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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 illustration. 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 passable 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 classify, 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 classifications 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 illustrating 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 class of cases, however, is sufficiently discussed in special literature pertaining to the subject. [24]
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