Summary: A thoroughly characteristic example of the type of pathological lying which led to the invention of the term pseudologia phantastica. A young woman, well endowed physically and mentally, for years has often been indulging in extensive fabrications which have no discernible basis in advantages accruing to herself. The peculiarities of the falsifications have given rise to much trouble for her, her family, and for many others who have been incidentally connected with the situation. The genesis of the tendency was finally found in early experiences about which there have been much mental repression and conflict. In the background there was also defective home control and chronic neuropathic tendencies in both parents and in their kin.

Janet B., 19 years old, we saw first in an eastern city at the request of her parents. There she had become involved in troubles which seemed particularly hard to unravel. However, we were told that this was an old story with her. A diagnosis of her mental condition was asked, and recommendations for the future. Janet had told some very peculiar stories at her place of employment where she was doing very well as a newcomer, without any seeming reason for fabrication. Several who had become interested in her were wondering if she were quite sane.

After having made her way alone to New York, Janet readily obtained employment. After a couple of weeks she approached a department manager of the concern for which she worked and related a long story, which at once aroused his sympathy. She told him that her father and mother had died in the last year and that she was entirely dependent upon herself. When she was about four years of age she had been in a terrible accident and a certain man had saved her life. Naturally, her father had always thought very highly of this person and had pensioned him. Formerly he lived up in the country with his family, but at present was old, penniless, and alone in the city. Now that her parents were dead she was in a quandary about keeping up her father's obligation to the old man. Out of her $8 a week it was hard to make both ends meet. She had to pay her own board and for this man also. She found that he needed to be taken care of in every way; she had to wash his face and dress him, he was so helpless. She made no demand for any increase of salary and the story was told evidently without any specific intent. The services of a social worker were enlisted by the firm and the girl reiterated the same story to her, even though it was clearly intended that the case should be investigated. Janet's boarding-house was visited and there she was found to be living with distant relatives whom she had searched out upon her arrival in the city. They knew she had run away from home and, indeed, by this time the mother herself was already in New York, having been sent for by them.

The situation then became more complicated through the girl's giving more explanatory details to the social worker, somewhat accusing her own family. It was at this time I first saw her. She then acknowledged that this story of a man who had saved her life was purely an invention. Now she stated that in the western town where she lived she had been engaged to a young man who was discovered to be a defaulter and who had recently died. When this fellow was in trouble, his mother, while calling on Janet's family, used to make signals to her and leave notes under the table cover, asking for funds with which to help him out. This was a great strain upon Janet and even more so was his death. She could stand it no longer and fled the city. Her lover's stealing was a secret which she had kept from her own family.

Before we had become acquainted with the true facts about the family this girl gave us most extensive accounts of various phases of her home life which included the most unlikely and contradictory details. For instance, they had a large house with beautiful grounds, yet before she left home she bought a sewing machine for her mother, which she is paying for on weekly installments. Her $8 a week is very little for her to live on because she is paying this indebtedness. Janet wishes now to take out a twenty year endowment policy in favor of her mother. Her brothers and sister are all very bright, she tells us, but she has never been particularly close to any member of her family except her mother. The others always remind her that they are better educated than she is. She expects to take up French and Spanish in the evenings because they would be very helpful to her commercially. She does not care to grow up, prefers simple enjoyments, and has no desire for social affairs. She is only desirous of improving her education. She relates her success as a Sunday School teacher. She thinks at times she is very nervous, and especially when she was in the high school she showed signs of it. Then she used to stutter much, but of late she has been able to control this.

At another time, very glibly and without the slightest show of emotion, she continues with her story. Tells of frequent fainting spells when she goes from one attack into another. She has not had them just recently, but she used to have them at home. Tells us now that her mother has been very sick and she has been worrying much about her. She wanted to send money to her and help support her. `It's awfully hard on one to know your mother is terribly sick and to think you can't reach her if anything should happen.” (It is to be remembered that all this was told when the girl must have known, if she had thought at all, that we would certainly get the full facts in a day or so.)

On the physical side we found a very well developed and well nourished young woman. Weight 148 lbs. No sensory defect noted. Moderately coarse features, broad deep chest, quiet and strong attitude. No signs whatever of nervousness. Her only complaint at present is of headaches and “quivering” attacks. (We could get no corroboration at all of either of these from any one else.) She frequently spoke of herself as entirely healthy except for these slight ailments. Some months later, vide infra, it was discovered that Janet had a chronic pelvic trouble. The most notable finding was Janet's facial expression when confronted by some of her incongruities of behavior. Then she assumed a most peculiar, open-eyed, wondering, dumb expression. When flatly told a certain part of her story was falsehood, she looked one straight in the eyes and said in a wonderfully demure and semi-sorrowful manner, “I am sorry you think so.” Her expression was sincere enough to make even experienced observers half think they must themselves be wrong.

On the mental side she demonstrated good ability in many ways. She had been through two years of high school and showed evidences of her training. We tested her for a number of different capacities and, with one exception, we found all through that she did fairly satisfactory work, showing herself to have normal mental capabilities and control.

This exception was in the “Aussage” or testimony test. Here in reporting on our standard picture she gave in free recital 17 items, which is a fair result, but she added several incorrect details. On questioning she gave 12 more items, but invented still more details. Of the seven standard suggestions offered she very curiously accepted only one, and that not important. As an example of how she would supply details from her fancy is the following: The picture represents a little girl standing by the side of an older person. Janet said it was a little boy, that he had his hands in his pockets, a muffler on his neck, a stocking cap on his head, and black shoes and stockings. All of these were voluntarily offered and all were incorrect.

Beyond this curious performance, and her peculiar lack of foresight and shrewdness, or whatever it is that causes her so readily to falsify and fabricate, we found not the slightest evidence of aberration. Her conversation was coherent and to the point.

In the information obtained from the intelligent parents the following points stand out clearly. The heredity is of interest. There has been no known case of feeblemindedness, insanity, or epilepsy on either side, but there is a great admixture of very good with quite unstable qualities. This is true of both sides. Some members of the family have taken high positions in the community, and been exceptionally endowed mentally. Others have been notoriously lacking in stability. We are informed that on one side some have shown a marked inclination for tampering with the truth, and it is suggested that Janet's tendency is the result of early influence. The care of an incompetent grandmother, whose word was notoriously untrustworthy, devolved upon the family and it was impossible to prevent Janet from being much with her. All of the children were aware of the old lady's untruthfulness. One of Janet's parents had been addicted to narcotics, but had managed to shake off the habit. The other parent has had a severe attack of “nervous prostration,” largely induced, it is maintained, by worry over family affairs. It is most interesting to note that the other children, two boys and one girl, have turned out remarkably well; two being university graduates, and all being very stable in character. Both parents are people of good moral ideals, and in spite of their own nervous defects have given their children very good care.

The pregnancy with Janet was not entirely healthy, but no worse than with the other children. Her birth and infancy were normal. Walked and talked early. Started to school at 6. Menstruated first at 13; not irregular. She never had any severe illnesses of any kind. As a child she once fell down some steps and was unconscious for a few minutes, but the accident was not known to have left any bad effects. Janet's own stories of fainting are much exaggerated. In fact, the mother has never really seen her faint, nor is there any evidence of any minor lapses of consciousness. At times the girl would feel faint and ask that water be poured on her forehead--that was all there was to it. She was removed in the middle of her high school course on account of general nervousness. The doctor felt she was working too hard. Her parents are sure she was never a great sufferer from headaches. Nothing else of importance could be found in her physical history.

The story of this girl's falsifications and fabrications as obtained from her people is exceedingly long. As a young child she was not over-indulged in fairy stories, and the parents noticed nothing peculiar about her then. She was not regarded as a child who had any unusual powers of imagination. Somewhere about 12 years of age, her parents cannot be certain just when, they noticed she began the exaggeration and lying which has continued more or less ever since. In the past two or three years this has grown upon her and she has been making not only untrue statements, but has been concocting peculiarly long and intricate fabrications. The curious thing to the family is that Janet seems to have little shrewdness in lying; of normal ability in other things, she seems to have the mind of a child in this. Very many deceptions are discovered in short order, but even then the girl will sometimes argue at length that what she has said was really the truth. The parents insist she must know that she is lying, but her anomalous behavior has been so excessive that they have long felt she should be studied by a psychiatrist. Her mother asserts there is some periodicity in Janet's tendencies. She maintains she has noticed that most of her lies are told in the two or three days preceding menstruation. (This was certainly not true during the period we observed the girl.) The parents are sure there has never been any particular mental shock, and the mother has always felt that Janet was particularly free from contamination by bad children. At times she seems to realize her own bad behavior, and not long ago said she would become a nun, for in the tranquil life of the convent her tendency to lying would not be stimulated.

Further inquiry brought out the fact that it was true, as Janet stated, that in her high school course she became nervous to the extent of jerking and twitching, and that also for a time she stuttered. Their physician said, however, that there was no definite nervous disease.

As a young child the parents never thought this girl in any way different from the rest of the family. As she grew older she has been regarded as physically the most robust, but, as she stated to us, she has done the poorest intellectual work and that has often been a matter of family comment. The other children are careful truth tellers.

The type of Janet's lying has been not only in the form of falsifications about matters which directly concerned herself, but also involved extensive manufacture of long stories, phantasies. Meeting people she might give them extensive accounts of the wealth and importance of her own family. She once spread the report that her sister was married and living in a fine home close by, giving many elaborate details of the new household. Such stories naturally caused much family embarrassment. Then she worked up an imaginary entertainment and gave invitations to her brothers and sister at the request of a pretended hostess. Just before the event she, simulating the hostess, telephoned that an accident had taken place and the party would not be given. An extremely delicate situation arose because she alleged a certain young man wanted to marry her. The truth of her assertions in this matter never was investigated. The parents felt it quite impossible to go to the young man about the facts on account of the danger of exposing their daughter. They were long embarrassed by the extent to which she kept this affair going, but it finally was dropped without any social scandal occurring. In this and other affairs the family situation was at times unbearable because of the possibility that there might be some truth underlying the girl's statements. As the years went on Janet, of course, suffered from her loss of reputation, but still continued her practices of lying. In the two years before she left home she worked as a clerk. Previously she had held two or three situations and was reported to give good satisfaction in her work, but something would always come up about money matters, or other things, which would finally give rise to trouble. It is not known that she ever really took any money except the last time when she ran away and took a considerable sum from her parents.

A period of extensive untruthfulness and deception occurred before she left home. Janet represented to her parents that she was working at a certain place after she had left. She got into some mix-up about money matters, the rights of which never were straightened out. As usual, the affair was too complicated to be understood by anything short of a prolonged investigation. After things had come to this pass and her parents hardly knew what to do with her, she took money from them and ran away. She was readily traced because the ticket agent in her home town could give a description of her. She had bought a ticket to an intermediate point and there stopped over night. Her father followed her thus far. It seems when she finally got to New York she hunted up the distant relatives who took her in and informed the mother. The girl intended to earn her own living and soon found a good place. She was always able to make a good presentation of herself, being a quiet and convincing conversationalist.

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.

The workings of Janet's mind in connection with her alterations of a story were sometimes most curious. We were interested to study a long letter quite coherently written to her mother a few days before we saw the young woman, and about the time when she first told her long story to the department manager. In the letter she spoke of the extraordinary opportunities she now had in this place of employment, exaggerating her salary to $14 a week. She stated she had already had a raise, and could get work for other members of her family at good salaries. She was about to start a bank account, and so on. But instead of making any remittances to her mother (such as she asserted at one time) she requested her parents to send her $5 to tide her over. We counted no less than nine definite falsehoods in this epistle. We were keen to know if Janet could remember her own prevarications and so asked her if she could recall what she had written to her mother. She trimmed her statements most curiously then, being aware we knew her salary to be $8 a week. She said she had told her mother her salary was $10, but in answer to our reply, “Oh, you said more than that,” she blurted out, “Well, I said $14.” It was quite evident she remembered this, as well as certain other exaggerated statements and figures in the letter.

We were fortunate enough to be able to analyze out much of the genesis of this girl's career as a pathological liar. After the immediate situation was somewhat cleared and Janet asserted she was anxious to make a new start in life, we began our inquiry into beginnings. Janet showed willingness to enter into the question of her mental antecedents and tendencies which she maintained she heartily deplored. To be sure we had evidence that even in her most sincere moments she was unable to refrain from occasional falsifying, but the main facts seemed self-evidently true, and some of them were corroborated at interviews with the parents.

After considering her own career with us for a time, she asserted that it now was clear to her just how and when she began lying. As a child of about 12 years it seems she was wont to meet with a certain group of girls on a hillside and they indulged in many conversations about sex matters. Evidently the circumstances surrounding this important introduction into affairs of sex life were indelibly impressed upon her mind. She was there instructed not only in the general facts, but also in methods of self-gratification. It is clear to her, she states, that it was exactly at this time that she first began deceiving her mother and telling lies. She explains these tendencies as the result of a guilty conscience. It comes out that the mother did not know this group of girls to be undesirable companions for Janet, but the latter's consciousness of their frailties always led her to state that she had been with other children when in reality she had been in this bad companionship. Through dwelling on their teachings she began sex practices by herself, and in order to carry this out she had to indulge in other deceptions. She remembers distinctly her willful repression of the facts, and states that the nervousness which she displayed for two or three years in her school work was undoubtedly due to this cause. In fact, she thought so at the time, but persisted in deceiving her mother and her physician in regard to the matter.

Her mental repressions and conflicts did not begin, however, at this period. By digging further into her memory Janet tells us about a girl in another town where they used to live, a girl who, when Janet was about 7 years old, wanted to show her about sex practices. Janet knew this girl to be bad by general reputation, and ran away when this offer was made, but it was too late--the mental impress had been formed. She thinks her mother would remember this girl. The things which this bad girl started to tell came frequently up in Janet's mind and she wondered much about them. No practices, however, were indulged in and even the thoughts were fought against until the time mentioned above when other sex ideas were implanted. Janet's mother had neither given nor received confidences on this subject, and indeed never throughout the daughter's life has there been anything except vague warnings on the part of the mother about the general dangers of sex immorality.

We gradually came to learn that Janet had been subject to much sex temptation from her own physical feelings. She never was a good sleeper, she thinks, and she often lies awake, or will wake up for a time in the middle of the night and think of sex affairs. She feels sure there has been considerable stress upon her on account of this temptation which she has felt should be combated. The occasional giving way to sex habits also resulted in mental stress and, as she expresses it, worry.

At the time of her failure to do well in school work her internal conflicts were especially acute. There was before her continually the success which the other members of her family had made, which she herself admired, and for which she was ambitious. She hid at that time the cause of her nervousness and failure; there was the danger of its being discovered. After thus reviewing her case with us, Janet reiterated that she was sure her tendency to prevaricate came on at the time when she first began her bad sex habits.

This girl was probably not much of a day-dreamer. She denies being so, saying she had always been too busy for such to be the case. We also obtained corroboration of this from others who had closely observed her. She says she had lived no specially imaginative life beyond occasionally thinking of herself as a well-to-do lady with many good clothes to wear, or sometimes lying in bed and imagining she had a lover there. Further inquiry into her imaginative life seemed futile because she was not trained in introspection and because even in her frankest moments we were always afraid that she might fall into her strongly formed habit of prevarication. We ascertained that in her home life special efforts had been made to keep her busy and she could not be regarded as a dreamer. Janet strongly denied the periodicity in her lying which her mother maintained, but the girl did state that her periods of sex temptation were mostly just preceding her menstrual period.

In giving the above account of what was ascertained by analysis with Janet we have offered such of her statements as are clearly probable or which are corroborated by the parents. Our many experiences with the young woman led us to be particularly careful in accepting as veracious any of her statements unless, as in what is given above, they clearly followed the type of fact which may be ascertained in the investigation of other instances of pathological lying where the individual's word is more reliable. The parents were able to corroborate many points. The mother remembers the older girl in the town where they lived when Janet was 7 years old and that this girl was notorious for her sex tendencies, although she was not in the least aware that Janet had been contaminated. Then she recollects that Janet used to tell her so particularly about going with a special crowd of girls (those which she now says were not her companions). Both parents considered the matter at great length in order to help my study of the case and both are very certain that it was just about this period when Janet says she was beginning her covert sex experiences that she began the lying, which was petty at first, but after a time expanded into the type of detailed falsifications we have enumerated above. Altogether there was little doubt in our minds that Janet was giving the truth in its main outlines. Undoubtedly it was merely her habit which always led her to alter somewhat the details.

We were interested to note that in her letters and in her ordinary conversation Janet took up the topics that a fairly well educated girl would naturally discuss. For instance, she would give us some account of her recent reading, or a visit to an art gallery, telling us with normal vivacity about a couple of pictures which had deeply impressed her. She spoke not only of their subjective influence, but discussed the details of composition and coloring. We might mention that in a characteristic way she interjected some remarks that she herself used to be very good at drawing and won several prizes at it. She stated that she thought of going farther in art, but that her parents could hardly afford to allow her to do this. These remarks were found later to be quite aside from the truth.

Telling us the story of her school career, Janet insists her memory had never been good for learning poems or for languages, particularly Latin, but anything in the way of a picture she could recall with ease. What she has read she often thinks of in the form of pictures. Concerning her lying she denied it was done particularly to cover up things, at least since the time when the habit was first formed. She feels that it really is a habit, a very bad one. She hardly knows she is going to prevaricate; the false statement comes out suddenly. In thinking about it all she harks back once more to that crowd of girls; everybody thought they were good, but she knew they were not.

After a time of quieting down in her behavior tendencies, although there was never complete cessation of the inclination to falsify, a new exacerbation of lying arose. This time it seemed to center about a clandestine love affair of a mild type. There was one trouble with this case which neither I nor any one else was able to clear for the parents. It was perfectly apparent that the girl might naturally be expected to marry at some time. Now, when an honest young man felt inspired to keep company with this vivacious, healthy, and generally attractive young woman, what were the parents to do? It was easy enough for them to decide that she must not go with a man of bad character, but were they bound in honor to inform any young man, before affairs had gone too far, that the girl had this unfortunate tendency and that she had had rather a shady career? It was perfectly clear to them that she herself would not tell him. This was how the matter stood at the time we last heard of the case, and while the parents were holding back, a young man's affections and the girl's fabrications were growing apace.

Janet had been suffering from a chronic inflammation of the bladder, which, however, did not cause any acute symptoms. A chronic pelvic inflammation was discovered, for which she was operated upon in her home town. The surgeon reported to the parents that conditions were such that they would naturally be highly irritative, although there had been no previous complaint about them. The girl made an exceedingly rapid recovery. It was after this that her last affair of the affections was causing the parental quandary and distress.

Our final diagnosis of this ease, after careful study of it, was that it was a typical case of pathological lying, mythomania, or pseudologia phantastica. The girl could not be called a defective in any ordinary sense. Her capabilities were above the average. She showed good moral instincts in many directions and was at times altogether penitent. Nor could she be said to have a psychosis. The trouble was confined to one form of conduct.

The lying, as in all these cases, seemed undertaken sometimes for the advantages which thereby might accrue. On the other hand, at times the falsification seemed to have no relation to personal advantages. Indeed, this girl had experience, many times repeated, that her lying very quickly resulted in suffering to her. There were aspects of her falsifications which made it seem as if there was pleasure in the mere manufacture of the stories themselves and in the living, even for a short time, in the situations which she had created out of her imagination and communicated to others. Frequently there seemed to be an unwillingness on her part to face the true facts of existence. In her representation of things as different from what they really were she seemed to show even the desire for self-deception. Another point: no student of cases of this kind should allow himself to forget the potency of habit formation. There can be little doubt but that a large share of this girl's conduct was the result of her well developed and long maintained tendency to trim the facts.

As far as we were able to determine, and we undoubtedly got at the essential facts, this girl's falsifying trait was based on the following: The fact that she came of neuropathic stock would make us think that she possibly inherited an unstable mental make-up. To be sure, the only evidence of it was in this anomalous characteristic of hers, namely, her pathological lying. She seemed sound in her nervous makeup. The idea that the grandmother passed on as inheritance her prevaricating traits is open to discussion, but we have seen that environmental influences from this source may have been the only effect, if there was any at all. Very important in this case, without any doubt, is the early sex teaching, its repression and the mental conflict about it for years, and then the reintroduction into the subject just before puberty. Probably this is the vital point of the girl's whole career. The success she early achieved in deceiving her mother, not by denials, but by the elaboration of imaginary situations, has been the chief determinant of her unfortunate behavior. Added to that was the formation of a habit and of an attitude towards life in which the stern realities were evaded by the interposition of unrealities. Even the affair of the imaginary social gathering can be conceived in this light, for evidently she and her family were not engaged then in social affairs and the preparation for a gay event would for a time be a source of excitement and pleasure. Her autoeroticism may have helped towards the production of phantasies and the general tendency to evasion of the realities of life.

It was clear from first to last that the exploration of the genesis of the tendencies in such a case as this could be but one step towards a cure. What was also needed was prolonged disciplinary treatment under conditions which were well nigh impossible to be gained at her age. Willingness on the part of the individual to enter into any long period of discipline or education, such as an institution might offer, is not easily obtained.

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Mental conflict: early and severe.              Case 6.
  Early sex experiences and habits.       Girl, age 19 yrs.
    Mental habit formation.
       Home conditions: defective understanding
               and control, although ordinarily good
               home.  Early acquaintance with lying.
            Heredity: neuropathic tendencies on
                both sides.
Delinquencies:                     Mentality:
Excessive lying.                        Ability well up to
Runaway.                                the ordinary.
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