In shrinkdom, there is a disorder that is well known amongst career criminals. It is called Factitious Disorder. It is an intentional production or theatrical, staged by a person feigning physical and/or psychological symptoms… for ulterior gain.
This can include mimicking fugue states (taking unremembered travel whether across the hall or across the world… and claiming not to remember what one did or who one spoke to, the content of what was said, or what occurred (for instance, in the recent news chopper crashes in Phoenix, the suspect who’d stolen a truck claimed he later woke up at his family-member’s house, not remembering that he’d led a multi-car police chase, saw the huge plume of smoke from the crashed helicopters, felt the impact of the truck’s tires being blown, et al.)
Think also of Congress’s failed attempts to get Cheney to give on which oil co execs he talked to and about what. IF Congress moved that inquiry along, it is highly likely based on Cheney’s m.o. to this point, that Cheney would demur and say, he recalls nothing, as though he has a brain stem injury all of a sudden.
A person enacting a Factitious Disorder may claim amnesia, (episodic or concurrent inability to remember personal information that is often, in reality, seriously threatening to their charade of innocence or ignorance). Think of all those who have murdered their families and claimed they were knocked out at the scene by five Black or Hispanic men. They often don’t realize the moment they say Black or Hispanic men, and their injuries are nowhere commensurate with the injuries to their family members, they may become an instant prime suspect
Think of Cheney claiming he knew nothing about Scooter Libby’s work product, that Cheney was busy being ‘sick’ having heart conditions on and off throughout that time.
Or a criminal may feign a kind of multiple personality disorder; speaking clearly with full memory and accuracy about selected matters, but when interrogator, interviewer, investigator comes near the stressful facts that might force the criminal’s revealment, suddenly a ‘second personality’ is pretended, one that is terse and uncommunicative and irritated. The ‘other’ personality carries any number of symptoms which most often are pretended to affect memory. There may also be facetious and wrongful blame assigned to others who may, in actuality, be innocent.
Other ‘pretend symptoms’ may give the appearance of addledness, ‘closed head’ injury, aphasia (not being able to speak), somnolence (pretending sleep or pretending drowsiness), and feigning Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It would be interesting to track Cheney in two ways… to see over which topics he ‘falls asleep’ during… perhaps so he can feign ‘no memory’ afterward… and where he goes when he says he’s going to the doctor… amongst criminals, ‘doctor’ is sometimes code for one who helps you ‘fix things.’ In investigation, even odd trajectories are looked at until proven cogent or not. Those odd tracks are followed because it is amazing often, how highly symbolizing criminals are in their subterfuges.
The criminal’s underlying motive is to evade being brought to justice, to continue in their own fiefdom, to gain privilege, to be fawned upon, to dangle reward for whomever will not turn them in, to retain power, to evade consequences of their own ill and egregious actions, to walk free.
The denouements I’ve seen of burrowed-in wily criminals are often effected by men who are bigger than the criminal, and smarter, and in a way, more wily about human nature than the criminal is… that is, the big guys press them in every way, not let them off the hook, not being deferent to them, using a two member team of good cop/ bad cop and often a third to give the criminal friendly philosophical advice, to interfere with and question the criminal’s fantasy of protected privilege, to not be politic or polite, to log all their movements and meetings, to
depose all their chums, and to bring all legal muscle and ace-accurate chronologies to bear and to force them out of their den into light of day, to put the squeeze on the little guys around them who will likely squeal in order to avoid deleterious consequences for themselves, and to eat away at their power structures until they fall. To give them no quarter, and no saving of face.
It’s chilling to watch such an undoing. But, those who orchestrate and effect it– and it is all done within the law– do it like containing a hazardous spill. Protocol is followed immaculately. No changes, no second chances, no breaks given, nothing overlooked.
When we say career criminal, what we really mean is a person who has a dedicated disorder, one that there is no medicine to mediate or change the condition, and no therapy will help. They essentially could be said to have a form of retardation that does not affect intellectual development, but completely interferes with conscience.
This particular kind of criminal will in no way ever own up, give up power or concede or admit to their wrongs voluntarily. Not ever. They are absolutely the man who will knock the women and children out of the lifeboat at the Titanic by donning a woman’s dress and headscarf. They are wily, bloodless, cold and smart and utterly self serving.
They consider themselves kings, headsmen, lords, dons. They cannot in any way be allowed an out. Like the Nazis on trial at Nuremburg who tried to befriend their guards, claiming they, the Nazis were really gentlemen at heart, so they should still enjoy favor after committing the most heinous crimes… the career criminal sees all others as mere marks to be duped into cutting them a break.
This particular disorder is never disclosed by the person pretending the symptoms. It is revealed by analyzing their speech patterns on audio, in writing, in transcripts, and, in part, by noting the sudden dips of affect during the feigning of forgetfulness, by noting the topics that were being broached, and the sudden flatness of affect, and interruptions in literally timing of spaces in between their sentences or words, that most often give away that the criminal is disturbed, and is highly likely to be lying.
The rapidity or broken rhythm of eye blinking, the way the foot rotates on the axis of the ankle, can also be giveaways. People who lie chronically about everything, practice ‘quiet body’ … still, they cannot control things like the pulse in their throats, nor spontaneous changes in color of the skin.
Most oddly, in the kind of analytical psychology I’m trained in, the indicators for subconscious disturbance in the person telling falsehoods often can be traced, for instance, not to the topic at hand, but the topic just before that one. The agitation begins quietly during the topic they are first agitated by, but only surfaces by the time the train has reached the next station, the next topic.
This is well worth watching with regard to people like Cheney who say that which in forensics and analysis of behavior are the ‘rote’ or vapid replies: “I don’t recall; I cant recall, I don’t know, I can’t say, I haven’t heard that, I haven’t seen the document, I didn’t get the call, I didn’t read it, hear it, know it… “ and one of the oddly incriminating non-averrings in terms of guilt if not consequence, “I take the 5th.â€
The psychology of Factitious Disorder is that the criminal pretends not to be affected by the most threatening questions that come to close to their chronic deceptions. And, what most often ultimately gives them away is a sudden departure from relatively free constructs in spoken word, changing to a stylized and rote construct: those practiced words again: that sound like robotic, that have a bland affect to them, unlike all other language used by the criminal.
One of the oddest things I see in tv media interviews that I do not quite comprehend entirely, is how when a presumed VIP says, “No comment,” or “I don’t recall,” the interviewer smiles and makes a few little ineffective pokes with a green willow and then goes on to the next item… almost as though hearing the words “I don’t recall…” causes the interviewer to fall asleep as though enchanted and ask no more questions with anything approaching alacrity. Perhaps a diagnosis is needed for that, as well.
The dullard interviewer lets all these pretenses of ‘not knowing, not recalling’ go by. An analyst however, an investigator worth their salt, a media person who is not taking Sominex would however press on: and hard. They might say, “Well speculate for us anyway.”
When the person repeated themselves saying some version of, “I can’t comment because I haven’t read the documents,” the interviewer ought not back off, act all smily and cut to break, but rather say something like, “You wouldn’t be reading them anyway, your lawyer would. What is your speculation on the issue?”
When the interviewee repeats, “I can’t comment,” the interviewer would not back away, but press forward with a provocative: “Why are you waiting to be lawyered up? Can you answer that? ”
This is the place where a criminal with Factitious Disorder ends the interview, becomes agitated and angry, pretends to be sick, says they have another appointment, does whatever they can to escape. They may bury themselves behind their cohorts and refuse further interviews with anyone ever, in which case their crooked cards are laid on the table for all to see, regardless.
A proper media that has huge power would never accommodate in order to have access to ongoing lies. A proper media interviewer would close off both doors to the weasel’s den. And then write about why a high official is burrowed in afraid to speak. The criminal won’t speculate, so the media must. Strongly. And educate themselves about criminal psychology. Media doesn’t need to hire a 5th Avenue shrink or a famous one for name recognition: This kind of criminal behavior we’re talking about is Psych 101. Any shrink, including one like myself, can lay the lines out in ten minutes. So, likely, could you my dear readers. A great deal of psychology is observation and common sense. It’s come to this, as of today I believe… our squinty-eyed grandmothers would’ve had Cheney’s number down accurately a long time ago.
What if we couldn’t do anything about criminals already in office? But, what if media with a psychological map of what to look for and where, and real balls, could?
CODA:
Three different words in English.Factitious, artificially created or developed, used as a behavioral term.
Facetious, treating serious issues with deliberate unseriousness
Fictitious; being imaginary or having been fabricated; often applied to genres of novel writing, for instance. etc.