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Pseudologia phantastica is a special method of denying dreadful reality. The author's patient made herself believe her nurse's absurd stories and tried to make others believe her own absurd stories which by psychoanalysis were uncovered as derivatives of sadomasochistic fantasies. Her unconscious reason for doing so may be expressed in the following formula: 'If I succeed in making myself and others believe such absurd lies I prove to myself that perceptions are deceiving. I need not be afraid any longer of the cruel acts I have seen and heard in my parents' sleeping room. Those old perceptions of mine do not represent reality either. They only seem to be true as these new ones do.'
After witnessing the temper tantrum of a psychotic man she depreciated this new shocking experience as untrue by producing still more sadomasochistic fantasies to calm her attacks of anxiety. People were enlisted to confirm her fiction that one can be deceived by what one sees and hears. The libido-economic effect of her fantasies was supported by increased masturbation.
The author describes analogous methods of denying dreadful reality. Some artists retire from emotionally unacceptable reality and recreate their own corrected substitute-reality in their work. They reassure themselves and others whose unconscious needs they meet that their artistic fantasies represent reality (cf. function of a fetish and of screen memories) and that their original perceptions are errors. Apart from this propagandistic demonstration they unconsciously try to depreciate the reliability of perceptions quite as it is done in pseudologia phantastica: 'If perceptions are so unreliable that these artificial creations can be accepted as representing reality one need not rely on other perceptions. Their dreadful contents do not exist in reality.'
Another specimen of falsification with the same economic function is the philosophical system of many a compulsive neurotic. He pretends it encompasses every