Psychiatry professor on the Gil Ofarim case: "Con artists today like to present themselves as victims"

Psychology - Psychiatry professor on the Gil Ofarim case: "Con artists today like to present themselves as victims"

Professor Stoffels, are people who spread lies ill?no, not necessarily. Lies are part of normal life. It would be inhumane to always stubbornly stick to the truth.

But some lies are no longer part of normal life, and the phenomenon of pathological lying was first described by the psychiatrist Anton Delbrück in 1891. Experts call it "Pseudologia Fantastica". On the other hand, there is also calculated lying, for example for the sake of gain. There are all shades between the two types of lying, pathological lying and calculated lying.

As a psychiatrist, in addition to depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, you mainly deal with pathological lying. When do those affected come to you?It is always something special when a pathological liar, a so-called pseudologist, seeks psychotherapeutic treatment. As a rule, fibbers do not come to my practice because they are suffering, but because they have been exposed or have become entangled in a web of untruths.

Why do they lie?Pathological lying is always an escape from a reality that is experienced as painful into a fantasy. By lying, pseudologists pull themselves out of circumstances that they cannot cope with or can only cope with with difficulty.

So people lie in order to leave a world they cannot bear?that's right. The real world is painful and they want to escape it. Imagine a small child who feels badly treated by its parents. He lies in bed at night and then the idea occurs to him: Oh, maybe I'm not my parents' child! And then he imagines another family. This is not yet a lie, it is a fantasy, but it shows how people flee from a reality in which they have experienced deprivation, in which they were not recognized.

Now, many of us are neglected in childhood, and yet we don't make up stories later that harm ourselves and others. Are pathological liars the creative ones among neglected children?I refer to the writer Karl May, who was convicted of fraud. As a young man, he assumed various identities, sometimes posing as a letter carrier, sometimes as a policeman. Later, when he no longer put his creative potential into lying, Karl May became a great novelist.

One case in particular is currently preoccupying us: musician Gil Ofarim confessed to telling an untruth at Leipzig District Court on Tuesday. He had accused a hotel manager of anti-Semitic discrimination. Why does a person hold on to a false allegation for two years when sooner or later it is bound to cometo light? as a psychotherapist, in a case like this I would first check what the cause of the deception is. Perhaps it's about a slight, a feeling: I am not respected. Perhaps his invented story is intended to secure him recognition and sympathy.

In the video in which Gil Ofarim reveals himself to be the victim, he complains that one person after another was moved up from the check-in queue. He obviously felt disregarded.I have noticed that liars today like to present themselves as victims. They used to pretend to be aristocrats or later factory owners. For some time now, however, the invention of victimhood has had great suggestive power - especially for those who are prone to deception. Sometimes I even notice that patients long to be a trauma victim because then they can hope for attention.

What do you read into this development?This is a sociological question that urgently needs clarification: Why is it that the former hero narratives, as I call them, are being replaced by victim narratives? I remember the case of a wheelchair user who had been assaulted, someone had carved a swastika into her cheek. That caused great outrage. It was later discovered that she had inflicted the injury herself. However, her victimhood initially earned her extraordinary recognition.

Gil Ofarim also received extraordinary recognition for his claim to have been subjected to anti-Semitic discriminationand, according to reports, he received worldwide attention. No other allegation would have earned him as much attention and recognition as this story.

What kind of personality do pathological liars have?as a rule, they have an unstable self-confidence, they have no ego strength, no self-confidence. The feeling of not being worth anything, of not being recognized, gives rise to the desire for a different reality. They feel the temptation to reinvent themselves. In the 1920s, a psychiatrist in Zurich was treating a pathological liar and introduced him in one of his lectures. This man had claimed to be a doctor of philosophy and a doctor of law, and had also claimed to have been an air force officer. In the lecture, he admitted contritely that he had been a liar. He had never been an officer, but only a simple infantryman. He went on to talk about his hardships in the trenches until everyone was moved. It later turned out that he had never been in the war. So he switched from the hero narrative to the victim narrative and initially escaped all accusations in this way.

I have to think of Claas Relotius, a journalist who invented stories on a grand scale at Der Spiegel. He obviously also touched his bosses and readers,and in terms of self-awareness, it would be worth reading his stories again, because they spoke to us. Claas Relotius was awarded prizes for his articles, and they were published by a newspaper that emphasizes the importance of working only with facts.

Do you mean that we as a society are reflected in the stories of liars? Yes, we are looking in a mirror, exactly. In Ofarim's case, too, the people who believed him should ask themselves: why were we so quick to follow this story? Did we believe Gil Ofarim because his narrative corresponds to our world view or our current interests? Why weren't we skeptical? Many people need to ask themselves these self-critical questions now, but my impression is that they are not doing so.

If the self-esteem of the liars is so porous - can they even get out of their pattern of lying and be cured?psychotherapy cannot fundamentally change a personality. But you can talk to the person concerned about their personality and see how you can deal with the problematic parts of their personality in a new way. And I always point out that pathological liars have an amazing creative potential that should ideally be lived out in a different way. If the person concerned receives attention in psychotherapy because of their personality, they may be able to use their creative potential in a different way.

However, your anecdote about the Swiss colleague is not encouraging in this respect: the pathological liar had the attention of the entire lecture hall and still slipped from one lie into the next:Is this perhaps a new tall tale, a new fantasy? Is the patient really a sick liar, or is he just pretending to be ill? Is he trying to save and excuse himself by redefining himself as ill?

Domen lie more often than women? I can't say, a quantitative study would have to clarify that. However, I have noticed that more men than women come to my psychotherapeutic practice with pathological lies.

Why do people hold on to a lie for two years, knowing that one day it will be exposed?The pathological liar has great suggestive power. He can influence other people, but also himself. He believes his story. It is a mixture of deception and self-deception. A pseudological swindler can believe his own lies over a long period of time, and this is what makes him so convincing.

How can we find a good way of dealing with liars in everyday life?I think we have a duty to believe the other person first and to trust them. I do the same. However, we should not allow ourselves to be deprived of the freedom to question what has been said. But first of all, we need to trust our fellow human beings, even if we suspect that they are lying. I always say: believe critically and doubt empathetically.