INTRODUCTION

Forensic psychologists and psychiatrists are sometimes referred individuals who are  described by their lawyers as heretofore honest, hard-working, white/blue-collar workers, professionals, business people who may even be pillars of their communities, or even public figures, yet for whom clinical assessments are being sought that will explain why these clients  committed seemingly nonsensical, even bizarre, acts of shoplifting or other kinds of theft. 

Too often, a diagnosis of kleptomania is forthcoming in such cases, even though one of the stipulations of DSM IV[i] is that in instances of kleptomania, the offender’s stealing is not committed as a means of expressing anger.  In fact, however, our[ii]  original 1983 investigation[iii] (carried out by me and Dr. D.J. Atcheson) and as corroborated by my[iv] 1996 study[v], have clearly indicated that perhaps most so-called nonsensical or bizarre acts of theft have  been carried out by persons who were, in fact,  very angry indeed at the time -- angry with their spouses, other ‘significant others’, bosses or co-workers, God, and/or themselves.  In fact, in 1994, Dr. Atcheson and I estimated that of the hundreds of theft offenders we had assessed, perhaps 2% to 3% were truly suffering from kleptomania.

Not infrequently, also, the assessing clinician will conclude that the accused individual was  depressed at the time of the theft.  The assessor may then write a letter or report indicating that such theft behavior was an aberrant act that is most unlikely to reoccur.  However, making a statement that the accused was depressed does not in any way provide an explanation as to why the person chose to commit an act of theft in response to feeling depression, in preference to committing some other kind of aberrant behavioral response (such as getting drunk, speeding, overeating, etc...).  Furthermore, assurances that there will be no further acts of theft not infrequently turn out to be in error, and when the re-offending person appears once again before the court perhaps weeks, months or years later, a new letter or report suggesting that the offender stole once again “because he or she was again depressed” may not be received at all well by the court.  Nor does such a clinician’s offering necessarily assist either the comprehension of the court with regard to the latest theft; neither is the offender enlightened in regard to understanding his or her behavior, or helped to cease and desist from carrying out additional thefts in the future.

It was fortuitous that between 1979 and 1983, while working on the forensic service of the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in Toronto, numerous such cases, usually at their lawyers’ urgings, presented themselves to us for full clinical assessments, usually involving psychological testing, plus clinical interviews with members of the forensic assessment team, which included psychologists, clinical social workers, and psychiatrists. 

Dr. Atcheson and I published the findings of our original study into the bizarre theft behavior of generally honest persons in a 1983 article entitled, Shoplifting: An Occasional Crime Of The Moral Majority. Our principle finding was that most of the cases of apparently nonsensical or bizarre shoplifting that we assessed appeared to have been perpetrated by persons who had acted out in response to having anticipating experiencing, or having actually experienced, what they perceived to be unfair personally meaningful losses.  Furthermore, in virtually no cases had these individuals related their loss experiences to their subsequent acts of theft.  This causal relationship seemed to have occurred in the majority of such cases; indeed this psychological relationship between actual and/or anticipated loss and acting out by shoplifting seemed so frequent an occurrence that we formally articulated it as the Loss-Substitution-by-Shoplifting Hypothesis.

In a chapter we wrote for the book Clinical Criminology: The Treatment and Assessment of Criminal Behavior[vi] we extended our formulation to include acts of fraud in addition to shoplifting.

Over the period of the last eleven years during which time I have continued my clinical investigations of theft behavior from within my private practice, I have concluded that any type of theft behavior may be perpetrated by generally honest and ethical persons, whom we termed  ‘Atypical Theft Offenders’.  Therefore, I have now extended and renamed our original hypothesis as the Loss-Substitution-By-Stealing Hypothesis, as follows:        “In response to experiencing (or anticipating) what is  perceived to be an unfair personally meaningful loss, some individuals, whom we have termed Atypical Theft Offenders, may carry out acts of theft, by which they cause other persons, places or institutions to suffer unfair losses of some sort or other.  Such acts of atypical theft behavior are almost always carried out without the conscious awareness (on the part of the perpetrator) of the relationship of the act of stealing to the experienced or anticipated loss.”

                            CASE MATERIAL

Case # 1: Harold, a Holocaust survivor who stole to soothe a 50-year old wound

A financially successful, now retired gentleman, was apprehended in a drug store in 1995, and charged with stealing an item worth less than $10.  In our interview, this individual could not offer me any explanation as to why he had done such a thing.  He did not even need the stolen item!  Approximately an hour after I had concluded a rather extensive history-taking, which included having the client recount some very painful recollections of his survival during successive stays at three concentration camps, I realized that the date of his being apprehended for stealing, and the date of his release from the concentration camps, were the same --separated by a period of a half-century.

The client’s recollection of his release from the concentration camp was dramatic indeed; he and all the other inmates had been awakened in the middle of the night and marched by their German guards for over five hours, over country roads strewn with sharp stones, without the benefit of any footwear to ease their distress.  These poor, barefoot souls were marched with sore and bleeding feet, without rest. Those who fell and had difficulty getting up were shot where they had fallen. The remaining concentration camp prisoners eventually arrived at a border and were told by the fleeing Germans soldiers that the war was over for them, and that they should stay where they were and the Red Cross and allied soldiers would be there soon. Then the soldiers ran away.  Red Cross personnel and allied soldiers arrived a few hours later. 

I inquired whether my client had been thinking of his release from the concentration camps on the morning that he was apprehended for theft.  He replied in no uncertain terms that he had not!  In fact, he said, he never thought about those terrible times.  And he did not want to do so now.  The professional reader of this article may well appreciate the symbolically driven, unconscious dynamics at work in this case when I mention that this man had been arrested for stealing a package of Dr. Scholl’s foot pads.

In the day of the theft in 1995 this client’s feet were in fine condition. Indeed, he had always made sure, since coming to North America and thriving, that he wore only the most comfortable shoes.  And he could well afford to replace those that became even close to being worn out!  I suggest that this man represents a classic case of an Atypical Theft Offender.

Case # 2: Penelope, who shoplifted only on the first day of her menstruation

Penelope was one of the first theft offenders to alert me to the matter of shoplifting as a behavioral manifestation of an aspect of her menstrual cycle.  In one of our early sessions she volunteered that she only shoplifted on the first day of her menstruation, and usually only when that day coincided with experiencing some at least moderately serious marital disharmony. She and I thereafter jointly tracked her mood and marital problems as a function of where she was in her menstrual cycle and her inclinations to shoplift.  She described for me her “pronounced feelings of aloneness and impending
emptiness” when she would begin menstruating at a time when she was also experiencing feelings of anger towards, and emotional distance from, her husband.

Over the past several years I have noted that some female Atypical Theft Offenders have been more inclined to shoplift at particular times before or during the days that they were menstruating. As well, some male and female Atypical Theft Offenders have apparently reacted by stealing in  response to having not been able to conceive, or having lost a child.

Case # 3: Margaret, who stole from her employer whenever her father had another bout with cancer

Over a period of ten years, as it turned out when she was finally apprehended, Margaret, who had worked for over 15 years as senior secretary to the frequently traveling owner of a successful manufacturing company, had intermittently written forged cheques in her employer’ name for amounts ranging from $50 to $5000, for a total amount of $65,000.  It was only when she became more aggressive in forging cheques for increasingly larger amounts over shorter intervals, that she was found out. When we reviewed her theft behavior with copies of the canceled cheques provided by her employer, we discovered that her cheque writing endeavors coincided nearly exactly with those times when her father had again had a setback in regard to his prostate cancer.  The largest, and most recently cashed, forged cheques were deposited in her account a few days after her father’s death. 

At no time had Margaret ever related the two events in her conscious mind until we reviewed the salient events in her life during the period of the previous ten years. 

This lack of awareness of the connection between their stealing activities and their lives’ stresses, including and especially what actual or anticipated losses they were dealing with, is very typical indeed of Atypical Theft Offenders.

FORMULATION

Atypical Theft Offenders are individuals whose acts of theft are not related to genuine need or greed; rather, their theft behavior is carried out for psychological as opposed to either material or monetary motivations.

Indeed, there appears to be a Theft Offender continuum, ranging from pure ‘Atypical Theft Offenders’, i.e., who have led exemplary lives up to the point of their acts of bizarre or nonsensical acts of theft wherein they have taken things that they may not have wanted, let alone needed, and who experience powerful feelings of shame, humiliation, and remorse, on the one hand, to, on the other hand, those persons who have stolen precisely what they wanted when they wanted, for either their own use or for sale, and who have no sense of remorse or concern about their theft behavior. I have termed the latter category of offender, ‘Typical Theft Offenders’. And in between there seems to be a large number of theft offenders with mixed (Atypical + Typical) Theft Offender qualities.

Incidentally, those who truly suffer from kleptomania are, in terms of this Theft Offender continuum, considered to represent, depending upon the particular case in mind, individuals who may exhibit both Atypical Theft Offender and Typical Theft Offender qualities, inasmuch as his or her behavior may be rather out of control and occasionally bizarre, on the one hand, while at the same time, and on the other hand, the offender may steal without remorse, and may indeed sometimes take things that are wanted, and some of which may then be sold or given to ‘significant others’.

·      as a reaction to stress