Deceitfulness

Deceitfulness, the intentional or unintentional use of lies in communication with people, is a feature of practical importance and of interest in various fields of knowledge: sociology, pedagogy, criminology, psychology, and psychopathology. Lying is not necessarily confined to words but can also be expressed in gestures, mimicry, and other means of human interaction. In a broad sense, any statement that distorts reality is called a lie. Usually, the following types of deceitfulness are distinguished. 1. The deceitfulness of primitive people, which, arising at the first stages of human social development, depends on the predominance of emotional moments, imagination, and superficial subjective generalizations that replace a lack of knowledge, a lack of development of logical thinking and speech precision (see Imagination). 2. The same causes underlie the childish tendency to fantasize, childish deceitfulness, and an inability to accurately convey reality. 3. Pathological deceitfulness, also in most cases associated with mental underdevelopment and emotional instability. 4. Deceitfulness as an error of adults (for example, unintentional lying in witness testimony) due to insufficient accuracy of perception, peculiarities of attention and memory, and due to the fragmentary and insufficient data for judging facts. In all these cases, objectively incorrect, false statements are subjectively reliable at the moment for the person making them and therefore are not deceitfulness in the present sense of the word. However, knowing about the possibility of such deceitfulness is very important from a practical standpoint. Finally, fully conscious lying includes: 1) conventional lying, conditional lying (altruistic—hiding unpleasant news that unnecessarily causes anxiety, lying in art, jokes, etc.); 2) conscious distortion of truth to deceive another for personal or group gain. Pathological deceitfulness begins where lying becomes an object of drive in itself and thus, to a certain degree, transforms from a means into an independent goal. In these cases, it often takes forms approaching the primitive lying of a savage and a child, especially in the role played by excessive excitability and the richness of immature imagination in the origin of these forms. This last circumstance gave Delbrück, the author of one of the first and most thorough works on pathological lying, occasion to call it fantastic lying—pseudologia fantastica [French authors, following Dupré, are more inclined to call pathological lying mithomania]. Pathological liars, or, as they are sometimes called, pseudologists, or mithomaniacs, represent a peculiar psychopathic personality, attracting the most attention for their tendency to tell stories that are impressive to the imagination but, upon verification, turn out in most cases to be false, in which their own person figures most prominently. Krapelin described this group of psychopaths, emphasizing the fact that pathological liars are not only inventors but also personalities directed egocentrically, and accordingly united them into one group of "liars and swindlers" (Lügner und Schwindler). Most often these are people not devoid of superficial abilities, often artistically gifted; many of them write decent poetry, draw, engage in music, and have a passion for the theater. Quickly making acquaintances, they adapt well to people and easily gain their trust, all the more so because they usually know how to make an impression by their manner of behaving. However, they always suffer from a complete lack of diligence and endurance and rarely show genuine interest in anything other than their own person. Their spiritual life is petty; they live only by the interests of the moment, not thinking about the future, and do not like work; any work, especially one requiring persistence and thoroughness, has a repelling effect on them. "Their thinking," says Krapelin, "lacks systematicity, order, and coherence; their judgments lack maturity and thoroughness, and their entire perception of life lacks depth and seriousness." They are capricious in their sympathies and do not form lasting relationships with people. The sense of duty is alien to them, and they love only themselves. Being extremely frivolous and egoistic, they are also vain and indiscriminate in their means. In their actions, they are guided most of all by the need to be at the center of attention of those around them. Invention and lying, on one hand, give them a unique tool for the struggle of life, allowing them to achieve often very effective, though fleeting, successes without special effort and exertion, and on the other, give them a unique independent pleasure, remotely reminiscent of the satisfaction felt by an artist in the process of creation. Such people lie talentfully, masterfully, becoming absorbed in their own lies and almost forgetting that it is a lie. Often they lie completely aimlessly, without any pretext, just to amaze the imagination of their interlocutor. They are especially eager to tell about their high origin, wealth, their connections, and important posts they held or hold. In the excitement of their lies, which begins to dominate such a personality and forces it to "wear someone else's clothes," they often resort to various fraudulent tricks and imposture; this also includes some petty street "swindlers" who extort money from trusting people with fantastic stories about misfortunes that befell them or promises to help realize a profitable deal. Until they are caught, their dexterity and self-possession are astounding, but when cornered and seeing no way out, they fall into complete despair and then completely lose their dignity. Psychopaths of this kind, thanks to their activity, sometimes surface in social life (especially under conditions of the decay of bourgeois culture) to then settle relatively quickly at the bottom. The desire to "appear bigger than one really is" actually connects pathological liars with the circle of so-called "hysterical" characters (Geltungssuchtige Schneider). Jaspers and Kretschmer even consider the former a variety of this circle. Indeed, both concepts—degenerative hysteria and pathological lying—gain much more clarity from their comparison with each other; this last comparison makes the regularity of the combination, on one hand, of childishness, immaturity, and fantasizing, and on the other, of egotism, emotional instability, and to a degree conscious deception, much clearer. The deceitfulness of the core of hysterics differs from the deceitfulness of the entire above-described group only in that it rarely crosses the limits defined by criminal law and is less fantastic, often concentrating on inventing and embellishing pathological symptoms. Among its particularly exotic manifestations, one must mention the self-inflicted injuries made by hysterics with the sole purpose of proving the severity of their suffering, as well as the frequent false accusations by hysterics of rape by persons with whom they remained alone for one reason or another, for example, with the doctors treating them. The heightened activity of imagination somewhat brings pathological liars closer to fantasizers—"dreamers," who also sometimes lose the ability to distinguish the fiction they created from reality. With regard to pathological lying, the hypothesis of partial delay in mental development, peculiar psych infantilism, which Krapelin holds responsible for the emergence of psychopathies in general, applies without special modification. Of course, biological factors create only the soil for the development of the pseudologist's personality, while the concrete content, and equally the impulses for action, this personality always receives from its environment. Thus, it is precisely here that one sees how a class society determines the type and structure of personality development. In the picture of proper psychoses, lying and deceitfulness in the direct sense play a secondary role, usually arising as a phenomenon accompanying the weakening of social inhibitions or caused by delusion, as well as by various practical motives; among these, simulation, dissimulation, and aggravation are included. In literature, the question was also raised whether the tendency to fantastic confabulations arising in some memory disorders (for example, in Korsakoff's psychosis) is not also a phenomenon related to pathological lying but developing only under a corresponding fantastic constitution in the patient. Finally, one must mention a peculiar form of mental disorder that apparently develops primarily in pseudologists, usually for a very short time under the influence of partly weakening physical factors (fatigue, infection, etc.) and partly mental trauma (imprisonment), and consists of the unrestrained production of the most incredible inventions, accompanied by subjective certainty in their truth. This is the so-called delusional fantasies of degenerates. The prediction and possibility of treating deceitfulness depend entirely on the properties of the underlying substrate (whether it is a delay of biological or social character).

Expressed degrees of fantastic deceitfulness must be treated as early as possible; neuropathic and psychopathic children require special pedagogical measures based on great tact and extreme caution in applying any repressive influences; here the method of ignoring and, above all, switching creative fantasy to socially useful ends sometimes acts well, whereas humiliating reproaches and punishments often lead to the opposite result. Habituation to socially useful labor corresponding to natural characteristics (art), under constant and prolonged control within a labor collective, is useful even for adults with not sharply expressed pseudologues. However, with sharply expressed psychopathic constitution the prognosis is unfavorable. Necessary therapeutic attempts in such cases, consisting of complete re-education of the personality, encounter insurmountable obstacles - degenerative properties of the subject. In forensic psychiatry, phenomena of pathological deceitfulness have always attracted great attention. The difficulties arising here are mainly due to the extreme complexity and branching of the tangled web of lies spun by the pseudologue, which sometimes even he himself is unable to unravel. The question of social protection measures is resolved by applying the principle of expediency. This means that in judging such a psychopath, the consideration of a preventive nature is placed in the foreground, i.e., the question is posed as to how socially harmful or dangerous such a personality is. This position does not change in principle even in cases where the offender is entirely a plaything of his pathological drives. Then the measure of social protection is expressed only in internment in a psychiatric institution. It is also very important to remember the constant, almost inaccuracy, unintentional deceitfulness of all kinds of testimony (witness testimony at trial, testimony about the course of disease, anamnesis, etc.). In this respect, experimental works by V. Stern are particularly indicative. The images of our memories do not lie in the brain in a stable form to be stereotypically and accurately reproduced the moment they are required. What remains in memory after a certain time from what has been experienced is usually only fragments, which in later transmission are usually supplemented from the general stock of representations of the narrator. This unconscious transforming process of memory is especially strong in those cases where the described event evoked certain strong emotions, where the narrator is interested in a certain version of the fact. Then individual features of the fact, not emotionally accentuated, are veiled, repressed, while emotionally important ones stand out vividly, and the narrator is not conscious of any exaggeration. The more often the narrator repeats his story, the more pictures forming in his favor are built up, and finally the event is so firmly fixed in his consciousness in that form as any delusion. The imperfections of the organs of perception, weakness of attention, suggestibility depending on the form of the question (leading questions), and the confusion of what is seen with what is heard from others, etc., also have great significance in the inaccuracy of testimony. These inaccuracies, unintentional deceitfulness of testimony, are significant not only for the lawyer (at trial) but also for the doctor when collecting the anamnesis, information about the causes and course of disease, especially in cases of trauma, receipt of insurance sums, etc.