iable. 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 praecox 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