to no particular pleasure in writing up this
rather sordid material; the task is undertaken because such studies offer
the only way to gain that better understanding which is necessary for
adequate treatment of special types of human beings.


CHAPTER II
PREVIOUS STUDIES
The subject of pathological lying was first definitely brought to the
attention of the medical and legal professions by the studies of
Delbruck.[8] The aim of this work was to follow the development of a
symptom but little commented upon up to this time, a symptom, as he
says, found in every healthy person in slight degree, but in some cases
rising to pathological significance and perhaps dominating the entire
picture of abnormal traits--thus becoming pathognomonic. This
symptom he at the outset calls lying.
[8] ``Die pathologische Luge und die psychisch abnormen Schwindler.
Eine Untersuchung Uber den allmahlichen Uebergang eines normalen
psychologischen Vorgangs in ein pathologisches Symptom, fur Aerzte
und Juristen.'' Pp. 131, Stuttgart, 1891.

Through an elaborate and exhaustive investigation of the lies told by
five patients over a period of years, he came to the conclusion that the
form of falsifying in these cases deserves a new and separate name. It

was not ordinary lying, or delusion, or false memory, these words
express only part of the conception; hence he coined the new term,
pseudologia phantastica, to cover the species of lying with which he
was concerned. Later German writers have also adopted his
terminology.
To emphasize the method by which he arrived at this conclusion and to
gain at the same time some knowledge of the problems he dealt with,
we may review in bare outline his case-studies.
The first patient presented by Delbruck was an Austrian maid-servant
who in her wanderings through Austria and Switzerland had played at
various times the roles of Roumanian princess, Spaniard of royal
lineage, a poor medical student, and the rich friend of a bishop. Her
lying revealed a mixture of imagination, boastfulness, deception,
delusion, and dissimulation. She romanced wonderfully about her royal
birth and wrote letters purporting to be from a cardinal to herself. She
fled disguised as a man from an educational institution to Switzerland
where her sex was discovered. It appeared that she was subject to
contrary sex feelings and thought of herself as a man. She was under
the observation of Krafft-Ebing at one time. He considered it at least as
a case of paranoia. Others had determined the girl to be a psychopath
who indulged in simulations and lies. Delbruck denominated it a case
of direct lying with a tendency to phantasies, delusions, and
dissimulations. Delbruck from this case argues that a mixture of lies
and delusions is possible, comparing such a state with dreaming and
with the hypnotic condition in which one follows the suggestion of the
hypnotizer and is still aware of the fact. It was evident at times that this
girl half believed her own stories, then again that she had forgotten her
former lies. In her, Delbruck considers perverted sex feeling and
hysteria revealed a brain organization abnormal from birth. There was
the instinctive tendency to lie.
The second patient, an epileptic girl, had been many times imprisoned
and also sent to the Charite for examination into her sanity