Delusional is another term that could be applied.
Delusional revisionist? Not exactly pithy, but I think it’s accurate.
Maybe we should start calling those people Lucas.
Snopes describes one such story here, based, in part, on a movie called “Wing and a Prayer” (although not a movie in which he appeared.
Mother in Law works for me.
Good to know that Democrats are immune to lying. Thanks for pointing out that liars are the exclusive domain of the Republican party. My favorite recent truthful quote from a be-loved liberal is the famous “I did not sleep with that woman, Monica Lewinski”.:dubious:
I believe the actual quote was :
(Clinton): “I’m going to say this once, only: I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky”.
I took from this the feeling that Clinton actually thought that while telling a falsehood, because of the way he phrased his answer (as if he was not identifying “Miss Lewinsky” as “that woman”), he was actually being truthful.
There was also his statement “it depends upon what “is” is”-I took this as an effort to deceive, using wordplay.
In any event, I think Clinton did actually believed that he was telling “the truth”-whatever meaning that had to him.
Moderator bat-phone ringing!
[Moderator Warning]
obbn, given that I’ve already issued a warning for the post you are responding to and explained the rule on political potshots, I don’t know why you felt you had to answer with another. This is an official warning for political jabs in GQ. Do not do this again.
Further political commentary of this sort by anyone will receive a warning. Those who wish to discuss the relative truthfulness of Democrats or Republicans can do so in either GD or the Pit.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I used to work with a compulsive liar. He lied to get himself out of difficult situations, he lied to keep people happy, he lied to cover up other lies, and he lied when he didn’t have to, when the truth would have been easier and there was nothing to be gained from lying. It was terribly frustrating, to say the least. He did seem to believe his own web of lies to a rather large extent, and did not cope well with being called out on any of it. When confronted with one of his obvious lies, he would get very frustrated. He could argue his way out of almost anything. If he couldn’t, or in the face of hard evidence, his absolute last resort would be something along the lines of “I was so tired and overworked at the time, I didn’t know what I was saying”.
He seemed to think anything he said carried enough authority that it should be believed, however unlikely or demonstrably wrong. There was definitely an element of arrogance there, thinking he was smarter than everyone else. I also think the lies became truth for him, but I always wondered at what point in his mental processing this happened.
Confabulation doesn’t quite fit, I’d love to know if there is a word for this.
Cognitive dissonance. Wikipedia:
The idea is that people re-arrange their beliefs to fit conflicting motivations. In terms of the OP, the rewards people get from telling a good story conflict with that small part of them that knows it’s not true. So they convince themselves the story is true – and ironically the tale gets even better. A good way to convince others is to first convince yourself.
Sampiro: Check out the wiki article on cognitive dissonance: it’s quite good. You might use it as a lead, in order to find the specific answer in a (cog?) psych textbook.
Wiki also has a section on bad faith: “In bad faith, it is from myself that I am hiding the truth” – Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness So there’s your term. But if you use it, I would guess that many would misunderstand, for it has other more common meanings. The cognitive dissonance article is much richer. (Hm. Maybe the french have an expression for this phenomenon.)
This may be too much of a hijack, but is there a term for what it’s called when a person tells exaggerated stories (say, about personal heroism) and believes they’re true, or when that same person will deny having done something that you just watched him do, and will believe it? I suppose it’s a form of delusion but I’ve always wondered if it has a particular name.
(Toward the end of my acquaintance with him he made us all very nervous, but I don’t think any of us had any idea what to do about it either. He was relatively normal when I first met him, and gradually got scary. Schizophrenia, maybe? He was about the right age.)
I don’t see why Confabulation wouldn’t cover that.
I had somehow missed Askance’s referenced wiki entry on confabulation.
Also: mythmaking, mythmaker, myth creation.
For completeness, I will add the related (though admittedly different) concepts of special pleading, one-sided argument, and the Master’s piece, Is there really such a thing as a pathological liar?
The literature on false confessions is also of note. Google for Pezdek, Sperry and Owens, “Interviewing Witnesses: The Effect of Forced Confabulation on Event Memory” and Kasin, “Internalized False Confessions”, which describes confabulation as the process by which witnesses "concoct details to fit their newly formed belief ".
I think we may be on to something.