Rama Rao Gogeneni and Thomas Newmark list the following features of PF: Lying as a defaultįinally, there is falsification that many people would call pathological lying, and which goes by the extravagant scientific name of pseudologia fantastica (PF). Confabulation is usually seen in the context of severe brain damage, such as may follow a stroke or the rupture of a blood vessel in the brain. Or, the person may insist she was abducted by terrorists and present a fairly elaborate account of the (fictional) ordeal. For example, the person may insist – and sincerely believe – that he had eggs Benedict at the Ritz for breakfast, even though this clearly wasn’t the case. Some confabulated memories are mundane others, quite bizarre. For example, you are absolutely certain you sent that check to the power company, but in fact, you never did.Īs social scientist Julia Shaw observes, false memories “ have the same properties as any other memories, and are indistinguishable from memories of events that actually happened.” So when you insist to your spouse, “Of course I paid that electric bill!” you’re not lying – you are merely deceived by your own brain.Ī much more serious type of false memory involves a process called confabulation: the spontaneous production of false memories, often of a very detailed nature. It is a sincerely held belief, but still a falsehood.įalsehoods of various kinds can be voiced by people with various neuropsychiatric disorders, but also by those who are perfectly “normal.” Within the range of normal falsehood are so-called false memories, which many of us experience quite often. When the patient expresses this belief, he or she is not lying or trying to deceive the listener. A patient who inflexibly believes that Vladimir Putin has personally implanted an electrode in his brain in order to control his thoughts would qualify as delusional. Importantly, delusions are not explained by the person’s culture, religious beliefs or ethnicity. These are strongly held, completely inflexible beliefs that are not altered at all by factual information, and which are clearly false or impossible. On the severe end of the continuum are delusions. A passionately held belief that vaccinations cause autism might qualify as an over-valued idea: it’s not scientifically correct, but it’s not utterly beyond the realm of possibility. These are very strongly held convictions that are at odds with what most people in the person’s culture believe, but which are not bizarre, incomprehensible or patently impossible. On the milder end, we have what psychiatrists call over-valued ideas. We can think of distortions of reality as falling along a continuum, ranging from mild to severe, based on how rigidly the belief is held and how impervious it is to factual information. Talking image via When what you believe is wrong And this is our entree into the psychiatric literature.Īs strongly as she believes, it doesn’t make it true. Some people who voice falsehoods appear incapable of distinguishing real from unreal, or truth from fiction, yet are sincerely convinced their worldview is absolutely correct. ![]() Rather than lying, he’s stating a falsehood. ![]() That person may simply be unaware of the facts, or may refuse to believe the best available evidence. In contrast, someone who voices a mistaken claim without any intent to deceive is not lying. Thus, someone who deliberately misrepresents what he or she knows to be true is lying – typically, to secure some personal advantage. So how can we sort out claims and beliefs that strike most people as odd, unfounded, fantastical or just plain delusional? Untruths aren’t always liesįirst, we need to make a distinction often emphasized by ethicists and philosophers: that between a lie and a falsehood. The phrase “ alternative facts” has recently made the news in a political context, but psychiatrists like me are already intimately acquainted with the concept – indeed, we hear various forms of alternate reality expressed almost every day.Īll of us need to parse perceived from actual reality every day, in nearly every aspect of our lives.
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