Pseudologia fantastica

Pseudo Logie ( altgr. ψεῦδος pseudos, false ' and -logy ) or Mythomania is to lie the morbid desire of a person. Motivation is often a need for prestige and recognition.

Pseudologia phantastica referred to in psychiatry since Anton Delbrück ( 1891), the urge to pathological lying and exaggerating. More common today is the term " pathological lying " is used. A special form of Pseudologia phantastica represents the Munchausen syndrome, in which the patient invents physical discomfort and underpinned by lies to get the attention of doctors. In the modern psychiatric classification this disorder under " Other Personality and behavioral disorders / Factitious disorder " (ICD -10: F68.1 ) is classified. Pathological liars are called pseudo- lodges. In contrast to illusion sticking in the context of psychosis or persistent delusional disorders (ICD -10: F20, F22 ) the Pseudologe revise his belief in the light of reality. However, the failure holds comparable category F22 long time, without being interrupted by periods of normality. There are, as a rule, no external reasons for the behavior (such as in so-called " white lies " ), so that an internal event can be assumed as the cause.

Heinz Kohut (1971 ) gave a deep psychological contribution to the understanding of this tendency to untruth. It is different lies, which arose on the ground of insufficient internalization of normative parents in the context of the Oedipus complex and therefore more accessible to psychotherapy, of lies as a result of early childhood neglect. People who have already had to do without in infancy on idealisierbare parents, replace this loss by the imagination of its own omnipotence ( grandiose self ). The ostentatious contempt for all the values ​​and ideals of serving the defense and denial of a longing for a idealizable parental figure or the inclination to make idealizing transmissions. The danger posed by such transfers, whether the traumatic rejection by the idealized object, with the result intolerable narcissistic tension and painful shame and hypochondria. The pride of these patients on the skill with which they ruthlessly manipulate their environment, in addition serve to prevent emptiness and lack of self -esteem to the point of continually criminal activity of the grandiose self, in word and / or deed occurred.