Studies in Forensic Psychiatry by Bernard Glueck (best black authors txt) 📕

in the fabrications of this individual an unbounded craving for compensation for a natural deficiency—in this instance a racial deficiency. What this man lacks in reality he endeavors to substitute in his fantasy. There can be no doubt that the tendency to lie has reached such dimensions and intensity in this man’s mental make-up as to make him absolutely believe in his own impossible fabrications, to render him absolutely helpless in the mazes of his fantastic creations. He is assisted in this by his craving for self-esteem, by his extreme need of compensation for a real deficiency, by his ready and fertile fantasy, one absolutely devoid of critique, by his extreme suggestibility, and, lastly, what is of great importance, by his extremely defective apperceptive faculties and consequent falsifications of memory.

The latter defect was particularly well illustrated in the following note from my records of the case. He was asked, in the course of my examination, to repeat a simple story known as the “Shark Story”, which I shall reproduce here in full for the sake of making clear my point:—

“The son of a Governor of Indiana was first officer of an Oriental steamer. When in the Indian Ocean the boat was overtaken by a typhoon and was violently tossed about. The officer was suddenly thrown overboard. A life preserver was thrown to him, but on account of the heavy sea difficulty was encountered in launching a boat. The crew, however, rushed to the side of the vessel to keep him in sight, but before their shuddering eyes the unlucky young man was grasped by one of the sharks encircling the steamer and was drawn under the water, leaving only a dark streak of blood.”

In reproducing it he said:—

“The son of a Governor of an Oriental steamer was the captain. Now, doctor, I can’t think of those little stories. It isn’t because I haven’t brains enough; it’s because I’m so poor a scholar at reciting. I always was.” “What happened to the captain?” “That I can’t recollect, neither.” “What happened to the ship?”

Here, instead of answering my question, he said: “Doctor, I suppose you have heard about the big wreck that happened out on the ocean.” (This was when the terrible Titanic disaster was on everybody’s lips and the papers were full of the tragedy.) The patient regularly read the papers. “Tell me about this wreck.”

“Well, the steamer was 1200 miles from the land—north-northerly course. It was first reported that 1800 lives were lost; afterwards they found out for certain, through the communication with General Wood, that it was only 1300. Mrs. Zelia Smith, she was on the vessel.” (Patient’s name is Smith.) “She is Commissioner Hodges’s daughter. She was counted lost, for instance, and was found alive. I knew her well; I knew a good many other people on that boat.” “About how many people did you know?” “Well, I just only remember some. For instance, Major B——; I knew him well, of course. I dare say I knew all the others, but I knew him best. The boat was in charge of E. C. Smith.” “Did you know Captain Smith?” “Yes, sir; I knew him. I didn’t know him personally; I only made one voyage with him from Angel Island.” “When was that?” “In 1907.” “What was the name of the wrecked ship?” “I can’t recall that, neither; Tripoli, I think it was; she is close on 1500 feet long.” “How much money was she supposed to be worth?” “I don’t know, sir; there were several heirs who had charge of the ship. She was called the sister-ship Trinic and was worth about $25,000. That, perhaps, may not cover her upper-deck cabins.” “Did you ever travel on her?” “No, sir; I never was on her. I was on the Trinic, the sister-ship. The White Star people own these boats. I used to run a transport between the White Star Line and the Yellow Star Line.” Here he was told that the examiner did not know of the existence of a Yellow Star Line, and he replied: “Oh yes, doctor; you heard of the Flying Squadron that reports all these disasters and signals the other ships.”

Thus we see that with partial truths, with facts only partially and imperfectly recalled as a framework, he builds his fantastic tales. He read the newspapers regularly, but could not even recall the name of the ill-fortuned ship, or any particulars about the accident. But what of that?—he could readily fill in the hiatuses with his fabrication. He failed entirely in the attempt to reproduce the story given him, and used the talk about the Titanic disaster as a subterfuge—as a ready means of escape from the difficulty in which he found himself.

He himself threw some light upon the part played by his craving for self-esteem in his statement: “When I tell of all these big things it makes me feel that I’m a little above the common herd of negroes.” He unquestionably believes in these tales, if they are real enough to make him feel above the common herd of negroes. His suggestibility was well illustrated by the suggested river at Cambridge, “on the banks of which he sat many a time during his student days.”

The facility with which his imagination, his fantasy, works was demonstrated by the “ink-blotch” test to which he was subjected. This test, in brief, consists of a series of ink blotches which are shown the patient, with the request to describe them as they appear to him. The following are several of his replies: (1) “A woman sitting on a man, seems like she’s got a little weaving in her hand; a little stick, sticking out from the weaving, seems like the man’s elbow is sticking out back of the shawl.” (2) “It seems to me I have seen a volcano that looks like that. I think it is a ship out at sea. I can see the lifeboats lashed to the side, several ripples of water behind.” (3) “A figure of a woman with a hand purse or a disfigured arm near the wrist. Her mouth is open and she is looking around. The wind carried her hat off; she has a muff on her right hand. Seems like there is a neck-piece around the muff.”

Notice the detail with which he describes the blotches. In this one ordinary speech seemed to have been insufficient to describe the blotch, and he had to resort to a neologism. “Is that supposed to be a ‘perpendicament’? It’s got a head like a sea devil; the upper part seems like a peacock trying to peck him in the back of the head.”

There remains one other thing to be inquired into in this case, and that is the history of epilepsy which accompanied the patient. He was never observed in an epileptic seizure at the military post from which he came to us, and no seizures were observed in this hospital. His own statements concerning this are, like everything else he said, quite totally unreliable. But in repeated examinations he persisted in his statement that he had had but one “spell” in his life, but that he frequently suffered from fits of melancholy. In all probability this one seizure was hysterical in nature, phenomena of which type not infrequently manifest themselves in the pathological liar, as will be seen in the next case.

Here one sees how lying, a mental phenomenon which is looked upon as quite a normal manifestation in a great many people, has reached such dimensions in this individual and has succeeded in dominating his personality to such an extent as to definitely remove him out of the pale of normality and place him within the sphere of the mentally diseased.

There is, of course, no question here about the genuineness of his lying as a symptom of mental aberration; i.e., the fabrication as manifested by this individual is something over which he has no more control than the dementia præcox patient has over his delusions. In both instances the symptoms are spontaneous and genuine expressions of a pathological mentality. And yet when such pathological phenomena become manifest in association with some concrete difficulty in the individual’s life, say in connection with a threatened punishment for a crime committed, the genuineness of the symptoms is frequently doubted.

One, of course, can readily see with what facility an individual of the type under discussion could malinger mental symptoms. Reality and fiction have about identical values in this type of mental make-up, and it is frequently impossible to separate the genuine from the fictitious in their mental productivity.

It is likewise quite easy to divine why an individual of this sort would resort to malingering in his effort to extricate himself from a difficult situation which he is organically unable to meet squarely in the face. On the contrary, it would be strange indeed were an individual of this type to refrain from resorting to this form of defense. Of course, even the man whose history we have just quoted may still be considered mentally responsible before the law were we to judge him by the legal standards of responsibility. But as physicians we need not on this account refrain from attempting to delineate these mental types in their true colors.

The situation is well illustrated in the following case. Here the symptom of pathological lying is associated with pathological swindling and criminality and offers a fertile field for seeds of malingering.

E. D. C., a white male, aged thirty-four, came to us on April 16, 1914, from the penitentiary at Stillwater, Minn., where he was serving a sentence of ten years for white slavery. He was admitted on a medical certificate which stated that his father was supposed to have died from pulmonary tuberculosis. The patient gave a history of epilepsy until fourteen years of age, likewise of having been a patient in a Vienna hospital for the insane for one and a half years, in 1900 and 1901. So far as was known to the prison authorities, he was mentally depressed and had delusions since his arrival at the Minnesota State Prison on October 11, 1913. The present symptoms were described as mental depression; says that everybody is persecuting him; also has the delusions that he has or can invent a wonderful electric machine which he wants to sell to the government for a hundred million dollars; said he would shoot himself and die in prison. Physical condition was not good. Patient suffered from obstinate constipation, peculiar shuffling gait, suggesting partial loss of control of legs and feet. Complained of constant headache on the top of his head. No fever.

On admission to this hospital the patient was in poor physical health and very anæmic. He was quite slender in stature and somewhat effeminate in manners and speech. He walked with a very marked limp of the right leg, stating that he had been afflicted in this manner ever since his first attack of mental trouble at the age of nineteen. Patellar reflexes were markedly exaggerated on both sides, the left more so than the right, and ankle clonus was present on the left side. Babinski phenomenon was absent. While the reflexes were being tested he volunteered the information that his left patellar reflex was very much stronger than the right. He was a very glib talker and spoke fluently in five foreign languages. He gave his name as E. J. B., Count de C., the son of the chamberlain to the Austrian Emperor and of a famous Austrian countess. In the official papers which accompanied him to the hospital the above name was followed by several aliases. He talked in an affected, whining manner, constantly complained of various bodily ailments, and showed a marked tendency to hypochondriasis. He spoke of himself as a poor, down-trodden, and persecuted unfortunate who is being constantly misunderstood. The whole “white slavery”