Diagnosis: Pathological Lying Lying as a method of survival for today’s power By Grigory Pasko, journalist In our family a nine-year-old child fell ill. Fever, coughing, stuffy nose… A typical picture at the end of winter, when a child’s organism is weakened, when there’s a deficiency of vitamins, when a slew of other kids just like him go to school with drippy noses and spreads infection… I started to phone the children’s polyclinic, in order to get a doctor to come by the house. All 35 minutes of my attempts the telephone at the other end was busy. I ended up having to go to the polyclinic myself. By the office with the sign «Doctor house calls» stood a queue of five people. I waited my turn and then entered the office. Behind the desk sat one woman holding a telephone receiver in one hand, and writing data on sick children to whom a doctor needed to be sent in a thick notebook with the other. I will note right from the start: the entire time I was in her office, the telephone did not stop ringing.