Pathology of Lying, accusation, and swindling Part 17

Again our advice was not taken and some months later the father came to us with the story of extreme poverty, some recent attacks of unconsciousness on his part, separation from his third wife, and the information that Annie was about to become a chorus girl.

Even a final consideration of the general diagnosis in this case which has been so long observed by us does not seem to justify our including it among our border-line mental types. Application of the term const.i.tutional inferiority seems a priori warranted by the family history and yet we have no proof that her physical and mental conditions as enumerated above are not the result of her many early illnesses and the excessively erratic environmental conditions, rather than of causes which existed at birth.

On account of the peculiar inhibitory phases which arose nearly always during observation, we never relied merely on the results of laboratory tests for our judgment, and her success in some social situations has proved the wisdom of this. Our earliest feeling that we had to do with a temporary and mild psychosis was perhaps justified, but further observation of her has led us to see clearly that she is not to be considered as a deeply aberrational type. Could she ever have been free from the extraordinarily upsetting home conditions one could have gauged much more accurately her mental capabilities. As time went on, the moral difficulties, which were largely induced by family conditions, led to mental as well as moral upsets which could be considered as little else than normal reactions to the situation.

Her conduct lapses, under the circ.u.mstances, are no indication of any mental breakdown. On the contrary, it is clear by our own examinations and the accounts of other observers that she gradually has showed greater mental stability.

(Since writing the above, we have had, by chance, the opportunity of getting some important information about this case from an entirely new source. A person who knew the family many years ago corroborates the father's remarkable story of antecedents. The father himself remains in about the same state of social incapacity. Annie, now married to a young man with a long criminal record, has a child. Her word has recently been found absolutely unreliable, and testimony lately given by her in court concerning her husband was grossly false when it would seem that her interests and welfare demanded her testifying the truth concerning his non-support.)

--------------------------------------------------------------- Mentality: Psychoneurotic. Case 20.

Heredity: Extremely defective. Girl, age 16.

Developmental conditions: Defective antenatal conditions. Difficult birth. Earlier neurosis.

Physical conditions: Earlier dental defects.

Defective vision, usually uncorrected.

Stigmata of eyes.

Stimulants: Excessive use of tea.

Home conditions: Highly erratic and unstable.

Many bad influences there.

Excitement and suggestion from revival.

Delinquencies: Mentality: Self-accusations. Abilities irregular, Running away. and as above.

s.e.x affairs.

CASE 21

Summary: This case ill.u.s.trates the fact that pathological lying and accusation may arise first during a period of special stress.

A young woman of 19, after illegitimately becoming pregnant, was found home after home by a charitable organization. In each place she made false accusations of immoral proposals against some one in the family or neighborhood. This created much trouble and lost her several good homes. Her lies persisted after an abortion had been secretly produced, but it is to be noted that she now, as a sequel to the operation, suffered from irritative pelvic conditions.

A short statement of this case will suffice to bring out the point that during a period of social and mental upset pathological lying and accusation may be first indulged in. We studied the case of a young woman of 19 who had been the source of much trouble in a certain locality on account of her false accusations. She was taken in hand by a charitable organization and found a home, after she had become pregnant at a wedding feast where alcoholic stimulants flowed freely. There was then no one to look after her but an invalid father. She was placed with an estimable family. In a short time she made the shocking announcement to the wife, and to others, that the husband had made immoral advances to her. He was a man of excellent character and of course this could not be believed. She was then placed on a farm, where she showed erotic tendencies and insisted that one of the helpers about the place wanted to take liberties with her. She was observed flirting and making advances to thrashers and others. She had to be found a new home, and this time it was in a city, where new accusations were made against a delivery boy. After this the young woman made off and s.h.i.+fted for herself for a time, and succeeded in getting some shady character to produce an abortion on her. Later, she again came to the official attention of the social agency by reason of making new accusations. From the date of her impregnation to the time we first studied her, a period of about 10 months, she had made serious accusations against many. When her lies were told in a new environment they, of course, always made new trouble.

Each time, however, the girl herself was the loser. Her real partner at the wedding feast had early deposited several hundred dollars for the expected infant.

We found a strong, normally developed young woman of rather attractive appearance for the grade in society from which she came. No sensory defect. Diseased tonsils. Complained of constant suffering from pelvic conditions, perhaps induced by the abortion. However, being such a strong type she has been able to get about well and do her daily work. When we saw her she was employed in a factory.

The question put to us was concerning her mentality. She came of a Slavic peasant family, had been in this country only 6 years, and her relatives spoke only Slavic. She had been to school but a very short time, either in the old country or here. Because of the language difficulty, the giving of many tests, such as those in the upper years of the Binet system, could be regarded as most unfair. However, the simpler language tests she did fairly well, especially those where she could understand the commonsense questions. In regard to her acquirement of English, she has done better than her relatives, who continue to live in a neighborhood where their own Slavic dialect is spoken. When it came to dealing reasoningly with concrete situations, such as those presented by our performance tests, this young woman did comparatively well--quite above the grade of the feebleminded.

Our diagnosis, then, was that she could best be regarded as poor in ability or possibly subnormal as compared with our general population, but as correlated with her peasant type she was probably normal.

From the standpoint of aberration one could find no evidences of anything but eroticism and a constant tendency to deviate from the truth. About the affair of the abortion she showed herself unexpectedly shrewd, maintaining that she had had to work very hard carrying stones when a new silo was being built on the farm, and at her next menstrual period she had flowed for a week or so, and that was all there was to it, except that she had been suffering from pains continually since. (The charitable organization knew she had visited the office of a notorious abortionist.) She smiled much in a silly way when in the company of men; she proved herself easily led. Taking it altogether, there was no reason for considering her insane, or as being in any way a psychopathic personality. She showed no stigmata of degeneracy.

There was no opportunity to get a satisfactory family history.

Many of the relatives were still in the old country. A sister and brothers have been known in the neighborhood where this girl lived, and are said to appear quite normal in their simple ways of living. They are of the peasant type and good laborers, but given to occasional indulgence in feasting with alcoholic embellishments. From the sister we learned that this girl had pa.s.sed through a sickly childhood and had been most irregularly brought up on account of the illnesses of her mother. She was not known as a liar when younger. Her short school record showed nothing of value for diagnosis. What happened to this girl was no great exception; among these people, we know from their own accounts, free and easy s.e.x relations.h.i.+ps are common. We are advised that it was long ago known that this girl was going with bad companions.

In this case we advised gynecological and other medical treatment and segregation in a reformatory or industrial school. The young woman could be regarded as nothing else than a dangerous person in any community. Even when being brought to us she had endeavored to flirt with a conductor on the train. A fair diagnosis could only be that she was, for the present at least, morally irresponsible.

This case has been only recently studied and no further report can be given. It is cited in ill.u.s.tration of the fact that was not clearly brought out by our other cases, namely, that a period of stress may be very definitely the exciting factor in developing pathological lying and accusation. This stands out particularly clearly in this case because the young woman had, prior to the wedding feast, been a good worker and had given no trouble in the community.

CHAPTER V

CASES OF PATHOLOGICAL LYING IN BORDER-LINE MENTAL TYPES

We could load our pages with histories of cases where the statement of delusions, unrecognized as such, has created much trouble in courts and out, but this type of case is too well known to need any ill.u.s.tration. Text books of psychiatry deal with the falsifications of paranoia and other insanities. That the really insane also sometimes lie pathologically, that is, tell for no normal purpose what they adequately know to be untrue, is a fact not so well understood. But even that we need not be especially concerned with in our case histories. It has been well brought out in the previous literature on pathological lying, as witness in our Chapter II. In the present chapter we do not include the out-and-out insane, nor the definitively feeble-minded, nor the recognizably epileptic.

Much more difficult of understanding and much less easily recognized because of the mildness of many of the symptoms, or their variations from time to time, are the types which we enumerate. Several of these offer no complete picture of insanity--even Case 25, although clearly aberrational, extremely defective in self-control, and markedly criminalistic, did not show to some psychiatrists who observed him a sufficiently clear correspondence to any form of insanity as laid down in the old-school text-books to be practically regarded as insane and in need of long segregation. In considering this whole matter we must never forget that there is no wall of demarcation between those whose conduct clearly betokens insanity and those who are not insane. There are plenty of instances where the easily pa.s.sable border between the two is permanently occupied or is at times approached.

We keep our border-line cases separate in order to emphasize that pathological lying by an insane person does not make a pathological liar in the true sense. We should hesitate, however, to give in legal form a verdict of insanity in several of these border-line cases we cite--they are very difficult to cla.s.sify, and the question of responsibility called for sometimes in court work is unanswerable. Keeping even these mild cases away from our others serves, however, to lessen confusion; we need in this subject to conserve all the clearness possible by holding to fundamental cla.s.sifications and showing up vagueness of definition where it does exist.

Perhaps we are over-particular in keeping such a case as No. 22 in this chapter. The commonsense observer would hardly regard this girl as at all lacking, even in self-control. On the other hand, for the purpose of ill.u.s.trating the subject of pathological accusation we have kept Case 17 in the previous chapter when it clearly shows great resemblance to Case 26 and is in reality a border-line type. Then, too, the swindler, Case 12, in some respects belongs in this chapter.

We are hardly called on in this work to discuss the lying of drug habitues, although they so frequently in their mental conditions represent border-line types. They are often on the verge of a psychosis as the result of their intoxications. Their lying is mostly done for a purpose, to be sure, and hence much would not come under the head of pathological lying, but occasionally veracity is so much interfered with that there seems to be a tendency to aimless lying. This cla.s.s of cases, however, is sufficiently discussed in special literature pertaining to the subject.[24]

[24] Vide, ''Morphinism and Narcomanias From Other Drugs,'' by T.

D. Crothers. Philadelphia, Saunders and Co., 1902. Also Chapter V, Stimulants and Narcotics, in ''The Individual Delinquent,'' by William Healy Boston, Little, Brown, and Co., 1915.

CASE 22

Summary: A girl of 14, a most vigorous and vivacious personality, had for a couple of years pursued a curiously active career of misrepresentation, of obtaining goods under false pretenses and running away from home even to distant places. Her conversational ability was above normal; her lies were evolved for the purpose of adapting herself to the peculiar circ.u.mstances in which she frequently found herself. Her general conduct combined with her abnormal psych.o.m.otor activity gave ground for the diagnosis of const.i.tutional excitement--hypomania.

Birdie M., 14 years old, we saw after some clever detective work had proved her to be the girl who in another town had repeatedly swindled shop-keepers. It seems she had been accustomed to take the train for localities where she had no connections whatever, and there enter shops and make away with whatever she could. An astounding incident was when she returned some goods she had stolen and persuaded the manager to ''refund'' her the money on the same. This was regarded by the authorities as extremely clever.

We found Birdie very small for her age. Weight 76 lbs.; height 4 ft. 8 in. Tonsils very large. Teeth excessively crowded. No sensory defect. Not yet menstruated. A very nervous type; quick physical and mental reactions; exceedingly active, restless manner.

Our psychological impressions state that Birdie did all her tests brilliantly and quickly, but very often with less accuracy than would have been the case had she taken the time to think quietly rather than work rapidly. She was very keen to make the best possible record. ''I am proud of being quick; nothing is hard for me; it was not hard at school.'' It was found by steadying her that she gave a more accurate performance. We diagnosed her ability as good, but her school advantages had been poor.

Otherwise we noted she was a pert, talkative, responsive child, of a distinctly nervous and somewhat unreliable type. Her ideas came tumbling, one on top of another. Under close supervision she was able to control her mental processes fairly well. For instance, on the antonym test, where opposites to twenty stimulus words are called for, Birdie gave them in the remarkably rapid average time of .8 of a second, with only one failure and one error. This is an exceptional record. From this and her unexpected powers of self-control exhibited on some other tests we were obliged to conclude that her aberrational tendencies were not very deep-set. Her mental traits seemed to conform most nearly to the type designated as const.i.tutional excitement, or hypomania. Further observation of the case confirmed us in this first view of it.

On the ''Aussage'' or Testimony Test she gave 13 items, all correct, upon free recital. On questioning, 14 more details were added, but 6 of these were incorrect. Of the 6 suggestions offered she accepted none.

Birdie immigrated from Austria with her family when she was 10 years of age. She came of a healthy family; all of her grandparents and many of her uncles and aunts are living. We get no history of any insanity, epilepsy, or feeblemindedness on either side. She is one of 7 children, several of whom have had nervous troubles. Two of the children had convulsions in infancy, but then only. One brother at 10 years old is an excessive stammerer and extremely nervous.

Birdie was born after a pregnancy during which the mother was much worried and in poor health. The father, too, was sickly at that time. The family conditions were defective on account of poverty and illness during a large share of the period when the children were born. Birdie at birth was very small and there was difficulty in resuscitation. She, however, was never seriously ill until she was 7 years of age, when she had something like peritonitis. No spasms or convulsions at any time. She was a very small child during her infancy, but walked at 8 months and talked very well indeed when she was only one year old.

Developmental history otherwise negative, but all along there has been poor family control on account of ill health and the slight earning capacity of the father.

During the several months we knew Birdie she was always a most unreliable person. She repeatedly ran away from home and was lost track of. On one occasion she got as far as Omaha. By the use of elaborate, but plausible stories she always succeeded in winning the friends.h.i.+p of reputable people. Once she was found, after she had been away several weeks, residing in a good home in another State where the people thought of adopting her on account of her brightness. Many times she wandered about her home city and in the most active and sly fas.h.i.+on purloined anything she cared for. Several times when she was taken by the police she invented clever stories, without the least faltering, that seemed entirely fitted to the occasion. As the investigator said, she talked incessantly with not the slightest hesitation and was always airy and sure. No one to whom she had gone with her misrepresentations questioned her veracity-- she always came out with a clearly connected and plausible story. We noted that her parents in comparison seemed quite stupid.

Of course Birdie pa.s.sed under various names. Once we recognized her picture in the newspaper representing a weary, disheartened girl who was tired walking all day long from one employment bureau to another. She stated to the reporter it was her ambition to become a model servant. When in Omaha her mental peculiarities were recognized and she was studied by a competent alienist who, however, was not willing to render a verdict of non compos mentis to the police. This was when she had run away from Chicago and had told a lot of stories all of which had turned out to be untrue. The trouble which she created in various communities by reason of her hyperactive delinquencies has not been small.

With much merriment and an excessive amount of facial expression this little girl held forth to us. It is hardly necessary to say that the account varied somewhat from day to day. She did not like it at home and did not propose to go back there. There were too many in the family. As soon as the floor was scrubbed one of the children would get it all dirty again. She had started for New York, but the old gatekeeper at the station was mean and she could not slip by him. She got along all right in Omaha, but finally she gave herself up to the police there. She thinks perhaps she might go up to the people in Wisconsin who wanted to adopt her. In any case, she can do a great deal better than Viola B. who ran away from New York and got caught, and was so much talked about in the newspapers.

Thus her story would run along at great length, Birdie in the meanwhile chuckling with the thought of her own escapades.