Word of the Week
kənˈfabyəˌlāt
When I was researching last week’s word, conflate, I came upon this word: confabulate. Originally it meant something as benign as chatting, having a conversation, talking, etc. In the context of how I have heard it used recently, it seemed to take on a more negative connotation, basically lying.
However, as used in a psychiatric context, it’s much more complex than that. According to its wiki entry, confabulation: is a memory error consisting of the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world and is generally associated with certain types of brain damage. So essentially it is lying, however, it’s lying without the intent to deceive and is not motivated by personal gain. It differs from lying in that someone who confabulates does actually believe that what they’ve remembered is accurate and will not back down when confronted with contradictory evidence.
Why would someone confabulate? Possibly to preserve their self-identity or in confusion of the timeline in which events have taken place. An extreme example of confabulation in order to preserve self-identity could be Norman Bates insisting that his mother is alive. Children are particularly susceptible to forced confabulation as they tend to be more impressionable than adults. However, even well-meaning adults can also inadvertently be susceptible.
Elizabeth Loftus is an American psychologist who has done research on false memories and the misinformation effect. Loftus might be best known for debunking the repressed memory hysteria that occurred in the 1980s and 90s. (On the flip side, she is also known for arguing for the defense for Harvey Weinstein’s and Ghislaine Maxwell’s cases.) The misinformation effect occurs when someone’s memories become less accurate because of information given after the memory’s event. An example of this would be if you witnessed a hit and run but perhaps vaguely remember the color of the car that fled the scene. If the policeman, in an attempt to be helpful, asks, “Did you see the red car flee the scene?” you might actually modify your memory and have remembered a red car. Loftus even did a study in which a false childhood memory of getting lost in the mall was successfully implanted into the study participants’ memories.
Focusing back on the psychiatric context, there is some controversy over whether narcissists and psychopaths are actually confabulating or lying. It’s possible that they are dissociating (erasing memories) or just not remembering things because their relationship with the world is a fictitious construct. They are experiencing reality through a distorted lens and thus discount any information that challenges their self-perception and self-narrative (which they have constructed to legitimize their behaviors). So in order to compensate for their gaps in memory, they confabulate in order to fill in those gaps with what could have happened. So does the narcissist truly believe their reality or are they lying to meet their ends?
If I were being lied to, I’m not sure if I would prefer if they were confabulating or just out and out lying. Hmm… DJR
