instinctive demand. The resort to this mode of reaction, to
evasion of real issues for the purpose of gratification of instinctive
demands, is not characteristic of man alone, but is quite prevalent even
in some very low forms of life. We will have more to say about this
later. It is an important tool in the struggle for existence among all
living beings; it is one of the mechanisms by means of which the weaker
inferior being escapes annihilation at the hands of the stronger,
superior being.

Malingering, it will be seen later, appears to certain individuals to be
the only possible means of escape from and evasion of a stressful and
difficult situation of life. The lack of _critique_ which permits such
an abortive attempt at adjustment and the inherent weakness and
incapacity to meet life's problems squarely in the face which drives
them to resort to such a means of defense are some of the traits of
character which serve to distinguish these individuals from what is
generally conceived to be normal man.

The extent to which lying and allied behavior depend upon unconscious
motives has never been so well illustrated as in recent psychoanalytic
literature, especially in a paper by Brill.[1] This author is so
thoroughly convinced of the value of conscious lying as an indicator of
unconscious strivings and motives that he frequently asks his patients
to construct--artificially--dreams which he finds to be of valuable aid
in the analysis of the patient's unconscious. After citing a number of
examples Brill states: "These examples suffice to show that these
seemingly involuntary constructions have the same significance as real
dreams, and that as an instrument for the discovery of hidden complexes
they are just as important as the latter. Furthermore, they also
demonstrate some of the mechanisms of conscious deception. The first
patient deliberately tried to fool me by making up what he thought to be
a senseless production, but what he actually did was to produce a
distorted wish. He later admitted to me that for days he was on his
guard lest I should discover his inverted sexuality, but it never
occurred to him that I could discover it in his manner. That his
artificial dreams have betrayed him is not so strange when one remembers
that _no mental production, voluntary or involuntary, can represent
anything but a vital part of the person producing it_."

Were this thesis on malingering to succeed in nothing else than in
br