Running away from home and itineracy show in a wonderfully strong
correlation with pathological lying, both in previous studies and
in our own material. Several authors, particularly Stemmermann
in her survey of the subject, comment on this. This phenomenon,
not only on account of the numerical findings, but also from a
logical standpoint, is easily seen to be the expression, in
another form of conduct, of the essential tendencies of the
pathological liar. It is part of the general character
instability, the unwillingness to meet the realities of life, the
inclination to escape consequences. As a matter of fact,
frequently the pathological liar gets himself in a tight place by
lying, and then the easiest escape is by running away from the
scene. The delinquencies of our present group as given below can
with profit be compared with our previous statistics[26] on a
large group of offenders. We gathered the facts concerning a
series of 1000 carefully studied youthful repeated offenders. Of
694 male offenders, 261 were guilty of running away to the extent
that it made a more or less serious offense. Of 306 female
offenders, 76 committed the same type of offense.
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