Cahuzac affair: the lie translates suffering

The lie ! The word spreads to the front pages of all the media. Yesterday, Jérôme Cahuzac admitted that he did indeed have accounts abroad. A revelation that had the effect of a bomb because of the gravity of the facts, but also the four months during which the former Minister of the Budget lied.

To learn more about the psychiatric definition of lying, why actor asked Pr Michel Lejoyeux, head of the psychiatry department at Bichat hospital.

why actor: In psychiatry, what does lying mean?

Prof. Michel Lejoyeux: At the psychiatric level, there is what is called the utilitarian lie that children know. For example, they arrive somewhere late and will tell a lie to get out of a difficult situation. And then there’s a lie that’s more like a 19-year-old psychiatrist^th century called the narrative impulse. That is to say, basically, the desire to lie in order to lie. It’s kind of an addiction to the urge to lie.

Revealing the truth, is it a relief or a pain?

Prof. Michel Lejoyeux: Anyway, I believe that when someone is faced with the reality of their lie, they can’t be okay. In any case, for a doctor it is impossible not to hear considerable suffering. The fact of being revealed in his lying behavior is an existential collapse and that carries the risk of acute psychiatric states.

Jérôme Cahuzac speaks of a “spiral of lies”. Pwhy not grab the opportunities to tell the truth?

Prof. Michel Lejoyeux: In some cases, lying can empower itself. It can even become a kind of existence in itself. If you start to lie about something, it’s hard to go back.

When lying is so important, does it reflect a psychiatric personality trait?

Prof. Michel Lejoyeux: Not necessarily, it is a behavior that can cover very different personalities. There is not “one” personality of the liar, nor is it a diagnosis, it is a behavior which can obey multiple determinisms. To make the lie a kind of syndrome or disease, of which one would say there is a personality, a frequency ect… It would be an aberration.

But, the pathological lie, it exists, it is the mythomania. Is it frequent?

Prof. Michel Lejoyeux: It is probably common, but people never come to see a doctor saying they are myth addicts and want help. Because one of the things of lying is agnonosia, it is the non-recognition of the character of the lie, except when circumstances require it. Mythomania remains a gray area in medicine, we do not have a lie psychology consultation at the Bichat hospital.

Do we have any idea of ​​the factors that would favor the development of mythomania?

Prof. Michel Lejoyeux: One of the hypotheses on lying is to tell yourself that you are all the more led to lie when you have suffered trauma in your childhood. And then when we lie to ourselves about our past, we tend to lie to ourselves about our present. There is probably a disease, but one that we know little about in psychiatry, which is this need to protect oneself by flight, rather than to protect oneself by explanations.