There's a scene in the TV series Better Call Saul where Mike goes to a group therapy session where the participants have experienced traumatic events, loss of loved ones or other tragedies, and he exposes one of the participants as a pretended, a liar who frequents such sessions and makes up completely fictitious sob stories about a non-existent dead wife.
A lot of therapists and people who run these group sessions will attest that such a thing is not just pure fiction, but it does indeed happen in real life, and it happens a lot. In other words, people who go to such sessions and just make up completely invented sob stories, or at the very least greatly embellish what they have experienced (or, perhaps, tell someone else's experience as their own.)
I suppose in many, perhaps most, cases this is a form of "Munchausen syndrome". In other words, the person making up fictitious illnesses or tragic events in order to garner attention and sympathy.
And what better environment for this than a group therapy session? Most usually there are strict rules in place where participants are not allowed to doubt, question or criticize anybody. Not that anybody would even want to. On the contrary, they are the people most likely to pay and give attention to the person speaking, and show sympathy, and be amicable and say some nice words. And because there are typically dozens of such groups in most cities, it's an endless supply of strangers who will never try to even find out if what you are telling is true, and will just believe it wholesale without question, and offer sympathy in return. Relatives are more unlikely to just swallow everything that the person claims. Strangers in some bar will most likely not be so interested nor sympathetic (not to talk about it being a horrible environment for such an interaction.) A group therapy session organized by some therapist is the absolutely best environment for this.
I don't know if any research and studies have been conducted about the psychology behind this kind of deception. How much does the person know how wrong this kind of thing is? How much do such people delude themselves, smothering their own conscience, the inner voice that says that it's wrong and they shouldn't be doing it? How deliberately malicious is it in their minds?
I suppose that at least in some cases it might be less of a "Munchausen syndrome" and more a case of pathological narcissism or sociopathy. In other words, the person is not doing it because he is trying to garner sympathy and experience human contact and interactions, but because he secretly enjoys deceiving people like this. It might give him a sense of malicious satisfaction seeing how his words affect other people, how he can so successfully lie to and deceive people, and how clueless those people are because they just believe it all wholesale. It might feel empowering in some twisted manner.
If the person is actually a psychopath, he might be fascinated with seeing others feeling emotions and showing empathy. It might be like a cruel secret experiment, where he pulls at people's heartstrings and observes the reactions, like he is analyzing lab rats.
But, I suspect, those are likely the minority. Most of such people are likely just suffering from some form of Munchausen syndrome to one extent or another, even if it's relatively mild. They just pathologically enjoy the attention and sympathy they are getting.
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