Why did John Davy lie?

What makes a man like John Davy construct a fantasy world of easily discredited lies? JAN CORBETT investigates.

Of all the traits that set humans apart from the animals, the one that causes the most trouble is our ability to lie.

We all do it, sometimes for the best of motives, such as sparing someone's feelings. We might lie to survive or avoid punishment. Some do it for personal gain - pulling off a fraud or getting elected.

But when confronted with someone like John Davy, whose lies were too wide-ranging and clumsy to be part of a sophisticated con or a party manifesto, you have to wonder if there was something, well, psychological going on.

It is one thing to falsify academic qualifications to get a job in a foreign country because you've been bankrupted in the one you come from. It is quite another to be driving through Canada singing along to Paul Simon's Red Rubber Ball and to tell a companion, "I wrote this".

Psychologist Henck van Bilsen says this points to someone with a psychological problem - rather than a mental illness - that is somehow wrapped up in self-esteem. These people equate a lack of achievement with unworthiness as human beings.

Self-esteem to some people can be like an addictive drug. They feel their levels falling and need another fix.

Take the episode with the song. "He's sitting there, and needs a boost of self-esteem," says Mr van Bilsen. "He thinks 'I could have done it'." And before long, he is saying he did.

"How much he believes his lies, I don't know.

"Some people need their self-esteem fed constantly because they haven't developed the ability to be content and happy with themselves.

"If your belief system is that you're only worthwhile if your intelligence and achievements are just below Einstein's, then you need constant feeding."

Think of John Davy as a bumbling, incompetent "accountant" in small-town Canada with two fake degrees hanging on his wall, talking up his sporting prowess by claiming he was a national fencing champion and a top hockey referee.

And imagine there might be some ghastly overbearing parent or sibling in his childhood who made him feel he was never good enough.

But that's not necessarily so, says Mr van Bilsen. It can be impossible to tell what messages he has taken from his environment about himself or how he has processed those messages through his unique mental filter. A parent who idolised him and put him on a pedestal is just as likely. His problem might be keeping himself up there.

Davy is not alone in the fakers' gallery. New Zealand has had its share of visiting conmen.

Australia has men claiming to have been Anzac veterans. America is plagued by men - including Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis and superior court judge Patrick Couwenberg - who falsely claim to have served in Vietnam.

The judge also falsified his academic and professional achievements. His condition was labelled pseudologia fantastica.

That constant need to feed one's self-esteem drives many a high-achiever and explains why millionaires don't stop at their first million. So why doesn't someone who needs to keep on the pedestal by amassing university degrees or sporting achievements devote himself to earning them in the conventional way?

At that point a narcissistic element swings in. They lie to protect their image of their perfect selves from their imperfections. They consider themselves already so clever that enrolling in university to learn would be like admitting they didn't know it all.

Mr van Bilsen suspects this is why, when he was found out, Davy told even bigger lies about his past - that he was on a witness protection programme that meant erasing his academic record. He could not face the truth about his average self.

Signs of a personality disorder like this might be apparent in childhood, but are not fully developed until adulthood.

Psychologist Sara Chatwin says Davy may have started telling white lies as a child, or learned to embellish stories about himself. It has snowballed from there.

The tragedy is that the more it snowballs, the more prominent they become and the more public the humiliation when the veneer is stripped off.

Ms Chatwin says that at a certain level this sort of lying is common, driven in part by increasingly pressured and competitive workplaces and the traditional pressures on men to be the breadwinner and a macho hero.

Men who have served in war don't lie and say they haven't. Nor do they come home and say "Darling, I'm having an affair", when they're not.

Mr van Bilsen says he treats five to six people a year who are leading double lives, lying to their partners or employers, have been caught out and want to change.

Treatment is possible, but takes a little longer than 10 sessions on the couch.

The first step is to find out if the compulsive lying is driven by narcissism, or the lack of an internal moral code.

Those without the code are the best liars, impervious even to lie-detectors because they don't blush, sweat or suffer a pounding heart when they tell a porkie. Treatment means teaching them a moral code.

Mr van Bilsen says it is far easier to get narcissists to see that their view of reality is unreal.

Full coverage: Maori TV