honorable man and a famous and colorful war hero. After his retirement from the German calvary, he spent his time traveling around his homeland, delighting listeners with tales of his military adventures. While he embellished some of his stories for dramatic effect, they were nonetheless essentially true. Historical records bear no evidence of his having feigned illness or duped people into caring for him because of his exploits. It was the manner in which he told his tales, however, which led Asher to associate Baron with the patients who had a syndrome characterized by low self esteem and sensational lies.
             With few exceptions in the last 30 years, the terms factitious disorder and Munchausen Syndrome have been used interchangeably, but a distinction must be made between them. Not all patients with factitious disorders have Munchausen Syndrome. Munchausen Syndrome is an especially extreme and dangerous form, the pinnacle of a pyramid in which the benign use of illness the base, factitious disorders are the center, and chronic factitious disorder (Munchausen Syndrome) is at the top.
             While well known to psychiatrists and psychologists, factitious disorders are often misinterpreted by the uninformed to be merely lying; a vicious way to use others for personal gain. Factitious disorders are far more complex than that, however, and surpisingly far-reaching in their effects on the general public and medical community. The main question to ask yourself when you are dealing with a Munchausen's patient is this: Is there an underlying problem, such as depression, in which doctors can intervene? It is important to acknowledge the various psychological or environmental contributions in order to underscore that a factitious disorder is almost never the sole problem. Factitious disorders have been well described in medical literature for more than 30 years. Factitious disorders are also a control mechanism, with patients manipulating the ...