ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what is described in psychopathology as pseudologia phantastica—the fantasy lie. Walking dreams are kept secret, because their dreamer is at all times conscious of their conflict with reality. The creative writer is able to communicate his daydream to the reader because his personal gifts enable him to find a form capable of bridging the barriers between his ego and that of others. An analytic understanding of the daydream, its relationship to the unconscious, its role in the origin of neurotic symptoms, etc., enables to attempt an analytic investigation of pseudology to state first of all that the difference between it and the daydream is that the pathological liar relates a piece of daydreaming or fantasy as if it were a real experience.
