The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Pathology of Lying, Etc. by William and Mary Healy: material together, plays such an enormous role.
Age of Onset. It is very easy to see that the tendency to
pathological lying begins in the early formative years.
Common-sense observation of general character building would tend
to make us readily believe that if an individual got through the
formative years of life with a normal hold upon veracity he would
never become a pathological liar. We can see definite beginnings
at certain critically formative periods, as in Case 6 and perhaps
in Case 3, but our material shows that most cases demonstrate
more gradually insidious beginnings. (Case 21 is in this respect
in a class by itself.) As we stated in our introduction, it is
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