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
We see neither reason for including insane cases nor for
overlapping the already used classifications which are based on
more vital facts than the symptom of lying. Our use of abnormal
cases in our chapter, ``Illustrations of Border-Line Types,''
will be perfectly clear to those who read these cases. They
represent the material not easily diagnosed, sometimes after long
observation by professional people, or else they are clearly
abnormal individuals who, by the possession of certain
capacities, manage to keep their heads well above the level of
social incompetency as judged by the world at large.
We have introduced only the cases where we have had ample proof
that the individual had been given to excessive lying of our
peculiar type. In the court room and working with delinquents
outside the court, it is in rare instances totally impossible to
know where the truth finally rests; such have been left out.
Then, too, we omit cases in which false accusations have about
them the shadow of even a suspicion of vindictiveness. False
accusations of young children against parents would hardly seem
to have such a basis, and yet in some instances this fact has
come out clearly. Grudge-formation on the part of young
individuals has all through our work been one of the
extraordinary findings; capacity for it varies tremendously in
different individuals.
Several forms of excessive lying, particularly those practised by
children and adolescents, are not discussed by us because they
are largely age phenomena and only verge upon the pathological as
they are carried over into wider fields of conduct. The
fantasies of children, and the almost obsessional lying in some
young adolescents, too, we avoid. There is much shading of
typical pathological lying into, on the one hand, the really
insane types, and, on the other hand, into the lying which is to
be explained by quite normal reactions or where the tendency to
mendacity is only partially developed.
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