NCJ Number
168197
Date Published
1997
Length
5 pages
Annotation
This paper discusses issues in the psychotherapeutic assessment and treatment of white-collar offenders who steal in the context of their employment, with attention to one case study.
Abstract
The stealing, the success, the evasion of detection, and the denial are all defenses against rage and grief. Like other perverse solutions, repeated theft and fraud give some relief from internal distress, which is only short-lived. This leads to a pattern of offending that is both compulsive and repetitive. Frequently, the behavior begins to fail as an affect-reliever, and then the offender may experience both sadness and guilt. This may lead to the offender being caught for the first time, as he seeks a concrete attribution of himself as "guilty." Insofar as this is the case, then the treatment implications are good, because the patient may be able to tolerate thinking about and experiencing painful feelings. The psychopathology of such patients is often well hidden, especially when they come from middle-class backgrounds and may be in high-status professions or positions. In such circumstances, various aspects of the criminal justice system may collude unconsciously with the patient to deny both his past traumatic experiences and his internal distress. Such patients may maintain their false self for a long time in therapy, or they may attack the therapeutic process by "conning" the therapist by being untruthful or otherwise acting dishonestly. When this is revealed, it is important to interpret the patient's fear that he is not entitled to an honest benefit and also the patient's need to triumph over the therapist.