Being kinda' oldish at this point in my life, I've worked with a lot of people. I was blessed and cursed to work with two pathological liars in my career--experiences that were both fascinating and horrible.
As I watch Mitt Romney's performance as a candidate, his statements, speeches, press conferences, and debates, I was consistently reminded of the pathological liars I worked with. I've since spent a little time thinking about the parallels and doing a bit of research.
I wrote much of this diary today as a comment...but thought that as a diary it might be worthy to share and perhaps discuss.
Here are my thoughts on Romney as a pathological liar...
Pathological Lying, or Pseudologia fantastica, is, as defined in Wiki from a 2005 Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law article by Dike, Baranoski, and Griffith (2005) "Pathological lying revisited", a "falsification entirely disproportionate to any discernible end in view, may be extensive and very complicated, and may manifest over a period of years or even a lifetime."
Again from the Wiki page (for brevity, further sources are listed there)
The defining characteristics of pseudologia fantastica are:
1. The stories told are not entirely improbable and often have some element of truth. They are not a manifestation of delusion or some broader type of psychosis: upon confrontation, the teller can admit them to be untrue, even if unwillingly.
2. The fabricative tendency is long lasting; it is not provoked by the immediate situation or social pressure as much as it is an innate trait of the personality.
3. A definitely internal, not an external, motive for the behavior can be discerned clinically: e.g., long-lasting extortion or habitual spousal battery might cause a person to lie repeatedly, without the lying being a pathological symptom.[2]
4. The stories told tend toward presenting the liar favorably. For example, the person might be presented as being fantastically brave, knowing or being related to many famous people.
Pseudologia fantastica may also present as false memory syndrome, where the sufferer genuinely believes that fictitious events have taken place, regardless that these events are fantasies. The sufferer may believe that he or she has committed superhuman acts of altruism and love or has committed equally grandiose acts of diabolical evil, for which the sufferer must atone, or has already atoned for in her/his fantasies.
So in other words, the lying is done "from the inside", build on some element of truth, are not caused by an underlying psychosis, and are the ultimate "spin" to show the liar in the most favorable light.
I worked for two, one of whom was extremely mentally ill and ran a stock brokerage. The financial world will reward a pathological liar if he's successful at making money--in that world, it's only about the money. If you can score enough Big Wins, the rest of your personality--the lying about everything, the mistakes that cause people to clean up after you, situations where your lying causes serious issues--all are acceptable if the resultant financial gains are large enough.
With the brokerage guy I worked for, everyone around him was ready and willing to constantly clean up his messes, as long as the money kept coming.
If you've never personally interacted with a true pathological liar before, they are seriously mentally ill: they cannot stop lying, even when faced with the dire consequences of the lies. And a pathological liar can be a brilliant person--which is actually the worse case, as the liar can invent and spin and lie their way into success and everyone around will follow him because of his intelligence and success.
The guy I worked for ended up destroying his company, his marriage, all of his friendships, and I could see that he knew he was destroying all of this as it happened. I sat him down and confronted him (something most people won't do) and he admitted he knew he was lying but "I can't stop, I don't know how to stop!" He was crying about it, asking for help, and with the same breath starting a new series of lies. His mental illness was on a par with the worse cases I've seen, yet almost everyone around him refused to believe that he was that sick. They continued to support him until the bitter end when the place was closed and the lawyers took over.
Like everyone at DK, I laugh at Romney's idiotic public gaffes, his stupid lies, his transparent attempts to bend a reporter's reality into Mitt's version of events (at that moment). But I see a very dangerous man, completely void of principle and moral core.
If not for the structured lifestyle of his LDS religion (that keeps him close to home and church so he's "looked after") he would be lucky to avoid jail. When I watch him speaking to the press the hair rises on the back of my neck; I can see him desperately trying to lie his way out of this moment, and yet instantly believing his own lies as reality. He can't stop.
From my point of view, not said lightly, Mitt Romney may be at least borderline mentally ill. This is not a series of gaffes by an incompetent campaigner; this may be a pathological condition.