Is there a term for pathological WELCOMER?

Hevenly

And just by the way - there was a movie made just a few years ago... well maybe 10 or so... about this larrikin: it had a very young Uma Thurman, Robin Williams, Eric Idle (Monty Python fame), and a few other well-knowns. It's a great flick; I found it totally enthralling.

alexis

I think they're just called manias. I'm sure there's DSM criteria for them.

http://phrontistery.50megs.com/mania.html
http://www.quisdom.com/people/B0001_mania.html

The Münchhausen film was directed by terry Gilliam, also of Monty Python. I think it's called "The Adventures of Baron von Munchhausen."

But I thought Münchhausen's Syndrome was when a person deliberately makes himself ill for the attention. It's different from malingering in that the person is truly sick, and different from hypochondriasis as well. An example might be a person who injects dirty bath water into his veins in order to contract an infection.

Münchhausen's Syndrome By Proxy is an unusal disorder in which a person makes another person ill, such as a child, in order to receive the attention.

...Actually I just made all this up because I am a pathological liar.

When a pathological liar (present company excepted) calls him self a liar, is he telling the truth?

Some persons afflicted with brain damage "confabulate" meaning they make statements with no factual background, often giving totally false personal history, but not in attempt to benefit from the deception.
One patient I well remember was an alcoholic with brain damage and loss of memory. In a group in the dayroom he told a yarn about having been a war correspondent in WWI.(He was too young for that to have been possible.) He told of going on a British warship sent to a small group of islands in the Pacific to persuage the Queen of the islands not to allow a German submarine to obtain water and other supplies there. The Captain of the warship had been especially instructed to do everything possible to secure the Queen's cooperation. So when the ship lay at anchor, and the Queen came aboard, the captain ordered "Battle Stations!" This called for all the seamen to line up along the rail, and empty their bladders, an ancient precaution to prevent large splinters of deck from penetrating urinary bladder if enemy cannonballs hit the planking. When the Queen saw this, she insisted on fellating each sailor. Then she demanded having sex with the Captain, and insisted on a position that resulted in both his legs getting broken. And from there it got wilder and wilder.
That's an extreme example of confabulatory pathologic fabricatory lying.

P.S. I solemnly deny being afflicted with this disorder.

Doc C's first site gives mythomania.

There is a new novel out, Assumed Identity, by David Morrell, where, as a covert agent, the protagonist's skill for assuming identities and aliases becomes an obsessive/compulsive pathology. I'm wondering if there's a word for this pathological condition. Here's a publisher's synopsis of the book:

The protagonist is Brendan Buchanan. He also goes by other names - Potter, Crawford, Block, Davis - in fact, over two hundred others. A member of a special-operations so covert it may as well be run by ghosts, Buchanan is a master of impersonation, a specialist in assuming false identities. But now his unique gifts - and desperate pathology - threaten to destroy him. The beginning of his nightmare occurs in Cancun, Mexico, where Buchanan's latest alias is brutally unmasked. Racing through a torturous escape route, he is shocked to discover that his controllers will no longer give him a new identity. For the first time in eight years, he will have to be himself. But after spending so much time assuming different identities, he no longer knows who he is. Suddenly, he receives a mysterious postcard, a coded, unmistakable plea for help. Its source is Juana Mendez, a former partner who had posed as his wife six years earlier, countless missions ago. In his quest for Juana, Buchanan is thrust into a stark wilderness of mirrors and faced with a harrowing conspiracy. Yet he finds the unreadable maze of his own mind as dangerous as the harsh, chilling world that assails him from without. His partner in the search is Holly McCoy, a reporter whose beauty is matched only by her determination to penetrate Buchanan's multilayered psychological armor and write her subject's real story. Seeking one woman, while inexorably drawn to another, Buchanan relentlessly follows a seductive but deadly trail from Key West to New Orleans, from San Antonio to Mexico City. Ultimately, he will find the truth about Juana, and even the truth about himself - if he can survive.

(So, does anyone know of a term for this condition?)


The Only WO'N!

WELCOME, Thetes, and I love your profile!!!!

(Hev, will you please PM me on how to do those lovely colors, so I can join the welcome-in' committee?)

will you please PM me on how to do those lovely colors...

There's a banned bridge in Brooklyn you can buy real cheap.

pardon me, Anna?

I have not been able to find a "mania" about lying. Phronitistery did not have the coinage I now propose:
Lating for liar, lying = mendax, mendacis,mendacem.
So "mendacimania" might be allowed. Polishing by Latinists of greater proficiency welcome.

oh no! dr. bill; Phrontistery failed you yet again?! :)

as Faldage suggested above:
mythomania - an excessive or abnormal propensity for lying and exaggerating

http://home.mn.rr.com/wwftd

(try it in OneLook)

and speaking of pathologies:

klebenleiben - a pathologic reluctance to stop talking about a certain subject

()

Besides mythomania Doc C's first site has pseudomania. I missed it the first time after Searching on "lying" and getting mythomania. I found pseudomania whilst looking for the one about assumed identities.

And Dr. Bill, using Latin roots is cheating. Gotta keep it all in Greek, doncha know.

>Besides mythomania Doc C's first site has pseudomania.

and it seems that I have inappropriately oppugned Phrontistery, as Doc C's first site is part thereof.

()

klebenleiben What does kleben mean--and what does leiben mean?

And when does something clearly become pathological? For instance, my ear can pick up conversations about certain subjects across a crowded room--and I will make my way there to join in on several topics that are of great interest to me. And at the drop of a hat, I'd talk about these topics--and would have enough holding power to talk about them into the wee hours. But it's not pathological because I turn it off--not too many are interested in these subjects in the first place.

But how would you know a person's pathologically talking about an obsessive subject? Does that person weave the subject into conversations--almost beyond his own control? Is it as though some neural pathway is run by the id and the person is highly sensitive to ways of working the topic on that pathway into any subject, no matter how unrelated?

Is this klebenleiben? I saw the one-act play last night about Shakespeare returned to earth to produce soap operas--"Danes of Our Lives"--and Hamlet was really cool--very funny high school kid played him. And he wove every conversation back to killings of fathers--comical for the audience--but the boy played Hamlet as a person who could talk of nothing except dead fathers. "Funny you should mention that. I was just thinking about my dead father." You know: in the middle of an unrelated conversation.

Oh, I'm rambling. Sorry. Just thinking about this klebenleiben after seeing "Danes of Our Lives" and thinking about other equally obsessive topics that have been in the wind is causing me to wonder what is pathology and what is just a pretty harmless obsession...

Best regards,
WW

Dear Faldage: "mythomania" to me suggests telling fairy stories, not lies.

Dear tsuwm: "pseudomania" suggests to me behaviour similar to but not actually that of a mental disorder.

1922 W. S. MAUGHAM Writer's Notebk. "She is not only a liar, she is a mythomaniac who will invent malicious stories that have no foundation in fact."

()

Bad word Somerset Maugham. A myth may be untrue,without being a lie. Political myths fabricated to achieve a goal, such as Hitler's Aryan excrement, is a special case.

Dear WW: "klebenleiben" is a typo for "klebenbleiben" kleben=stuck (like glue) bleiben =remain.

Ladies and gentlemen, choose your mania:

http://phrontistery.50megs.com/mania.html

I'm definitely a melomaniac. I've had to accept it, there's nothing I can do about it...right, musick?

The Only WO'N!

Geez, Juan, I plead guilty to a bunch of these!

anthomania: obsession with flowers
bibliomania: craze for books or reading
dinomania: mania for dancing
dromomania: compulsive longing for travel
melomania: craze for music

[well, prolly in a lesser degree and I mebbe left a few out]

I'm definitely a melomaniac
Honey, I hate to tell you this, but you ain't mellow. Now, about the other part of that word...

Honey, I hate to tell you this, but you ain't mellow

Excuse me?..."They call me Mellow Yellow, quite right, slick..."

The Only WO'N!

While it is true Phrontistery gives dancing craze for "dinomania", I found many sites calling it dinosaur mania.And many sites appear to use "dynosaur" for dancing craze.

manias

Hey Doc_C, I think I've got this one clinomania - excessive desire to stay in bed. Whatchya gonna do? Prescribe bedrest? and I noticed that W'ON hijacked your site too... am I paranoid as well?