Does ‘Roos’ from Op Zoek Naar Marlotte have this disorder?
The first episode of the sequel to Op Zoek Naar Marlotte is out, and more than 75,000 listeners (myself included) jumped right on it. In no time we were back in the world of Roos. And as if the story wasn't crazy enough, we found out that not only Annika was part of her web of lies. Sanne also got her own carefully constructed storyline. As always with everything surrounding Roos, I was left with a thousand-and-one questions. But the biggest one was actually very simple: how do you do this?
Detail after detail
Marlotte once told Annika that she was taking Russian lessons. Years later, Annika took home belongings after her ‘death’, including a booklet with Russian exercises. And now we know that in the meantime, there was also a completely different story for Sanne. If I had to remember all those details, keep them apart for years, and then deploy them exactly at the right moment, I would probably need not only a detective board with red strings but also a filing cabinet. And even then, I wonder if it would be as watertight as with Roos. In the podcast, we hear psychiatrist and former professor Michiel Hengeveld talk about something that sounds like a Harry Potter spell: pseudologia fantastica. Hengeveld has never spoken to her, so it's not a diagnosis, but according to him, it could be a possible explanation for the kind of detailed stories she invented.
Pseudowhat?
Everyone tells a lie sometimes. I, for example, just today when I said I didn't care where we would get lunch, but what Roos did goes way too far. People who exhibit pseudologia fantastica tell very elaborate and dramatic stories. And they can present them so convincingly and persistently that they start to believe them themselves. The line between what is and what is not the truth has blurred, which means you often see fewer signs of lying. That is immediately where the difference with pathological lying lies. That is compulsively sharing untruths. Pseudologia fantastica takes it a step further: the stories are elaborate, imaginative, and sometimes almost cinematic. Before we all start labeling Roos with the magic spell: that's not how it works. Pseudologia fantastica is not an official psychiatric disorder in itself. More a symptom or phenomenon that sometimes occurs with borderline or narcissism.
In search of sympathy
What researchers often see is that the narrator in these stories is either the hero or the victim. Marlotte and the Roos we know from Sanne's experience were definitely victims between the cancer and burning. There is an automatic empathy for a victim, and that is exactly what these stories produce. Often, they have never learned to receive admiration or acceptance in a healthy way, but like every human, they still have that need. Michiel Hengeveld said in Op Zoek Naar Marlotte: behind this kind of behavior is almost always someone who is also damaged.
Whether pseudologia fantastica actually has anything to do with Roos, we will probably never know. Unfortunately. But if you ever decide to listen to the podcast including the bonus episode and sequel again, at least you will finally know what that unpronounceable word stands for.
