to run 10-13-95
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Why not? Looking at Washington and the O.J. trial, you’ve got to figure it gives you a lot of career options. The term is, however, somewhat imprecise. The best definition was put forth 50 years ago by L.S. Selling: “a person having a constellation of symptoms … characterized psychopathologically by a very definite tendency to tell untruths about matters which perhaps could be easily verified and which untruths may serve no obvious purpose.” This enables us to distinguish a pathological liar from, say, a lawyer, whose distortions of the truth are easily detected by anybody not serving on the jury even as they serve the obvious purpose of getting his murdering slime of a client off. More generally, we may say that John, the adulterous husband played by Peter Gallagher in the movie sex, lies, and videotape, is not a pathological liar because his deceptions serve the obvious purpose of enabling him to get laid. Thus we see that habitual liars are of two kinds: on the one hand, pathological liars, who are pathetic losers, and on the other hand skilled liars, who constitute the national ruling class.
Not all cases of pathological lying are associated with a neurological disorder. Psychologists also blame such conditions as “superego lacunae” or “a need for the patient to produce narcissistic gratification.” I love the word “lacunae,” and because I love it I can say for a fact that anyone using it has no concept whatsoever. Seems clear enough to me that some people lie because they profit from it, some fib because they’re sick, and some do it because they’re lying sacks of shit.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Slug Signorino.
