Summary: Girl of 16, over a period of some weeks made extreme accusations against several members of her family. She gave detailed account of sex immorality, alleged drunkenness and thieving, and an attack on her own life. She had herself, it was found, begun delinquent tendencies. The family circumstances and her clearly detailed account gave the color of possibility to her accusations, but investigation proved some of them false, and all of a sudden, after maintaining for long a most convincing demeanor, she withdrew her allegations. Both before and since this episode she has given no marked evidence of being a falsifier.

We were asked to study this case by police officials who thought perhaps the girl was the victim of some delusional state. She appeared at the police station and informed them her adult brother had been thieving from the place where he worked. She lived with him. Investigation by detectives on the strength of her convincingly given details proved his innocence. When the brother appeared on the scene he said he had been intending to report her on account of her being away from home. She herself was then held in custody.

We found a girl in very good general physical condition. Well developed in sex characteristics and a very mature type of face. Outside of a somewhat enlarged thyroid and moderately defective vision, we found nothing abnormal. Weight 114 lbs.; height 5 ft. Notable was her strong features, deep set eyes, high, broad forehead and sharp chin.

Our study of her on the mental side led us to denominate her as having fair general ability. She had had poor educational advantages. We noted much irregularity on work on tests. She did comparatively poorly on anything that called for careful attention and concentration. This was especially notable when she was dealing with abstractions or situations to be mentally represented. Although she could do arithmetic up to simple division she made a bad failure in the continued process of subtraction as given in the Kraepelin test of taking 8's from 100. In the work on the Code, Test XI, she found it altogether impossible to keep her mind concentrated. In tests where perceptions were largely brought into play she did very well. We noticed that she was possessed of a very dramatic manner. She sighed frequently as she worked. She was very nervous, continually moving her hands and tapping the table. She was quite satisfied with her superficial efforts. It was very curious that we, as well as others, were able to note her apparent sincere belief in her own statements about her family. As she made them she looked the interviewer straight in the eyes; there was not a hint of evasiveness.

Her result on the “Aussage” (Test VI) was very meager. She only recalled 10 details of the picture. On cross- examination she gave correctly 14 more items and was wrong on 3 of them. She accepted only 2 out of 5 suggestions offered and these were the most probable ones.

A full family history was never to be obtained. The best that we came ultimately to know was that her father and mother had been long dead and she had lived in institutions for years, then with a relative who was not at all a good person, and then with her brother and sister, whom she bitterly accused. These were people in decidedly poor circumstances and living in very congested quarters. Indeed, we were inclined to believe, finally, that crowded housing conditions with the necessary unfortunate familiarity with sex affairs and the like was largely responsible for her trouble. A few months prior to these events she had become acquainted with a girl who had drawn her into running away from home a few nights. During her unsettled home life she had seen a good deal of immorality in other houses, but had not been immoral herself. Conditions of squalor surrounded the whole situation.

Her accusations against her family as told to others, and reiterated to us, involved the drunkenness of her own father and mother. (We were never able to verify whether this charge against her mother was true or not.) Then she went on to allege extreme immorality on the part of her three sisters. She gave these in the utmost detail. (There is little doubt but that one of her sisters was rather free living before she was married.) She constantly maintained that she was the only virtuous one in the family and had withstood all advances. She then recounted much personal abuse and cruel treatment, and accused the brother and his wife of an attempt to poison her because they wanted her out of the way.

Her story was told in such detail, was so well remembered from time to time, and she presented such outward form of sincerity that experienced people were led to believe there must be much in what she said. On one occasion, under observation, she cried nearly all of two days because one good woman would not believe her statements. At least she said this was the reason of her tears. Her general behavior during this period of observation was perfect.

We found her hazy and somewhat incoherent about a number of the details of her life, but she had lived under such varied circumstances that this alone was not convincing of her insincerity. When we met her brother we were very sure that at least a part of her story was false. He seemed to be a very decent fellow and was really interested in her. Several months earlier he had trouble with her on account of her staying out late at night, and had threatened her. Then there was no more difficulty until her recent acquaintance with this other girl. He stated that he had been obliged to scold her very severely, and then finally she stayed away for five nights and wound up by going to the police station and making the accusations against him and the other members of the family. When the case came up in court she stated she wished to go back to live with this brother and admitted having continued misrepresentations about him and the others in the family since her acquaintance with this girl. It really was all false. She was placed under probation and the case has been, except for environmental circumstances, entirely successful. She is now a young married woman, and has had no further delinquent record against her.

Our investigation of the causation showed perhaps self- protection from punishment for her own behavior, but there was apparently much mental conflict about sex affairs and she had a very unfortunate acquaintance with such details, resulting partly, as she acknowledged, from her peeping through keyholes and so on. On account of her peculiar unreliability of statement and many quiet and staring periods, seen while she was under observation, we questioned whether she was not verging on psychotic conditions. However, all this tendency seems to have passed away.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Adolescent instability.                      Case 15.
                                          Girl, 16 years.
 Home conditions: Defective through poverty
                  and congestion.
       Early sex experiences and mental conflict
                   about them.
            Reaction to own delinquencies, self
                protection phenomenon.
                      Heredity.      Mentality:
Delinquencies:                          Fair ability, poor
False accusations.                           advantages.
---------------------------------------------------------------