Billy Liar, created in the 1950s, is a fantasist; a storyteller who lives much of his time in the imaginary world of Ambrosia.
He is engaged to two girls and likes a third. He is desperate to get out of the dead-end town of Stradhoughton, where he lives with his working-class family and where he has hidden 211 “luxury” calendars under his bed that he should have published nine months earlier, on behalf of his employers. , Shadrack & Duxbury, “funeral furnishers”.
Instead, he lied about its safe shipment and kept the postage money. His aspiration is to become a comedy writer in the capital, four hours away by train. “Are you really going to London,” asks one of his trio of girlfriends, “or are you just pretending?”
The late Keith Waterhouse was the writer of lying billy, a very funny book published in 1959, which records a day in the life of the eponymous hero. Back then, “simulating”, even on an industrial scale, was considered a gentle hobbyist’s game.
Now, several decades later and for the first time, two American psychologists, Drew A Curtis and Christian L Hart, have proposed in a new book that “pathological lying” should be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DMMMM) that helps clinicians and researchers define and classify mental illnesses. How is that going to work?
Today’s society, unlike Britain in the 1950s, is fueled by manufacturing. Politicians who “speak badly”, for example; doctors who manipulate the facts; professionals “editing” their CVs (builder Jon Andrewes, who was 63 in 2017 when he claimed to be a doctor, faked a PhD, became chairman of two NHS Trusts and a hospice, won £1m and only been asked to pay back £100,000… not a bad return); writers plagiarizing the work of his colleagues; influencers dissing about products they “love”; and individuals who claim that “my truth is the only truth that counts”, even if it is fiction. All of which takes place in the bear pit of social media, where it’s so easy to find out that you can’t or shouldn’t make it up.
So where do we draw the line? When does a “little white lie” as a way of life become a treatable diagnosis? And would we be lying if we said it might be too late to worry?
Christopher Massimine, 36, a former theater director in Salt Lake City, is undergoing a regimen of cognitive behavioral therapy to help him stop compulsively lying about what matters and what doesn’t really matter. He recently appeared on the New York Times and, like Billy Liar, Massimine’s saga is never without humor. Unlike the fictional young dreamer, however, Massimine’s disguise has a darker side of the darkness that has hurt others and given him prestige, power, and dollars. So is he smart, sick, or both?
Massimine told reporters that he was born in Italy (actually, New Jersey). He told his friends that his birthday is in September (May). He told his wife, Maggie, that he was having an affair with Kim Kardashian (definitely untrue) and made up awards to add to his resume. A friend described his behavior as catching “a minnow and then it turned into a swordfish.”
Maggie combed through all of her husband’s Facebook posts and email accounts and discovered voice impersonations, fictitious email accounts, elaborately forged correspondence, fake photos (Massimine supposedly at Everest Base Camp with a Sherpa when in fact she was in Cambodia). “Who is this person?” she is reported as thinking. “Who did I marry?” Her husband has now been diagnosed with a personality disorder. Dr. Jordan W. Merrill, a psychiatrist who treated Massimine last year, says her former patient is a “benign” liar as “a protection for her internal fragility.” It’s not about taking something away from you, it’s just about trying to cope.”
Massimine resigned from the acquired position with false qualifications and negotiated a $175,000 settlement in which neither he nor his previous employer admitted to wrongdoing.
How unusual is Massimine’s allergy to the truth? Dr. Curtis and Dr. Hart drew on 2010 research to calculate how many Americans habitually lie. It showed that 60% said they did not tell lies in the previous 24 hours. On average, people told 1.65 lies (half-truths?) in the last 24 hours, except for the 5.3% of the population who simply couldn’t stop. They said an average of 15 lies a day. Of this group, the two doctors have drawn up a psychological profile, a pathology that they want to include in the DMMMM.
Psychologists say these liars are needy, eager for social approval, and mostly have no legal problems or criminal records. Many were wracked with guilt and remorse and deserve better investigation, treatment, and the opportunity to address their “toxic” compulsion.
Maggie Massimine says she’s less angry now that her husband’s addiction to fiction is recognized as a disease. Massimine himself seems ambivalent on the recovery now that his days as Pinocchio are supposedly over. “There was this wonderful character of mine and he did things that nobody else could do,” he says. “In a way, I’m sad to see him go.”
Experts tell us that in an age of rampant lying, narcissism, and a chronic lack of self-awareness, “benign” pathological liars are a small minority. And who are we not to believe?
