cite: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/GoodMorningAmerica/hoax_walker030801.html
I think this is the dumbest thing she said
I’m not sure what her particular malfunction is, but I’ve heard tell of many people who do this sort of thing. Not just conventional con artists, looking to get money out to the bereved, but people who have some sort of psychological compulsion to contact and interact with people who have experienced a tragedy, and sometimes ultimately to claim to be a dead loved one.
It’s not an easy topic to “Google” on, and I don’t have any links handy, alas. I do recall reading on News Of The Weird about some guy who had been arrested, and found to have volume after volume of scrapbooks about various accidents and disasters, and to have intensively interviewed many of the next of kin apparently simply, so far as could be discerned, out of curiosity (though I don’t believe he ever claimed to be anyone he wasn’t). I also think that someone on the SMDB once reported an e-mail correspondence with someone who led up to claiming to be a dead relative. When tripped up with some trick questions and forced to admit their lie, I think the person fell back on the “trying to help” assertion.
If you do find links to articles on this sort of thing, please let me know, as I’ve tried repeatedly while writing this, and have come up frustratingly empty.
I’ve read about factitious disorders (like the one described here where a guy was being evaluated in a pysch ward because he was distraught and claiming he’d lost his pregnant wife in a car crash, and then his mom etc. when in fact, he was single and his entire family was alive and well).
Most factitious disorders are when you manifest symptoms of illness or injury (like Munchausen’s Syndrome). Never heard of one where you leech on to someone else’s bereavement – but it sounds like it could be an odd variation.
Would be a starting point for a Google search in any case.
I don’t know, but in this picture of her on Fox News, she actually looks like General Burkhalter.
(Probably won’t be here long.)
Eats_Crayons – I turned up references to Munchausen’s and the like in my ill-fated search, but didn’t get any closer. I suppose the next step could be to concentrate on more hard-core psych sites. Maybe over the weekend.
Plenty of people display “grief parasite” or “bereavement leech” behavior. Certainly many came to light after 9/11, and there are enough of them to provide a ratings base that TV news panders to. I guess this is the “merely neurotic” version of the condition, with the truly psychotic version leading some to seek to insinuate themselves into the grief of others. Claiming the identity of the deceased/missing might be motivated by a desire to rescue the bereaved by fixing the unfixable, or a manifestation of a desire to immerse one’s self as completely as possible in the powerful emotions of others: "I crave love and signifcance so much I’ll plant myself in the middle of the hole in someone else’s life to get them.
Earl – Maybe she’s that sister of Herr General’s that he was always trying to marry off…
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,93497,00.html
The woman is very strange, if you read the article.