Andy Patton

Pseudologia fantastica Powerful & fascinating take: the psychiatrist & writer Dr @MaxPemberton looks at Jason Arday... "The people I’ve met who fit the description of pseudologia fantastica tend not to stop lying. They are seldom cold or calculating. They tend to be charming and, perhaps most importantly, fragile underneath. What strikes me most is how often they appear to half-believe the story they’ve invented. The lie is not really being told to the listener at all, it is being told to the ego of the person telling it. The listener is only there to confirm it. "...the tales are about suffering that has been overcome, odds that were insurmountable, the diagnosis nobody believed, the childhood that should not have been survived, and then the triumph over all this. It is a far more effective structure for any fantasy, because it makes doubting it feel like an act of cruelty. "Why do the stories become so extravagant? Part of it is this notion that an audience gets used to them, just as the exponent of the lie does. So what produced gasps last year produces only nods this time, and applause that has stopped coming leaves an empty feeling. "So the story has to grow, and it grows in whatever direction was rewarded most loudly last time. You can’t backtrack once a story is out there, you can only embellish and elaborate... "The only person they picture on the other side of their story is somebody looking impressed. A claim is not weighed for whether it will survive scrutiny, it is weighed for whether it will trigger the required impression and response. The claims that do best in that regard are precisely the ones nobody sensible would invent. "Every fantasist I’ve known kept going with their stories long past the point where anybody was still convinced, because the alternative was to confess it was a sham and allow people to destroy the false identity they had built for themselves, so become a nobody. "Which is why I don’t feel triumphant about Jason Arday’s downfall. When a world collapses it is a terrible thing to live through, and no less terrible for having been constructed of tissue paper. "He built it and must answer for it. But he did not build it on his own, and the institutions – not least Cambridge University and the diversity, equality and inclusion industry – that made him their poster boy and handed him the bricks have gone very quiet. "For that they bear considerable responsibility in this sorry saga and should reflect on it in shame." Original: dailymail.com/news/article-1… Archive: archive.ph/H633W