Section 109.(2) The Pathoformic lie.
As in many other forms of human expression, there is a stage in
the telling of lies where the normal condition has passed and the
diseased one has not yet begun. The extreme limit on the one side
is the harmless story-teller, the hunter, the tourist, the student, the
lieutenant,—all of whom boast a little; on the other side there is the
completely insane paralytic who tells about his millions and his monstrous
achievements. The characteristic pseudologia phantastica, the
lie of advanced hysteria, in which people write anonymous letters
and send messages to themselves, to their servants, to high officials
and to clergy, in order to cast suspicion on them, are all diseased.
The characteristic lie of the epileptics, and perhaps also, the lies of
people who are close to the idiocy of old age, mixes up what has been
experienced, read and told, and represents it as the experience of
the speaker.[1]
Still there is a class of people who can not be shown to be in any
sense diseased, and who still lie in such a fashion that they can not
be well. The development of such lies may probably be best assigned
to progressive habituation. People who commit these falsehoods
may be people of talent, and, as Goethe says of himself, may
have "desire to fabulate." Most of them are people, I will not say
who are desirous of honor, but who are still so endowed that they
would be glad to play some grand part and are eager to push their
own personality into the foreground. If they do not succeed in the
daily life, they try to convince themselves and others by progressively
broader stories that they really hold a prominent position. I had
and still have opportunity to study accurately several well-developed
types of these people. They not only have in common the fact that
they lie, they also have common themes. They tell how important
personages asked their advice, sought their company and honored
them. They suggest their great influence, are eager to grant their
patronage and protection, suggest their great intimacy with persons
of high position, exaggerate when they speak of their property, their
achievements, and their work, and broadly deny all events in which
they are set at a disadvantage. The thing by which they are to be
distinguished from ordinary "story-tellers," and which defines what
is essentially pathoformic in them, is the fact that they lie without
considering that the untrue is discovered immediately, or very soon.
Thus they will tell somebody that he has to thank their patronage
for this or that, although the person in question knows the case to be
absolutely different. Or again, they tell somebody of an achievement
of theirs and the man happens to have been closely concerned
with that particular work and is able to estimate properly their
relation to it. Again they promise things which the auditor knows
they can not perform, and they boast of their wealth although at
least one auditor knows its amount accurately. If their stories
are objected to they have some extraordinarily unskilful explanation,
which again indicates the pathoformic character of their minds.
Their lies most resemble those of pregnant women, or women lying-in,
also that particular form of lie which prostitutes seem typically
addicted to, and which are cited by Carlier, Lombroso, Ferrero, as
representative of them, and as a professional mark of identification.
I also suspect that the essentially pathoformic lie has some relation to
sex, perhaps to perversity or impotence, or exaggerated sexual impulse.
And I believe that it occurs more frequently than is supposed,
although it is easily known in even its slightly developed stages.
I once believed that the pathoformic lie was not of great importance
in our work, because on the one hand, it is most complete and distinct
when it deals with the person of the speaker, and on the other
it is so characteristic that it must be recognized without fail by anybody
who has had the slightest experience with it. But since, I
have noticed that the pathoformic lie plays an enormous part in
the work of the criminalist and deserves full consideration.
[[ id="n109.1"]]
Delbrück: De pathologische Lüge, etc. Stuttgart 1891. "Manual,"
"Das pathoforme Lügen.
