The Satisfactions Of Impostorism

Everyday lies don’t usually harm us directly, while lies with intent fail if they don’t. Regardless, once we recognize that it is possible to enjoy a lie with intent, this form of deceit becomes at once more understandable and more complex. It is not just the function of the lie that matters. It is the form, too. In their research, they found that individuals described as excitement seeking, those with a tendency to pursue thrills and risk, were more likely to cheat. Just as with con men, the thrill of the crime itself is a motivating factor. Interestingly, duping delight has a parallel in the more mundane forms of deception we normally encounter in everyday life. As was noted above, many lies have more to do with the psychology of the liar than the target of the lie. This is true, again, in many instances of false bravado, such as exaggerating the quality of a golf score, or the size of a paycheck, or what have you. Duping delight suggests that this same phenomenon may be relevant, at least to an extent, for lies with intent. Yet perhaps more powerfully, they convey a psychological thrill to their teller. Sometimes lies with intent create more than a false investment opportunity.

Not Guilty

Sometimes they are used to create an entirely fabricated person. This prejudice might also have come from the fact that the Chadwicks reportedly met in a brothel, which Mrs. Chadwick may or may not have known was operating out of a boardinghouse she ran. Chadwick’s social status took an unexpected turn during a trip she made to New York. She asked an acquaintance of her husband’s, a man by the name of Dillon, to take her to Andrew Carnegie’s mansion on Fifth Avenue. Chadwick was admitted inside while Dillon waited for her. Chadwick explained that she was Andrew Carnegie’s illegitimate daughter. He had been giving her promissory notes for years, but she’d been too ashamed of her situation to ever make use of them. She also revealed that when Carnegie died, she stood to inherit 40 million. Chadwick spent this money lavishly, on clothing, jewelry, and elaborate parties. She couldn’t pay, and she was sued. The promissory notes were soon found to be crude forgeries.

No Matter How Stuck You Feel

When the issue was brought to Andrew Carnegie, he stated that he had never heard of Mrs. Chadwick, and certainly had never promised her money. Chadwick was put on trial, and her case drew global media attention. Carnegie himself attended the proceedings. It was revealed that Mrs. Chadwick, apparently knew nothing. Her real name turned out to be Elizabeth Bigley, and her actual father was a Canadian railway worker. The lies of Hakan Yalincak, Lou Pearlman, and their predatory ilk are extreme. But figures like Cassie Chadwick/Elizabeth Bigley seem to embody still another level of deception. Her lies were ones she lived with day in and day out. Whereas we tend to think of deception as an aberration within a larger practice of honesty, for Bigley, deception was the behavioral norm. Masquerading of this sort did not end with the nineteenth century, of course.

Back In The Saddle

Like Hakan Yalincak’s mother, who posed as a doctor for six months, rare individuals continue to blend themselves into ordinary life, posing as people entirely different from who they really are. The popular term for such individuals is impostors. Sometimes, they are motivated merely by necessity. And for some, there is almost certainly an element of duping delight. This sensation may, in fact, be magnified in impostors, who succeed not just in duping a few people but in fooling more or less everyone with whom they come into contact. Yet the satisfactions of impostorism are not necessarily limited to the joys of profit and the thrills of manipulation. At various times, he assumed the role of a lawyer, a college dean, a psychologist, and a sheriff’s deputy. For a time during the Korean War he even posed as a medical officer on a Canadian destroyer, going so far as to perform surgeries. Impostors fully occupy their false role in society. Such rewards may be especially tempting for someone who suffers specifically from their lack. Indeed, impostorism, according to the thinking of some who have studied it, is not so much about being another person but, rather, about not being yourself. From this perspective, impostorism appears, if not more understandable, then at least not necessarily malevolent. All of us have, at one time or another, wished we were different in some way. The idea that we can effect changes to ourselves is an enduring aspect of the national ethos. The American dream is one of willed transformation. Impostorism may be merely a distorted and exaggerated enactment of this dream, one that exchanges deception for effort, while the essential goal remains the same. Perhaps it is precisely because we can recognize some shadow of our own psychology in impostors that they occupy such an ambiguous place in our culture. More recently, Steven Spielberg directed and Leonardo DiCaprio starred in Catch Me If You Can, a movie depicting the many lives and lies of Frank Abagnale, an impostor who posed as a doctor, a lawyer, and, most notoriously, an airline pilot. Yet even if we admire their guts or identify, to a degree, with their psychology, it’s important to keep in mind that the core of what impostors do is exploit the trust and faith of those around them. Lies with intent, by definition, involve manipulation and victimization. While we shouldn’t overexaggerate the importance of the profit motive for impostors, we can’t ignore it, either. And that profit is stolen from someone. These issues of victimization and loss, which are easy enough to ignore in the Hollywood conception of impostors as lovable rascals, come into clearer focus when we look at the practitioners of another manifestation of lies with intent. If the mental makeup of an impostor is perhaps more sympathetic than we might first assume, the mental makeup of the con artist is probably more sinister.