Are there pathological liars? How to recognize them (and help them)? – breaking latest news

They are news stories sometimes with dramatic implications or intimate stories of people who see the world they have built collapsing: we talk about the lives of serial liarsa category that attracts general blame, but which includes individuals not always in bad faith. Telling lies on itself can be a psychiatric disorder it’s a uncontrollable impulse. In life, serial liars build a fictitious reality that is often unmasked and at that point they find themselves alone. Still, they should be helped.

The classifications

In 1891 the German psychiatrist Anton Delbrck coined the term fantastic pseudology to describe a group of patients who, in order to impress others, they invented extravagant actions that presented them as heroes or victims. This argument has returned to the fore in a new book by American psychologists Drew A. Curtis and Christian L. Hart, which is discussed in an article in the New York Times, who propose to add a new disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to the name: Pathological lie. This category of liars, psychologists argue, could benefit from behavioral therapies.

Two kinds of liars

There is not yet a true psychiatric textbook classification for this disorder – confirms Paola Mosini, psychotherapist at Humanitas Psico Medical Care -, however, the liar can fall, with his behavior, into some very specific categories of personality disorders: for example example narcissistic disorder, antisocial disorder, borderline personality disorder
line; with two fundamental distinctions that follow from the purpose of the lies. There are those who lie for their own benefit (often also tangible or economic) and who does it to beautify your own image. In the first case we speak of a manipulative liar, in the second of an insecure liar.
usual to consider i serial liars calling them exploiters and calculators, but psychologists have begun to make some distinctions: the second profile is not in line with the traditional classification of these subjects. This liar, who can be called for brevity, insecure a person often in need e eager for social approvalusually without a criminal record or legal problems, often plagued by guilt and remorse.

Who insecure

The “true” pathological liar tends to be a manipulator, an antisocial, a sadistic, non-empathic, anaffective, often moralistic person – explains Mosini -: this is the most problematic profile, who almost never gets to be aware of the seriousness of his actions. It’s about a person who deceives for personal gain. Even the serial criminal, with various nuances, has this narcissistic-malignant personality. You see others as victims, people to be deceived who simply have to enslave an interest, in the workplace, but also in the emotional sphere. Instead i more “innocent” and harmless liars, who do damage especially at the level of relationships and often pay a high price, are those who tend to lie due to low self-esteem, for fear of disappointing expectations. Think of the news stories of kids who lie about exams taken at the University. Lying becomes a defense mechanism, something you do to calm performance anxiety.

Uncontrollable impulse?

In reality, however, the liar is a person who has his own fragile fundamentally, whether it is manipulative or not – observes Mosini -. The non-manipulative type is a deeply insecure person who “needs” to start sell yourself for what you don’t . Later, he finds it always easier to keep lying than to tell the truth. They are people who realize the lies, but find it hard to get out of the mechanism. They often try a deep sense of shame respect and what they are and what they tell.
Is that really an uncontrollable impulse to lie? There are certainly paintings where the person loses the concept of boundary with reality and enters this fantastic world that he has built and from which it is increasingly difficult to get out. When the lie is exposed, it is not easy to deal with the sense of shame that can be felt: it can be extremely frustrating and painful.

How to intercept liars

What can you do when lies come to light? We must try to work on internal motivation and push these people towards a psychotherapeutic path – says the expert -. a long journey is necessary which will also lead to the reconstruction of their identity, because a subject who has always been used to lying has built another self and therefore must find himself. Sometimes these people are disappointed in themselves and prefer to live in the false but embellished world that they have built for themselves, rather than in the less glittering and perhaps more difficult one around them.
Is there a way to understand being faced with a serial liar? Sometimes it is really difficult, because they are often very intelligent people, given that it takes a good amount of intellectual energy and a good imagination to construct certain parallel realities. It’s not easy for lies to emerge by themselves, then, often the network of acquaintances to insinuate some doubt in the family who then begin to investigate. Classifying this behavior as a symptom of a personality disorder, however, also allows victims of lies to understand and help. At the health level, the correct identification of the problem can favor i treatments more relevant and undermine the prejudice that these people will never change.