Mitomania, what is the pathological lie and famous cases

The Mitomania or fantastic pseudology, It is a psychological disorder that leads the person to lie and distort reality compulsively, to the point of believing their own lies. In most cases they are in people with low self -esteem that seek the attention of others.

Content

• What is mitomania
• Mitomania and brain alterations
• Characteristics of fantastic pseudology
• Famous Pathological Lie
  • The case of Enric Marco
  • The case of Heather Mills
• The discovery of lies

What is mitomania

Mitomania was first described in 1891 by the Swiss Anton delbrück. The pathological lie is the constant falsification of reality, This falsification or distortion of reality is usually considerable and at the same time very complicated, and can manifest for years or even a lifetime. The pathological liar can be aware that he is lying, or on the contrary believe that he is telling the truth. Often the individual may be lying so that his life seems more exciting when he actually believes that his life is unpleasant or boring.

The lie is a daily behavior in the human being and is still a useful resource on some occasions, either to achieve their purposes or to fit better socially. A lie is a statement whose falsehood only knows who says it And it is an attempt to achieve a predetermined goal.

Mitomania and brain alterations

Mitomania is a pathological picture Where the continuous manufacture of disproportionate falsehoods can constitute an organized deception complex, and which, unlike the ordinary lie, originates from pathological motivations and psychopathological mechanisms.

Although there are few writings about the pathological lie, a study found a prevalence of almost 1 in 1.000 minors and 1 in 10 in the adult stage. It has been described that in 40% of cases there is a previous alteration of the CNS: Traumatic history, infections, epilepsy or pathological findings in the EEG.

Some investigations suggest that certain people have a "predisposition to lies". A study carried out a greater proportion of prefrontal white substance in people who lie compulsively. The presence of a right hemalamic dysfunction has also been observed. All these findings suggest that physiology can play a function at its origin. Likewise, this pathological process has been attributed according to various authors to psychopathic factors, such as limit, narcissistic or histrionic personality disorders.

Characteristics of fantastic pseudology

This is a disorder that does not cease to have harmful consequences. In society a mythomania ends up losing its entire credibility and is taken as a "how much stories", at intimate levels they are seen as people who are not trustworthy, and friends tend to get away from them and end up being isolated from cluster.

Its symptoms are characterized by:

• The stories they tell are not entirely unlikely, They often have some real glimpses and are very well formulated (this may be due to the fact that the mythomaniac thinks thoroughly in all the chances of answer to the questions of their interlocutors). The stories are not delusions or a manifestation of psychosis: if pressed, the person can admit that what he counts is not true, although reluctantly and in more persistent cases the individual will not admit the truth, he will generally end up diverting The conversation with physical compliments or other related topics containing greater veracity.
• The tendency to lie is durable, It is not caused by an immediate situation or by social pressure, but is a characteristic of disturbed personality.
• He Last reason for his lies is internal, not external.
• The stories told They tend to present you in a favorable way. For example, the person can present himself as someone incredibly brave, generous, wise ..

Mitomania can also present itself as false memories, where the liar really believes that fictional events are true, without being aware that these events are fantasies of their mind that have never taken place.

Famous Pathological Lie

The late writer and journalist José Saramago, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998, once said: "Humanity reflects that it has gone through different ages: the stone age, the age of the bronze and so on until today, the era of lies. It is as if the lie had become a custom, a habit, I would almost dare to say, a culture".

Mitomania is a problem that generally affects people with low self -esteem, who lie to feel important And because they are not able to communicate well with other people. With this strategy they are able to attract attention, because they exaggerate or invent entertaining stories and anecdotes.

The case of Enric Marco

An example of this is that of Enric Marco, a Spaniard who spent 30 years of his life saying that he had been imprisoned by the Nazis in the Flossenbürg concentration camp (Germany). It was also President of the Amical Association of Mauthausen, that gathered the Spaniards deported to concentration camps. He even received the cross of Sant Jordi Award in 2001, which was granted in recognition to your long social and political struggle.

Later Enric Marco explained that the lie began in 1978, and that he continued it because it seemed that people paid more attention to him, which allowed him to highlight the suffering of the many people who went to concentration camps. "I did not lie for bad reasons"He explained.

The case of Heather Mills

There is also a case of mitomania in the entertainment world: Heather Mills, the model and actress who jumped to fame after her Wedding with former Beatle Paul McCartney. Her desire to attract the attention of the public led her to talk about the details of her life that were far from the truth.

Mills said in an interview that when he was 14 he escaped from his house to live in the streets, but the school records confirm that she was attending classes. He said he worked in a circus cleaning horses, when the truth was that she used to go with her boyfriend who worked in a street circus on weekends. If this were not enough, it is said that one of his ex -boyfriends was an agent of the Secret Service, when in reality he wanted to be one, but he was never.

The discovery of lies

Paul Ekman, prestigious American psychologist who has specialized in the study of emotions and their connections with facial expressions, and author of a book entitled 'Telling Lies', says that the detection of lies is not a simple something simple.

"Lies detection is not easy. One of the problems is the enormous amount of information - there are too many things to take into account, at the same time, too many sources of information - that is, pauses, sounds, expressions, head movements, gestures, breathing, Rubor, sweating ... "says Ekman in his book.

In any case, Mitomania is not a disease in itself, but it represents a set of symptoms that can show themselves in different mental diseases, particularly in personality disorders.