Pathology of Lying, Accusation, and Swindling: A Study in Forensic PsychologyHealy, William
Science
Pathology of Lying, Accusation, and Swindling: A Study in Forensic Psychology
Healy, William
Criminal psychology; Swindlers and swindling
A great love of the dramatic was always displayed by this boy,
which may largely account for the evolution of his lying into
long and complicated stories. When truant one day he boldly
visited the school for truants, and when under probation, after
having fallen into the hands of the police two or three times, he
impersonated a policeman. The latter was such a remarkable
occurrence and led to such a peculiar situation that much notice
of it was taken in the newspapers. The incongruity between
apperception of his own faults and his continued lying,
considering his good mental endowment, seemed very strange. One
day he sobbed and clung to my arm and begged me to be a friend to
him and help him from telling such lies. ``I don't know what
makes me do it. I can't help it.'' Over and over he asserted
his desire to be a good man and a great man. This was at the
same time when some of his most complicated fabrications were
reiterated.
No help was to be had from his parents in getting at the genesis
of this boy's troubles; we had to rely on what seemed to be the
probable truth as told by the boy himself. It is only fair to
say that in response to many inquiries we did receive reliable
facts from the lad. My assistant also went into the question of
beginnings and was told at an entirely different time the same
story. Robert always maintained that his lying began when he was
a very little boy, when he found out that by telling his
grandmother that his mother was mean to him he could get things
done for him which he wanted. Later it seems he used to lie
because he was afraid of being punished or because he did not
like to be scolded. We found there was no question about the
fact that his parents never were in sympathy with his library
reading and his attempts to learn and be somebody in the world.
At first, then, there seemed to be a definite purpose in his
lying. At one time he pretended to be hurt when taken in custody
and thought because of this he would be allowed to go home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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