Most of the really effective compulsive lying folks are not patients. Such people, if ever seen as patients, do not stay as patients very long.

I remember a young woman, the daughter of a woman scientist who befriended me in France.  She was beautiful, I could tell from her photographs, in a way I knew I would never be beautiful.  Sometimes a poet, sometimes a singer, more often, this young woman in her late twenties, was manipulating (sleeping, I think) her way into bit parts on the Paris stage.  We were interested, her mom and me, in the manifestations of the powers of the brain, ranging from raw intelligence, which we both knew we had, to the sort of metaphysical magic her daughter, who was calling herself LaFleur at the time, definitely had. I remember we knew someone who allegedly read photos.  He was a “serious” person, an effective hospital administrator in one of the larger Parisian hospitals.  Among his occult practices, he read photos.  We asked LaFleur to submit him one, with no information other than her age (28 at the time) and name.  She gave us a photo. It was one of the strangest photos I had ever seen.  The lens distorted her myopic gaze in the vague direction of the camera.  She wore some kind of soft cloth that descended low enough to reveal a single nipple and not the other. Of course, the “reader” declined the photo.  He said a simple photo that would be used for a passport or drivers’ license would be helpful. LaFleur never submitted one. Read more on My Own Breakfast At Tiffany’s…