Characteristics of the Individual. Diagnosis : Part 1

Pathology of Lying, Accusation, And Swindling: A Study in Forensic Psychology
by William Healy, A.B., M.D., Mary Tenney Healy, B.L.

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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.

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.