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We are surrounded by liars, many more than we imagine. People who invent impressive professions, a résumé worthy of a nobel prize, love affairs at the height of Casanova, vacations and adventures of India Jones. To these people who make lying a way of life, the psychiatrists we called them mythomaniacs or pseudologists.
Famous cases of mythomaniacs
Every so often a new scandalous case comes to the fore. Let him remember: Enric Marco, the false survivor of the Flossenbürg concentration camp. Alicia Esteve, a Barcelona woman who posed as a victim of 9/11. The little nicholas, who duped people in high society by adopting false identities. Paco Sanz, the man with a thousand tumors, who raised a fortune by making thousands of Spaniards believe that he suffered from a rare genetic disease. Or, Jean Claude Romand, whose story Emmanuel Carrére tells in the book The adversary: a French citizen who led those close to him to believe that he worked as a doctor in Geneva for the WHO and, before being discovered, murdered his family and later attempted suicide.
These are some of the most notorious cases. Still, there are more mythomaniacs than we realize. We only discovered a small part of them.
What is mythomania?
According to the German psychiatrist Kurt Schneider (1887-1967), mythomaniacs they are a dangerous mix of narcissism and histrionics. As narcissists they are people who need to feel great. As histrionics they do not know how to live without being the center of attention.
“Mythomaniacs are a dangerous mix of narcissism and histrionics.”
The pseudologists They are fanciful people, who like to imagine themselves endowed with special power, great qualities, or exceptional success. It is human to harbor desires and imagine that we get them. The difference is that the mythomaniac tries to make these fantasies pass for reality. He who fantasizes may be fooling himself, but mythomaniacs fool others. With their lies they build a character that they are not, with which they manage to obtain the admiration of others.
“The one who fantasizes is deceiving himself,
mythomaniacs deceive others.”
Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926), considered the father of modern psychiatry, describes them as kind, educated and intelligent people. They often have a gift for people that makes them charming. They can, if they are interested, be generous and self-sacrificing. They display such self-confidence that they end up gaining the trust of those around them. They lie with such fervor that they often end up believing their own lies. They are a “hybrid of lies and self-deception,” wrote Anton Delbrück, the first author to write about mythomaniacs, in 1891.
“Mythomaniacs are a hybrid of lies and self-deception.”
A variant of the mythomania is called Münchausen syndrome: people who fake illnesses, with the more or less conscious purpose of awakening compassion and concern in health professionals and, finding in them, the attention that sometimes they do not find in other areas.
Is hiding lying?
Another problem related to lying is concealment, which is something like its reverse side. While the mythomaniac uses lies to create realities that do not exist, concealment is used to cover up a truth that we do not want to be known.
Hide is necessary. We all have a public identity and a private identity. We are like the moon, we have two faces. One, the brightest, the one we show to others. Another, dark and secret, the one we keep hidden.
Usually hiding does not mean lying. Rather the opposite, hiding is a way to protect ourselves and keep the truth safe. Now, concealment leads some people to develop a double life. In the face of others, a faithful husband or wife, a loving father or mother, a reliable friend, a responsible worker, or a sympathetic neighbor. Until the truth is uncovered: a lover (or thousands), a second family, bank loans, defaults, all the savings spent at the casino or at the racetrack, addictions …
Losing trust in a liar
If lying, in any of its forms, is so destructive, it is because it attacks what is perhaps the most essential condition for human relationships: trust. We trust people because we believe that they are honest and do not deceive us. Now when we find out that someone has lied to us, then we lose trust in that person and may never be able to regain it again.
That is why it is so painful to discover that a person we trusted is an unrepentant mythomaniac. And, also because of that, it is so difficult for a mythomaniac recognize your habit of lying. The mythomaniac he is aware that, if discovered, he could lose everything he has achieved thanks to his lies. Each lie, demands new lies and to avoid being discovered, the mythomaniac will continue to fatten his web of lies.
Is a compulsive liar discovered?
Now sometimes there comes a time when the compulsive liar He is discovered and is confronted by reality. It is a critical moment, sometimes so painful that the mythomaniac may even think of taking his or her own life. However, with the right support, this may also be an ideal time for a mythomaniac to accept help and to seek psychological treatment.
Can you help a mythomaniac?
Yes you can help a compulsive liar. With the support of his loved ones and the help of a psychiatrist or psychologist, the mythomaniac can “cure himself” and overcome his tendency to lie. The mythomaniac must be helped to abandon these fantasies of greatness, and teach him to be happy by being a “normal person”, one among millions. Ultimately, it is liberating for the liar realizing that a “mediocre” but honest person is more lovable than a splendid but false person.
