Pathology of Lying, Accusation, and Swindling: A Study in Forensic Psychology

by William Healy; Mary Tenney Healy

This exception was in the ``Aussage'' or testimony test. Here in reporting on our standard picture she gave in free recital 17 items, which is a fair result, but she added several incorrect details. On questioning she gave 12 more items, but invented still more details. Of the seven standard suggestions offered she very curiously accepted only one, and that not important. As an example of how she would supply details from her fancy is the following: The picture represents a little girl standing by the side of an older person. Janet said it was a little boy, that he had his hands in his pockets, a muffler on his neck, a stocking cap on his head, and black shoes and stockings. All of these were voluntarily offered and all were incorrect.

Beyond this curious performance, and her peculiar lack of foresight and shrewdness, or whatever it is that causes her so readily to falsify and fabricate, we found not the slightest evidence of aberration. Her conversation was coherent and to the point.

In the information obtained from the intelligent parents the following points stand out clearly. The heredity is of interest. There has been no known case of feeblemindedness, insanity, or epilepsy on either side, but there is a great admixture of very good with quite unstable qualities. This is true of both sides. Some members of the family have taken high positions in the community, and been exceptionally endowed mentally. Others have been notoriously lacking in stability. We are informed that on one side some have shown a marked inclination for tampering with the truth, and it is suggested that Janet's tendency is the result of early influence. The care of an incompetent grandmother, whose word was notoriously untrustworthy, devolved upon the family and it was impossible to prevent Janet from being much with her. All of the children were aware of the old lady's untruthfulness. One of Janet's parents had been addicted to narcotics, but had managed to shake off the habit. The other parent has had a severe attack of ``nervous prostration,'' largely induced, it is maintained, by worry over family affairs. It is most interesting to note that the other children, two boys and one girl, have turned out remarkably well; two being university graduates, and all being very stable in character. Both parents are people of good moral ideals, and in spite of their own nervous defects have given their children very good care.

The pregnancy with Janet was not entirely healthy, but no worse than with the other children. Her birth and infancy were normal. Walked and talked early. Started to school at 6. Menstruated first at 13; not irregular. She never had any severe illnesses of any kind. As a child she once fell down some steps and was unconscious for a few minutes, but the accident was not known to have left any bad effects. Janet's own stories of fainting are much exaggerated. In fact, the mother has never really seen her faint, nor is there any evidence of any minor lapses of consciousness. At times the girl would feel faint and ask that water be poured on her forehead—that was all there was to it. She was removed in the middle of her high school course on account of general nervousness. The doctor felt she was working too hard. Her parents are sure she was never a great sufferer from headaches. Nothing else of importance could be found in her physical history.

The story of this girl's falsifications and fabrications as obtained from her people is exceedingly long. As a young child she was not over-indulged in fairy stories, and the parents noticed nothing peculiar about her then. She was not regarded as a child who had any unusual powers of imagination. Somewhere about 12 years of age, her parents cannot be certain just when, they noticed she began the exaggeration and lying which has continued more or less ever since. In the past two or three years this has grown upon her and she has been making not only untrue statements, but has been concocting peculiarly long and intricate fabrications. The curious thing to the family is that Janet seems to have little shrewdness in lying; of normal ability in other things, she seems to have the mind of a child in this. Very many deceptions are discovered in short order, but even then the girl will sometimes argue at length that what she has said was really the truth. The parents insist she must know that she is lying, but her anomalous behavior has been so excessive that they have long felt she should be studied by a psychiatrist. Her mother asserts there is some periodicity in Janet's tendencies. She maintains she has noticed that most of her lies are told in the two or three days preceding menstruation. (This was certainly not true during the period we observed the girl.) The parents are sure there has never been any particular mental shock, and the mother has always felt that Janet was particularly free from contamination by bad children. At times she seems to realize her own bad behavior, and not long ago said she would become a nun, for in the tranquil life of the convent her tendency to lying would not be stimulated.

Further inquiry brought out the fact that it was true, as Janet stated, that in her high school course she became nervous to the extent of jerking and twitching, and that also for a time she stuttered. Their physician said, however, that there was no definite nervous disease.

As a young child the parents never thought this girl in any way different from the rest of the family. As she grew older she has been regarded as physically the most robust, but, as she stated to us, she has done the poorest intellectual work and that has often been a matter of family comment. The other children are careful truth tellers.

The type of Janet's lying has been not only in the form of falsifications about matters which directly concerned herself, but also involved extensive manufacture of long stories, phantasies. Meeting people she might give them extensive accounts of the wealth and importance of her own family. She once spread the report that her sister was married and living in a fine home close by, giving many elaborate details of the new household. Such stories naturally caused much family embarrassment. Then she worked up an imaginary entertainment and gave invitations to her brothers and sister at the request of a pretended hostess. Just before the event she, simulating the hostess, telephoned that an accident had taken place and the party would not be given. An extremely delicate situation arose because she alleged a certain young man wanted to marry her. The truth of her assertions in this matter never was investigated. The parents felt it quite impossible to go to the young man about the facts on account of the danger of exposing their daughter. They were long embarrassed by the extent to which she kept this affair going, but it finally was dropped without any social scandal occurring. In this and other affairs the family situation was at times unbearable because of the possibility that there might be some truth underlying the girl's statements. As the years went on Janet, of course, suffered from her loss of reputation, but still continued her practices of lying. In the two years before she left home she worked as a clerk. Previously she had held two or three situations and was reported to give good satisfaction in her work, but something would always come up about money matters, or other things, which would finally give rise to trouble. It is not known that she ever really took any money except the last time when she ran away and took a considerable sum from her parents.

A period of extensive untruthfulness and deception occurred before she left home. Janet represented to her parents that she was working at a certain place after she had left. She got into some mix-up about money matters, the rights of which never were straightened out. As usual, the affair was too complicated to be understood by anything short of a prolonged investigation. After things had come to this pass and her parents hardly knew what to do with her, she took money from them and ran away. She was readily traced because the ticket agent in her home town could give a description of her. She had bought a ticket to an intermediate point and there stopped over night. Her father followed her thus far. It seems when she finally got to New York she hunted up the distant relatives who took her in and informed the mother. The girl intended to earn her own living and soon found a good place. She was always able to make a good presentation of herself, being a quiet and convincing conversationalist.

Out of the mess of lies surrounding her New York experience, it was finally found that she had met a young man in a boarding-house and had become infatuated with him. He was an honest enough fellow, but fell in readily with her forwardness. He took her to shows, and letters, intercepted by the mother, showed that between them there had been some premature love passages. At that time Janet started making weekly payments on a gold watch to give to this young man at Christmas, a curious and quite unwarranted expenditure. Perhaps this was the fact around which some of her fabrications at that time centered. Perhaps it was this money which became now the amount she was paying to her father's pensioner, now what she had to send home to her mother, and, again, her payments upon an imaginary sewing machine. In this affair, as at other times, the lying was extremely childish, inasmuch as the truth, through receipts found in her room, proved to be readily ascertainable.