NCJ Number
168196
Date Published
1997
Length
6 pages
Annotation
This paper examines the psychodynamics of a British case in which psychotherapy was provided for a woman who fraudulently obtained 5,000 pounds from the elderly patients with whom she worked as an employee in a nursing home.
Abstract
The patient (Ms A) felt robbed of a father when he died from a heart attack when she was 17 years old. She was left to cope in isolation with her mother's physical and emotional abuse. Her life had consisted of a series of crushing disappointments in which her efforts and achievements received no rewards or affectionate responses. In the course of therapy, she came to realize that her fraud and exploitation resulted from her feeling of being unappreciated, such that she had to obtain a reward through deception from those who had failed to meet her needs. She acknowledged that she had felt cheated by her elderly patients in a similar way to that in which she felt cheated by her mother, who had also ignored her efforts and her worth. Ms A made significant progress over the first year of therapy, gaining insight into how she responds and copes with events in her daily life. Ms A's insight has reduced the risk of her repeating her criminal behavior; however, the "false self" prevails and continues to cause chaos and confusion within her relationships. It is possible that should she be any more in touch with the "true self" she would find this too destructive, leaving suicide as her only option.