Pathology of Lying, Etc.

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

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She now said that anyhow she really was a runaway girl. She had
left her adopted parents because they were cruel and immoral. It
was her unhappy brooding over her own affairs that led her to lie
about being the other girl. She insisted she was sorry for the
many lies she had told various officers, but felt, after all,
they were to blame because their obvious desire to have her tell
that she was Agnes W. led her on. They deceived her first
because they misrepresented themselves and did not say they were
police officials. Nevertheless, she makes much of how she hates
her false position, being registered under a false name and
figuring as a deceiver.

The significant points in the long story of Inez, as told to us
in the days of our first acquaintance with her, are worth giving.
(At this period she was with us thoroughly consistent; at all
times she has appeared self-possessed and coherent.) Inez states
she is 17 and has just come from a town in Tennessee where she
has been living for a couple of years with some people by the
name of B. who adopted her. At first they were very good to her
and she loved them dearly. She was quite unsophisticated when
she went to them and did not realize then that they were not good
people. She met them at an employment agency in St. Louis where
she had gone after leaving the Smiths, the people who had brought
her up. At that time the B.'s appeared fairly well-to-do, but
Mr. B. had been running up debts that later carried him into
bankruptcy. Inez was sick and exhausted now from having worked
so hard for them. She finally ran away from that town because
the B.'s wanted to go elsewhere, leaving her in a compromising
position with a young man who rented their house. She first
tried boarding in two places, however, before she ventured to go.

The Smiths were the people she lived with until she was 14. She
remembers first living with them, but faintly recalls bearing the
name of Mary Johnson before that. Who the Johnsons were she does
not know, but she feels sure of the fact that she was born in New
Orleans. However, Inez does not worry about her parentage even
though it is unknown. Mrs. Smith was an elderly woman of wealth
who was very good to her, and by the time she was 14 she had
studied German and French, algebra and trigonometry. She had a
French tutor and took lessons on the piano. Always did well in
school and loved her work there. The Smith children, who were
much older, were very angry with their mother for all the money
she spent on Inez--they would have preferred its being expended
on their children. The son grew quite abusive and Mrs. S. was
made to suffer so much that the girl came to feel that she was
largely the cause of the old lady's unhappiness. After one
particularly deplorable scene she slipped away from their home in
New Orleans, traveled to St. Louis and went to an employment
agency where she found the B.'s. At the present time, above all
things, she does not want the Smiths to know about her when she
is temporarily a failure. She will never go back to them until
she can help the old lady who was so good to her.

Inez tells us she is now suffering from a wound still open as the
result of an operation for appendicitis performed two years
previously. She also suffered from tuberculosis a few years ago.
(She was found to be running a slight temperature, and some
slight hemorrhages in the sputum were observed.)

It may strengthen the portraiture so far sketched to give our
impressions as stated after our first study covering a week or
two; nor will it lessen the reader's interest to remark that it
was not for lack of acquaintance with the pathological liar type
that we failed to correctly size up this individual. Indeed, we
had already studied nearly all the other cases cited in this
monograph. Our statement ran as follows: ``This girl is very
frank and talkative with us. With her strong, but refined
features and cultivated voice she is a good deal of a
personality. She is sanguine and independent. Very likely she
does not exaggerate the hard times she has had in going from one
home to another. One cannot but respect this unusual young woman
for wanting to keep her early history secret. It would be
fortunate if some one would care for the girl and get her
ailments cured. With her very good ability she might easily then
be self-supporting.''

A woman of strength and judgment undertook to look after Inez.
The girl's personality commanded interest. In a few days she
complained more vigorously of her abdominal trouble; an operation
seemed imperative and was performed. (An account of this will be
given later.) Later the girl was taken to a convalescent home
and then to a beautiful lake resort. While here she suddenly was
stricken desperately ill. Her friend was telegraphed for, a
special boat was commissioned, and the girl was taken to a
neighboring sanitarium. The doctors readily agreed that the case
was one of simulation or hysteria. She was brought back to
Chicago and warned that this sort of performance would not pay.
After being given further opportunity to rest, although under
less favorable circumstances, in a few weeks she was offered work
in several homes, but in each instance the connection was soon
severed. Then without letting her guardian-friend know, Inez
suddenly left the city.

Inquiries had brought by this time responses telling something of
the career of Inez in the past two years, but nothing earlier.
She was the ``mystery girl'' in the Tennessee town, as she was in
Chicago. The B.'s kept a boarding-house and took Inez as a
waitress, knowing her first by still another alias. She worked
for them about a year and then went to Memphis, where she was
sick in a hospital. She had now taken the B.'s name. They were
regarded as her guardians (on the girl's authority) and they
finally sent for her again out of pity, although they felt she
had a questionable past, and they knew she had lied tremendously
while with them. Then the B.'s moved away and turned Inez over
to a respectable family. While with the B.'s Inez had been
regarded as a partial invalid; their physician diagnosed the case
as diabetes and found it incurable. In fact, the B.'s went into
debt for her prolonged treatment. Another physician, who was
called in after the B.'s left, said the trouble was Bright's
disease. At any rate, all regarded her as suffering from some
chronic disorder. Except for her extraordinary lying, of which
she made exhibitions to many, and some little tendencies to
dishonesty mixed with her lying, Inez was regarded as being quite
normal. The two other families with whom she lived for a time
found it impossible to tolerate the girl on account of her lying.
Finally, obtaining money by false representation, telling the
story of a rich uncle in Chicago to whom she was going, Inez
departed, taking with her a trunk containing valuables belonging
to the B.'s.

Dropping our chronological account of this case we may from this
time deal with it as a whole, putting together the facts as they
developed by further study of Inez herself and by the receipt of
information from many sources.

Since we have known her, Inez has been under the observation of
several skilled medical specialists. She all along has been in
good general physical condition. Having been treated previously
for diabetes, special examinations were repeatedly made, but
never a trace of this trouble was discernible. Her own story of
having had tuberculosis, and the traces of blood in the sputum,
which she presented on handkerchiefs, etc., led to repeated tests
for tuberculosis. These also proved absolutely negative. Before
all this, there was found on the left side of the abdomen a mass
which, from the history the girl gave, was surmised to be a
tubercular abscess. At this time she was running a little
temperature. An operation was performed and an encysted hairpin
was removed from the peritoneal cavity. This had undoubtedly
found entrance through the old appendicitis wound; the hairpin
had evidently been straightened for the purpose. Both wounds now
speedily closed. Gynecological examination showed no disease and
established the fact of virginity. Thorough neurological
examination showed that the girl was not of nervous type and that
there was no evidence whatever of organic disease. There was
complaint of frequent headaches, but no signs of acute suffering
from these were ever witnessed and by this time no reports of
subjective symptoms could be credited. No sensory defects of any
importance. It was always easy to get a little variation upon
visual tests and the like, however. Weight 130; height 5 ft. 1
in. Color good. Head notably well shaped with broad high
forehead. Strength good. Very normal development in all ways.

Most important to note as bearing on her social career was the
fact that Inez was possessed of markedly strong, regular,
pleasant features, including a good set of teeth well cared for,
and an unusually firm chin. In attitude and expression she
seemed to give complete proof of great strength of will and
character. Her face suggested both frankness and firmness. When
with quiet force and dignity asserting her desire for education
and a place in the world, Inez presented a most convincing
picture. Perhaps even more significant is the fact that Inez
possesses a speaking voice of power and charm, well modulated and
of general qualities which could belong apparently to no other
than a highly cultivated person.

During a year there has been no variation in the general
well-being of Inez, although she has been taken to hospitals in
at least two more towns and has figured again as a sufferer from
tuberculosis and appendicitis, and has written several times to
friends that she was about to be operated on.

The diagnoses of several competent medical men are that the girl
is a simulator or is an hysterical, and their findings show that
she has lied tremendously about her past. (There were never any
positive signs of hysteria, and our own opinion is that the case
is much better called one of extreme simulation and
misrepresentation, as in the diabetes and sputum affairs, etc.,
and of self-mutilation, as with the hairpin.)

We have had ample opportunity to become acquainted with Inez's
mental qualities. She has repeatedly been given tests for mental
ability. As judged by the average of those seen in our court
work we are forced to regard her as having ability clearly above
the normal. Her perceptions are keen and quick. She works
planfully and rapidly with our concrete problems and shows good
powers of mental representation. It is notable that she is very
keen to do her best on tests and takes much delight in a good
record. Her psychomotor control is astonishingly good. In a
certain tapping test, which we consider well done if the
individual has succeeded in tapping in 90 squares in 30 seconds,
she did 117 and 129 at two successive trials with only one error
in each. This is next to the best record we have ever seen. Our
puzzle box, which is seldom opened in less than 2 minutes, she
planfully attacked and conquered in 52 seconds. She also rapidly
put it together again, which is an unusual performance. Reaction
times on the antonym test, giving the opposites to words, were
very low; average 1.4 seconds. Her immediate memory for words
was normal, but nothing extraordinary. She gave correctly,
although not quite in logical order, 18 out of 20 items on a
passage which she read herself. On a passage read four times to
her she gave 11 out of 12 items in correct sequence. The
Kent-Rosanoff association test showed, to our surprise, nothing
peculiar. Notwithstanding her known social characteristics,
there were very few egocentric or subjective reactions.

Nor did the ``Aussage'' test show great peculiarity. On free
recital she gave 17 items, two of which were incorrect. They
were misinterpretations rather than inventions, however. On
questioning she added 15 items. She was incorrect on 5 more
details, but all of these were denials of objects actually to be
seen in the picture. Not one was a fictitious addition. She
rejected all the 6 suggestions proffered.

Our psychological observations were important beyond the giving
of formal tests. We found her to be a fluent and remarkably
logical and coherent conversationalist. Her choice of words was
unusually good. Questioned about this she said she had always
made it a point to cultivate a vocabulary and was particularly
fond of the use of correct English. (This was all the more
interesting because we later knew that she had been living
recently with somewhat illiterate people and that her original
home offered her very little in the way of educational
advantages.) Inez told us that she had earlier carried her
desire for self-expression in language to the point of writing
stories and plays, but we were never able to get her to do
anything of the kind for us. One of her constant pleas was that
she might get the chance to become a well-trained teacher of
English. Her letters never showed the same skill with English
that her conversation denoted, but her meagre education probably
accounted for this.

Characteristic of Inez, also, is her intense egoism and her
abundant self-assertion under all circumstances. It often seemed
to us as if for her the world revolved, with passing show, around
a pivot from which she regarded it as existing only for what it
meant for her career. These qualities have led to her
statements, and perhaps to the actual feelings, that she was the
aggrieved one, and had been badly treated on many occasions.
This seemed to reach almost paranoidal heights at times, and yet,
before passing judgment on this, one should be in position to
know, what probably will never be known, namely, the actual facts
of her earliest treatment. Occasionally Inez showed most
unreasonable bad temper and obstinacy. This only came out when
she was asked to do things which she considered occupationally
beneath her. In general she felt herself much above the ordinary
run of people. When she could be patronizing, as with children,
she acted quite the grand lady. Indeed, in asserting herself on
numerous occasions she has assumed just this attitude, which is
all the more strange because our further information shows that
it was not justified by any social station which her family ever
held.

Going further with psychological considerations it is to be
asserted that Inez showed marked lack of normal apperceptive
ability in not appreciating the necessarily unfavorable results
of her own lying. For that matter, she also fails to learn by
experience, for very frequently she has suffered from her own
prevarications. It might, however, be argued that to Inez the
thought of a possible hum-drum future in which there was no
adventure, no roving, and no playing the part of a successful
personality, was a worse choice than that of lying, which might
and, indeed, often did serve the purpose of making friends with
people, who otherwise would not have entertained her. So one
could hardly judge her deficient even in this particular. (Of
the character of her lying and the special observations on that
point more later.)

We found Inez, then, neither mentally defective nor insane. To
even say that she was without moral sense would be beyond the
mark, for in many ways she showed great appreciation of the best
types of behavior. Her peculiarities verging on the abnormal
are, however, undoubted; they render her a socially pernicious
person. They are to be summed up in terms of what we have
discussed above, namely, her excessive egoism, her faulty
judgment or apperceptions, her astounding tendency to
falsification.

Inez was next heard from in Iowa where she wrote that two doctors
had pronounced upon her case and said an operation was again
imperative. She asked her recently made friend for permission to
have this done, and also for $150 to cover expenses. Neither, of
course, was forthcoming, on the grounds of there being no
guardianship. (Her age was then unknown.) Inez wrote, ``I just
thought I was compelled by law to let you know of my whereabouts,
for I understood I could do nothing without your consent.'' In
the same letter, replete with other lies, Inez asks, ``Please
forgive me now for all my willfulness and wrongdoing. I will do
my best never to do it again, and Oh! I do so want to be good so
that you may feel proud of me some day in the near future.''

A month or so later this friend was called up by the director of
a religious home for girls in Chicago, who stated that Inez had
just come to them and had been taken seriously ill. Advice was
given to discount her symptoms, but she was sent once more to a
hospital. Here she produced more blood as if from a pulmonary
hemorrhage and more symptoms were recounted, but the doctors
decided after careful examination that she was falsifying. Her
illness ceased the minute she was told to leave the hospital.
Matters were serious, for Inez was now without home, money, or
relatives. She was once more taken under protection and greater
effort was made to trace her family. They were discovered
through letters containing remittances sent by Inez herself from
Iowa, after years of silence. Much of her career was soon
brought to light. By this time, we may note, several observers
had insisted that from a commonsense standpoint the girl
certainly was insane.

While affairs were being looked up, Inez conferred with us from
time to time. She started by telling a thoroughly good story,
the general import of which was the same as she told months
previously, but there were differences in many details. In the
first place she still insisted she was 17 years old and gave us
an exact date as her birthday-- this was in response to the mild
suggestion that she might be considerably older. Since her
letters, although showing very good choice of words, were
incorrectly punctuated, we inquired further about her education.
She said she had received 18 credits in a noted girls' seminary
in the south, but later reversed this and stated she had very
little education. She told us her experiences of the last few
months when she had been introducing literary works in the towns
of Iowa. She had done well for a beginner at this, we found from
other sources, but had made misrepresentations and had talked too
freely, against her employers' wishes and advice. Finally she
had sent in forged orders. This was quite unnecessary, for her
salary was assured and sufficient, and her employers had regarded
her as an extremely promising representative. In Iowa she was
receiving mail under two different names; she still found it
convenient to represent herself sometimes as Agnes W. In her
peregrinations she had again made close friends with some
substantial people, who found out, however, in short order that
she was untruthful, and her chances with them were at once
spoiled.

In the next weeks, when under observation, Inez varied her story
from time to time even with the same persons. She was now 17 and
now 19 years old. She had an operation first in one town and
then it was in another. Her antecedents in many particulars
varied from time to time. Inez seemed to have lost her desire or
ability to be consistent, and in particular appeared to have no
conception of the effect upon the adjustment of her own case
which her continual lying was likely to have. (At this time
again some non-professional observers insisted strenuously that
Inez was insane. They based their opinion upon the fact that she
showed so little apperceptive ability, so little judgment in
relating the results of her continual lying to its necessary
effect upon her career.) It requires too much space to go over
the complicated details of her many stories, but some of her
expressions and behavior are worth noting.

We always found Inez most friendly, sometimes voluble, and she
ever dealt with us in a lady-like manner. Again we noted that
many a society woman would give much for her well modulated voice
and powers of verbal expression. Without any suggestion of
melodrama she would rise to strong passages in giving vent to her
feelings of indignation and ambition. At this time we were still
wondering where she could have obtained her education; it was not
until later that we comprehended that her abilities represented
sheer native traits.

She first came to us much hurt because a certain official had
warned her, after one of her simulating episodes in a hospital,
never to deceive again. ``My trying to get sympathy! I don't
want any sympathy. I told her I was independent and always
wanted to make my own way in the world. If they thought I wasn't
sick in the hospital why didn't they say so. The doctor told me
to stay in bed.

``Doctor, yes, I did lie to you about my age before; why
shouldn't I? I have been deceived on all sides and have found
that people are against me. If they want to leave me alone, they
can get the truth, but when one is deceived one has to tell lies
sometimes. I've had many troubles. Oh, doctor, if you knew what
I've been through and what's in my heart you'd think I do pretty
well. I would rather starve than have it cast up to me that I
had asked for any body's help or sympathy. I want to make my own
way. I must have an education. In September I plan to go to the
M. Academy and work my way through. I am just past 18 now.

``The B.'s are ashamed of me I suppose. I ran away from them.
They are refined people. But I can't be treated in that way.
They adopted me. They said that I got some money dishonestly,
but, doctor, it is not in me to be bad. I feel that through and
through.

``Well, I know that I'm a Yankee by birth, on both sides. My
people came from Mayflower stock. I will make my way in the
world, I will succeed, and you'll see, doctor. I will have an
education. As to going back to the Johnsons, I would commit
suicide rather than do that. It was not true that I had a good
education as I told you. They did not treat me well. They can
write as they please and talk about forgiveness for what I have
done, but it is they who were cruel and abusive. Suppose they do
say I'm their child. I know I am not because I was not treated
the same as the others. I was 12 or 13 when I ran away from
them. How could I belong to the family? They are all so much
older than I am.''

Inez now gave us, most curiously, some addresses which opened up
knowledge of her career over several years. But what she told us
about these new people was directly denied by return mail. At
one interview her first words were, ``Do you know now, doctor,
that I was in a State hospital?'' Having made this challenging
statement she went no further, merely involved herself in
contradictions as to the place, and would say nothing more than
that she had once suffered from an attack of nervous prostration.
She absolutely denied items of information about herself which we
had gradually accumulated, and this type of reaction obtained all
the way through our last period of acquaintance with Inez, even
after we had the detailed facts about her early life from her
parents.

Inez never lost an opportunity to impress upon people whom she
did not regard as her equals that she considered herself much of
a lady and quite above housework. On one occasion, when held as
a runaway girl, she had a terrible outbreak of temper simply
because she was asked to clear the dinner table. This was no
momentary affair. Her recalcitrancy was kept up the larger part
of one day, and she made the place almost unbearable that night
by screaming and moaning. Telling me about the incident, she
said it was because she would not allow herself to cater to such
people. ``If a person asks me, I may do things, but nobody can
tell me to. I would not give in. I would not do it.''

To some of us it has seemed highly significant that at moments
which would ordinarily be expected to bring out great emotion
Inez showed almost none. For instance, when going to an
important interview about the disposition of her case, she first
plaintively said she did not know what to say, and then
immediately began to dwell with evident pleasure upon the costume
of the person addressing her. Many normal emotions were seen
expressed, however, and many moral sentiments were undoubtedly
held, but there seemed to be curious displacements upon these
levels of her mental life; there was faulty mental
stratification. Probably the force which caused this is
egocentrism.

In relating what we now know of the past history of this case we
shall put together that which we have heard from many different
sources. There is no question about all the important
facts--correspondents largely corroborate each other.

Inez came from a family of French extraction, apparently stable
and normal tradespeople. The old mother at 74 years wrote us an
unusually well-thought-out, detailed account of her daughter's
early life. The paternal grandfather was insane and an aunt had
epilepsy. Defective heredity in other respects is denied. We
get no history of convulsions in the immediate family, nor of any
other neurotic manifestation, except that one sister is ``very
excitable.''

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