Point well taken! There was, however, a great deal of internal evidence confirming the truth of his stories about childhood, stories that were mirrored in the ways he handled men and women in everyday life. I guess it is useful for some lawyers (and some surgeons) to describe human events from a great distance (in order to reduce their emotional reaction to them). Yet Otto did not operate in his day to day life as if he were free from emotion; rather, he was overwhelmed during most of the time I worked with him.
I don't think people should remain terribly cynical about the lie he told at the beginning of treatment. He knew he was in serious emotional difficulty, he set up a fiction that might protect him from danger into which he had been precipitated by that emotional difficulty, and came into therapy hoping that along with the (future) legal protection he might achieve some relief of his discomfort. Remember that he had been in therapy some years earlier and had reason to believe that a therapist might help.