Pathology of Lying, Etc.

W >> William and Mary Healy >> Pathology of Lying, Etc.

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We felt much inclined at first to denominate him a case of
abulia, but his stubbornness in recalcitrancy led us to change
our opinion. From the above physical signs and mental phenomena
he was clearly a constitutional inferior.

Some facts we obtained on the family history were most
significant. The mother of William suffered from attacks which
were undoubtedly epileptic. Her mother, in turn, had convulsions
at least during one pregnancy. We did not learn whether or not
she had them at other times. No other points of significance in
that family are known. The father himself was brought up, as he
says, strictly, but he was inclined to be wild, and he has
indulged for many years altogether too much in tobacco and
alcohol. He is distinctly a weak type and the poorest specimen
of his family. William is the only child. There was nothing
peculiar in developmental history until he was 2 1/2 years old
when he suffered from ``brain fever and spinal meningitis.''
This was said to have left him with a stiff right arm and to
account for his being left handed. (We could discover no
difference in the reflexes.) Then at another period he was sick
in bed for 6 months with some unknown, but not very serious
illness. The mother has been dead for years and so we were
unable to get accurate details about this. At a very early age
William sought the pleasures of tobacco, even when a child of 6
or 7 he used his pennies for that purpose. He was brought up in
an environment defective on account of his father being a poor
earner and weak in discipline. But still his parent took for
years a great deal of interest in him and it was not until the
boy had proven himself most difficult that his father proclaimed
himself unable to manage his son.

At about 10 years of age William began running away from home and
manufacturing untrue stories. One of his favorite statements was
that his father had been killed in an accident. It is notable
that all these years he has been attempting to gain sympathy for
this or that assumed condition, whether it be his own alleged
physical ailments, or fictitious family difficulties. As a
matter of fact, during this time he has been in some good homes,
failing each time to comport himself so that he could be retained
there. It was typical that he reiterated, ``I have no friends;
there is no one to stick up for me.'' Besides being in three
institutions before he was 16 years old, William had been in
homes which he had found when he had run away, or in which he had
been placed by his father or by social agencies, the services of
which had been evoked. His stealing was often done with an
extraordinary lack of foresight. For instance, in one good
position that had been found for him he took a box of cigars,
when, of course, as the newcomer he would have been suspected,
and even after his employers made it clear to him that they knew
of the theft he took another box the next day. His lying under
all occasions was nothing short of astonishing. To even his best
friends he offered all sorts of fabulous tales which one iota of
forethought would have made him realize would redound to his
disadvantage. Almost his only show of common sense in this was
when he gave an assumed name while getting a new position, and
even this performance could hardly be considered deeply rational.
It is hardly necessary to give lengthy specimens of his
falsifications; they always pervaded his stories about himself,
but strangely enough he acknowledged many of his delinquencies.
A good example of the latter was when he collected a little money
for a new employer and on the way back, looking in a shop window,
saw an electrical toy and immediately bought it. He then went
home, not even returning to the office to get the wages which
were due him. An example of his lying is his responses to
questions about his schooling. He maintained that he only
reached the third grade. (In reality he could do sixth grade
work at least.) He said, ``I know long division by about 13 and
about 5 figures. I don't know it by any other numbers.'' William
maintained these same characteristics over the 6 years during
which we have good data about him. We know he continued the same
kind of a career for a year or so afterwards.

Three years later we have direct information from his family
concerning William. His habits of prevarication have been kept
up steadily, so it is stated. He has been in and out of
institutions and at present is serving a sentence for larceny.
He all along has been unwilling to face realities and has lied
against his own interests continually. For instance, we are told
that if he lost a place, instead of obtaining the help his family
would have been willing to give him in gaining another, he would
steadily pretend to be holding the former position. He is still
considered utterly unreliable and a thoroughly weak character
with a tendency to meet a situation as readily by a lie as
another person would tend to react by speaking the truth. People
who have known him of late speak of him as being at 21 ``just the
same fellow,'' which probably indicates that he is thoroughly a
victim of habit formation as well as of innate tendencies.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Mentality. (Typical constitutional inferior.) Case 26.
Boy, age 16 years.
Heredity: Mother epileptic. Maternal grandmother
had convulsions. Father alcoholic and
tobacco in excess--weak type.
Developmental conditions: Early disease of the
central nervous system.
Delinquencies: Mentality:
Running away. Abilities irregular,
Stealing. psychic episodes.
Lying.
---------------------------------------------------------------

CASE 27

Summary: Case of a boy, age 16 years, who told the most
extraordinary stories of his vagrant life and the character of
his family to officers of several organizations who tried to help
him. He understood well that evidences of his unreliability
would count against him. His stories, although often repeated,
were not credited, and later, after a home had been found for
him, he began a new series of lies that seemed almost delusional
and somewhat paranoidal. After months during which much had been
done for him it was suddenly discovered that he was an epileptic.

John F. appealed to an agency for assistance. He told a story of
having wandered with his brother since he was a young boy. ``My
father was insane from what my uncle did to my mother. He
drowned her. The house caught on fire and he blamed her for it.
She said she didn't. She was too sick to get up and he took her
out of the house and his big son pumped water on her. She was
pretty near dead anyhow. We was too little to do anything. I
seen it. I remember that all right. I can see that yet Brother
and sister died about 3 years ago. Brother took sick from
sleeping out. We slept around in barns for 2 years. Father was
in an insane hospital in Kansas. I think my uncle was hanged at
N. Junction. We did not stay there. I remember yet when they
went to put my mother in the grave. I jumped in with her. We
put right out and after awhile folks wrote that father was
dead.''

So much attention would not have been paid to this gruesome tale
had it not been repeated to various people during the course of
several months. The boy wrote letters reiterating these
incidents. His stories always went on to include the most
surprising amount of abuse. It seemed that everywhere he had
been illtreated. Farmers had whipped him, or clothed him badly,
or defrauded him of his wages.

Physically, we found John to be in good general condition. A
strong active country boy. No serious defect of any kind was
discovered.

On mental tests he did better than we expected. To be sure he
was very backward in arithmetic, but then his story was that he
had hardly ever been to school at all. He certainly did well in
many of our tests with concrete material, but the results as a
whole were curiously irregular, even if we allowed for his
deficient schooling. At that time we were disinclined to pass
ultimate judgment on his mentality without knowing more about his
antecedents.

On the ``Aussage'' Test he gave only 11 bare items on free
recital. On questioning 19 more details were added. Of the
entire number only 3 were incorrect, and these were not serious
mistakes. Of 6 suggestions offered he accepted 3.

The history of this boy and his family has never been
forthcoming. The authorities in his alleged home State have not
been able to trace his family, which they could have done had his
stories been true. Their report made it clear that the boy's
reiterated family history was a fabrication--the raison d'etre of
which is still in doubt. In spite of his lying the boy was found
a desirable home in the country at the work for which he was
suited. After staying for a few weeks he returned to the city
and got lodgings for himself. We next heard of him because he
was induced by a ``hold-up'' man to secrete a revolver on his
person while the police were in the neighborhood. Upon looking
up his landlady, it was found that while with her he had suffered
from epileptic attacks. These had not been observed during the
several months we had previously known him, and he had strongly
denied them to us. In our court work we constantly inquire for
evidences of epilepsy; in this case we received nothing but
negation. After he served his sentence this young man was lost
sight of. Even in the institution to which he had been sent he
continued his fanciful and often hideous stories, still largely
centered about the idea that he had suffered unjustly wherever he
had been.

No complete summary of causative factors is possible in this
case. The major cause for his lying as well as other
delinquencies, particularly his vagrancy, is, of course, the
mental traits peculiar to epilepsy.

CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSIONS

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE INDIVIDUAL. DIAGNOSIS

PHYSICAL FINDINGS

Our 19 mentally normal cases (18 females, 1 male) showed:

Good general condition. . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Fair general condition. . . . . . . . . . . . . .2
Poor general condition. . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Poor development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2
Poor development, undersized for age. . . . . . .2
Defective vision. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
Headaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Mild nervous symptoms . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2
Tonsils and adenoids. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Fainting attacks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Gynecological ailments. . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
Abdominal tumor, etc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Hutchinsonian teeth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2
``Stigmata of degeneracy''. . . . . . . . . . . .3
Premature sex development . . . . . . . . . . . .2

Comparing the above with the findings by previous writers we see
little chance to draw safe deductions. So many of the foreign
cases have been insane; they can be more nearly compared with our
7 border-line types where all sorts of physical conditions may be
found. It is notable that a large percentage of our mentally
normal cases are in good general condition. Defective vision in
6 cases may be only a coincidence, but perhaps resulting nervous
irritation was sometimes a factor in producing misconduct.
Headaches, which Stemmermann makes so much of, appear as an
incident in only a small number of our cases; her emphasis on
periodicity also we cannot corroborate, there are hints of it in
only one or two instances, but then her cases for the most part
are not comparable to ours. That 6 out of 18 females should have
had severe gynecological ailments is not to be wondered at,
considering the trend of their lives, but, in turn, there can be
little doubt that, as in Cases 16, 18, and 21, the local
irritation tended to bring about moral disabilities.

MENTAL FINDINGS

Considering first the question of mental capabilities we can
classify our 19 normal cases as follows:

Supernormal in ability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Precocious; later, still considered bright. . . . . . . . 1
Good ability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Fair ability, perhaps not quite up to the former classes. 6
Poor ability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Poor ability, hysterical type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Poor in general, but with artistic and literary ability . 1
Dull from physical causes, but later normal . . . . . . . 1

Over and beyond the above enumeration there were some intensely
interesting facts which came out during the intimate study of
these cases. We are at once forced to agree with previous
writers that an unusual number of the pathological liar group
show great aptitude for language. This is shown by their general
conversational ability and by the fact that many of them have
found out themselves that they had capacity, for instance, for
writing compositions. Taking our group of pathological liars in
the strict sense, as given in Chapter III, we find that no less
than 7 of these 12 have been given to writing compositions and
stories. Three of them had definitely commenced long stories or
novels. It is most unusual among other offenders to find
evidence of any such tendencies. A considerable number of our
group were characterized as great talkers, and several as
romantic, dramatic, fantastic, etc., even by ordinary observers.
All this goes to show clearly that the native traits making for
verbal fluency are strongly correlated with pathological lying.
When it comes to consideration of such an instance as Case 11 we
have the point more strongly brought out. Here the individual is
fairly swung down his life's course as the irregularity of his
capacities direct. His language ability carries him along as
nothing else will. In corroboration of this interesting point
the conclusions of other authors should be noted.

The aberrational types which show pathological lying are, several
of them, depicted in our Chapter VI. But little in summary of
them needs to be said. The general mental and moral weakness of
the constitutional inferior very naturally leads him to become a
pathological liar; he follows, by virtue of his make-up, the path
of immediate least resistance--lying. The episodic lying or
aimless false accusations of the choreic psychosis needs no
comment--the confusional mental state sometimes accompanying that
disease readily predisposes toward fantastic treatment of
realities. The relationship of constitutional excitement to
pathological lying is less well recognized, but fully explicable
when we recollect the rate at which ideas present themselves in
the mental content of such individuals, who have little time, as
it were, to discriminate the true from the false. The mental
conditions leading to purposeless prevarication which supervene
in the real hysterical mental states, or during the course of
traumatic psychoneurosis are well known. The individual is to be
surely regarded, at least temporarily, as suffering from a
psychosis in many of these instances, and falsification, while it
may be difficult to distinguish between delusion and lying, is a
well recognized phenomenon. The very deliberate lying of
psychopathic individuals, such as Case 25, who, though so
strongly aberrational, do not fit under the head of any of the
classic insanities, is a matter for earnest consideration by all
who have to deal with delinquents. There is altogether too
little general knowledge of this type of fact. The correlation
of the various epileptic mental states with pathological lying is
well recognized. In many of the cases cited by foreign writers
it has turned out that the individual was subject to epileptic
seizures. It is another illustration of the great variety of
epileptic phenomena. Something of a point has been made in the
literature heretofore that abnormalities of sexual life are
unduly correlated with the inclination to pathological lying, and
the conclusion is sometimes drawn, as by Stemmermann (loc. cit.
p. 90), that the two prove a degenerative tendency. Our material
would not tend to show this nearly as much as it would prove that
the psychical peculiarities follow on a profound upset caused by
unfortunate sex experiences.

A characteristic of pathological liars is undoubtedly a deep-set
egocentrism, as Risch states. If one goes over our cases it may
be seen that there is exhibited frequently in the individual an
undue amount of self-assertion. There is very little sympathy
for the concern of others, and, indeed, remarkably little
apperception of the opinions of others. How frequently the
imagery of the heroic role of the self recurs, and how frequently
it occupies a central stronghold is seen by the fact that nearly
all of our cases indubitably demonstrate the phenomenon.

Most of our cases have been studied by the application of a wide
range of tests. Indeed many of the individuals have been studied
over and over. It is beyond our point at present to go over the
separate findings because there is no evidence of a strong
correlation of any type of peculiarity, except the ones mentioned
here, with the pathological lying. Memory processes, for
instance, as ordinarily tested seem to be normally acute.

We have naturally been much interested in the result of the
``Aussage'' or Testimony Test work with this present group, on
account of the possibility of demonstrating correlations between
laboratory work and the individual's reactions in social
intercourse, particularly when there has been falsification upon
the witness stand. In general we may say that while we have seen
normal individuals who are not falsifiers do just as badly as a
number of these individuals, yet for the group the findings are
exceedingly bad. Perhaps the better way of stating it would be
to say that not one case shows the sturdily honest type of
response which is frequently met with during the course of
testing other delinquents, even as young as the youngest of the
cases cited here. Our findings stand in great contrast, we note,
to the results on other test work. When looking at the table
given above we see that a large share of our 19 normal cases are
up to the average in general ability, and yet as a group they
fall far below the average on this Testimony Test. Take Cases 8
and 9, for instance-- both of them bright girls with, indeed,
considerable ability in many directions, and yet both of them
give a large number of extremely incorrect items in reporting
what they saw in the ``Aussage'' picture, and also both accept a
very large proportion of the suggestions offered. It seems as if
frequently in these cases there is no real attempt to
discriminate what was actually seen in the picture from what
might have been in a butcher shop. In most cases the fictitious
items were given upon questioning, but without the offering of
suggestions. When the individual was allowed to give merely free
recital the result was better. This, however, follows the
general rule.

A general survey of work on other tests has not shown anything
immediately significant in correlations, and this makes the
result upon the ``Aussage'' much more notable. Perhaps it may be
urged that if these individuals had been told to key themselves
up to do this test well, being forewarned that otherwise it would
reveal their weaknesses, they could have done better. Some hint
of this may be seen in our story of the results of tests in Case
3. But of course the same might be argued about the other test
work where no such tendency to poor results was discernible.

The following table, with a word of explanation, will serve to
bring out results on this test clearly to even the reader
unfamiliar with the specific details of this subject. A general
description of the test is found in our introduction.

----------------------------------------------------------------
ITEMS REPORTED ITEMS INCORRECT SUGGESTIONS
CASE Denominator=number offered
Free On Number Percent
Recital Questioning Numerator = number accepted

16 16<2> 12<1> 3 10% 2/7
15 10 14<3> 3 12% 2/5
4 12 28<6> 6 15% 3/4
19 15<2> 8<2> 4 17% 4/6
3 17<2> 20<5> 7 19% 0/6
7 11<2> 17<4> 6 21% 2/5
6 17<1> 12<6> 7 24% 1/7
13 8 21<7> 7 24% 4/4
8 16 28<12> 12 27% 5/7
9 12 32<12> 12 27% 6/7
14 7 21<8> 8 28% 4/7
2 10 12<7> 7 32% 1/5
20 6 9<8> 8 53% 2/5
----------------------------------------------------------------

Only 13 of our 19 mentally normal cases were found to have had
the ``Aussage'' Test done so uniformly that results could be
fairly compared, as in the above table. The reader will find it
easy to refer back to the case for noting other correlations with
behavior. In the first double column the items which were given
in free recital come first, and in the second part the number of
positive responses to questions by the examiner. The
coefficients attached to these represent the number of egregious
errors or entirely fictitious items given. It should be clearly
understood that slight deviations from facts, for instance in
color, are not counted as errors for our present purposes. In a
later study on this whole topic of the psychology of testimony
there will be much more complete itemizing. The errors in which
we are particularly interested can perhaps best be called pure
inventions. In the next double column is given, first, the total
number of incorrect items and, then, the percentage of these to
the total number of items reported. In the last column
suggestibility is dealt with. We have been accustomed to offer 7
suggestions, asking the individual whether such and such things
which might well be in a butcher shop really appeared in the
picture. For several reasons not all of the 7 suggestions were
asked in every case, therefore the result is best viewed as a
statement in fractions-- the numerator being the number of
suggestions accepted and the denominator the number of
suggestions offered.

As a last statement on this question which we put to ourselves,
namely, whether pathological liars show the same traits in the
laboratory as they do on the witness stand or in general social
life, we can answer in the affirmative. We may repeat that
others have made as bad records as some of this group, but taking
the group as a whole, it is unlike any random 13 cases which
might be picked out from our other classes of mentally normal
offenders. On the other hand, many a feebleminded testifier has
done vastly better than the median of this group. The errors
themselves are of the purely inventional type, such as your
ordinary report from a mentally normal person does not contain.
(There is perhaps one interesting exception to this; Case 3. The
report given by this subject included egregious denials of some
of the main objects in the picture, and so was fictitious to this
extent. She did not say that she did not know whether these
to-be-expected objects really were in the picture--she insisted
that they were not.) So far as suggestibility is concerned,
there are great differences among even normal people in all
classes. For comparison with the above group, we may take 63
cases of mentally normal delinquents, all of whom had been
offered the full 7 suggestions. The median error of this group
was two. Lower than the fraction thus obtained was the result on
only 4 of the present cases. We have been interested to see that
with some of the pathological liars there is no great
suggestibility. The person is willing to deal in his own
inventions, but not with false ideas which others attempt to put
in his mind.

DIAGNOSIS

The essentials for the diagnosis of pathological lying are
contained in the definition at the beginning of our book. The
above considerations of the physical and mental make-up of
pathological liars should leave little question as to what
belongs in this class. Of course here, as in the study of any
mental traits, borderline cases difficult to discriminate will
always be found. Sometimes one will not be able to determine
whether the individual is a true pathological liar or merely a
prevaricator for a normal purpose. We have already stated our
inability to determine this in some cases, and yet the nucleus of
the type stands out sharply and clearly, and there can be no
doubt as to what is practically meant by the definition.

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