[16] ``Zur kasuistischen und klin. Beurteilung der Pseudologia
phantastica.'' Charite-Annalen, XXV, XXVI.



Wendt[17] enlarges the field in which we may look for such cases.
He finds pseudologia phantastica a symptom, not only of hysteria,
alcoholism, paranoia, but also of sex repression, and
neurasthenia. He takes a more philosophical view of the subject
than previous authors. He understands by pseudologia phantastica
not merely the bare habit of telling fantastic lies, and what
they bring forth, but rather the yielding up of consciousness of
reality in the presence of the morbidly fantastic wish in its
widest consequences. Since the wish in order to exist is not
permitted to lose entirely the conscious presentation of what it
hopes for, so memory and recognition of reality emerge
disconnected in consciousness, and a condition described as
double consciousness arises. In this state of mind two forms of
life run side by side, the actual and the desired, finally the
latter becomes preponderant and decisive. Such a psychic make-up
must lead unconditionally and necessarily to swindling and law
breaking. A degenerative alteration furnishes the basis from
which a wish or wish-complex arises, increasing in force until it
becomes autosuggestion, hence it is pathological. Then follow
the practical consequences, and we have developed, on the one
side, pathological lying, and, on the other, swindling, i.e.,
criminality. Purely symptomatically pseudologia phantastica is
characterized by the groundlessness of the fabrications, the