Pathology of Lying, accusation, and swindling Part 20

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 pa.s.s 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 inst.i.tution 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 s.e.x 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 cla.s.sify 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 cla.s.ses. 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 apt.i.tude 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 const.i.tutional 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 ch.o.r.eic psychosis needs no comment--the confusional mental state sometimes accompanying that disease readily predisposes toward fantastic treatment of realities. The relationship of const.i.tutional 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 cla.s.sic 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 ill.u.s.tration of the great variety of epileptic phenomena. Something of a point has been made in the literature heretofore that abnormalities of s.e.xual 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 s.e.x 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-a.s.sertion. 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 st.u.r.dily 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 fict.i.tious 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 fict.i.tious 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 cla.s.ses 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 fict.i.tious 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 cla.s.ses. 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 cla.s.s. 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.

The differential diagnosis involves consideration of the characteristics of the insane, defective, and epileptic. We repeat that we agree that the mentally abnormal person may engage in pathological lying quite apart from any expression of delusions, and that during the course of such lying the insanity may not be recognized. This occurred in many of the cases cited in the foreign literature, and if the prior histories of many individuals now in insane hospitals were known undoubtedly such lying would be frequently noted. But once the person is recognized as insane he need not be cla.s.sified as a pathological liar. This term should be reserved, as we stated previously, for normal individuals who engage in pathological lying. Of course other observers have noted such lying in people who could not be designated as being mentally abnormal, but our material is peculiarly rich in examples of this kind.

CORRELATIONS STUDIED FOR CAUSES

Heredity. We come now to a very interesting group of facts--showing at once complete corroboration of previous observers' statements that pathological liars are extraordinarily ''erbliche belastet.'' Taking our 19 mentally normal cases we find the following:

Insanity in the direct family (four of these being a parent). .6 One or both parents severely alcoholic. . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Criminal or very dissolute parent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Suicide of parent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Extremely neuropathic parent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Syphilitic parent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Epileptic parent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Unsatisfactory data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Reliable data showing normal family stock . . . . . . . . . . .2

Thus, out of the 19 cases there are only three or four which do not come of stock showing striking defects. Now, as we go on to show later that unfortunate conditions or experiences were often causal factors, the total findings seem to show clearly that these latter influences generally bore their unfortunate fruition upon inherited instability.

The heredity in the border-line cases is, as might be expected, even worse. These facts are easily discerned in their respective case histories.

The question of inheritance of similar mental traits is, of course, important. We have found absolutely no proof of the trait of pathological lying, as such, being inherited. The reader will note with interest particularly the facts in Cases 2 and 4, where we at first thought we had to deal with inheritance, but later found there was no blood relationship between the supposed parent and child. In those instances the lying of the younger individual was much more likely to be the result of psychic contagion, and this also may be largely the explanation of Cases 6 and 8, where an older relative was well known to be a prevaricator. The bad inheritance in these cases then turns out to be, corroborating what we found in studying the general problem of criminality,[25] a matter of coming from stock that shows defects in various ways-all making, however, in the offspring for moral instability.

[25]''Inheritance as a Factor in Criminality. A Study of a Thousand Cases of Young Repeated Offenders.'' Edith R. Spaulding and William Healy. pp. 24. Bulletin of the American Academy of Medicine, Vol. XV. February 1914.

Developmental Physical Conditions. Inquiry into our 19 mentally normal cases gave the following findings: Antenatal conditions were defective in 2 cases on account of syphilis and in one case from advanced age of the mother. The accident during pregnancy to the mother in one case, the severe mental shock in another, and the effect of illegitimacy in still another we can not evaluate. In 2 cases there were operative births with, however, no bad results known. One was a twin. Early severe disease of the nervous system was experienced by one, and convulsions during infancy by two others. Another suffered from some unknown very severe early illness, and one from prolonged digestive disturbance in infancy. Three had in early childhood several severe illnesses, one had a long attack of ''ch.o.r.ea.'' Two suffered from general nervousness, incited in one case by the excessive use of tea and in the other by a similar use of coffee.

One was an habitual masturbator from childhood. Difficult menstruation was reported in only one case. In 5 cases there was a quite normal early developmental period, according to reliable accounts. In 3 cases the early developmental histories are completely unknown, and in 3 others uncertain. The data of developmental history in the border-line types may be easily noted in the case histories.