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
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.
A good example of the character of Janet's falsifications was the
story about the death of her lover, told to us at our last
interview with her when she had come to us with the specific
purpose of trying to get herself straightened out once and for
all. She was not aware that her parents had given me any account
of this young man, but she might well have supposed that I had
inquired about him, or at least would inquire. Only a few
minutes previously she had told about her lying and given a very
definite account of its beginnings which was much in accord with
what her parents had said. Mentioning her love affairs, she
maintained that, unbeknown to her parents, she had been engaged
to this man, but that he had proved to be a thief, stealing money
and robbing the mails. She started off on a story of how another
young man was accused, but no evidence was forthcoming about him,
and soon afterward her lover died. Getting him safely buried for
us, she was quite willing to go on to another topic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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