CASE STUDY- A CASE OF KLEPTOMANIA
BARTON A. SINGER, Ph. D
This patient is a 35 years old mother who has married over fifteen years. She has two kids and lives with upper-middle class life (which means they do not have financial problem). One of interesting thing is the patient was referred by her lawyer for the second offense punishable by imprisonment because of stealing act.
The patient has undergone psychological and psychiatric evaluation to determine whether she can control her stealing habit by her maximum effort of rationally thought. Fortunately, her psychopathological behavior has occurred for 1-2 times per month for many years. This means that she can control her pathological behavior in most of the time under certain condition.
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She has struggle for many years for the decision to seek treatment because the psychic pain was not intense enough to motivate her for seeking treatment. Luckily in this case, this patient knows well how to discharge all the negative emotion and tension in order to avoid the reflection of pathological behavior.
For treatment consideration, the patient has undergone the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and Rorschach Inkblot Technique. By doing all these tests, we can found that the patient has excessive needs for care, approval and attention from the people who are important to her. As a result, it is clear that the patient is seriously need psychotherapy to deal with her passive-dependent striving and conflicted sexual identity.
Abrahamsen (1960) sounds that kleptomania is more related to obsessive-compulsive affliction. This is because the patients usually know recognize that their act is wrong but they just can’t resist doing it repeatedly. In this case, the patient was clearly aware that her stealing action was illegal and unhealthy, but she usually suppressed and repressed the issue and was motivated by intense unconscious dependency needs to continue this pathological behavior in spite of the
Psych: The patient states that she is depressed due to “falling apart” and anxious about dying. Denies suicidal thoughts, memory loss and confusion.
This paper will outline sexuality at different life stages, and as a sexual therapist I will coach an adolescent girl with a boyfriend who is pressuring her to have sex; an elderly couple with a wife exhibiting a renewed interest in sexual activity and a unwilling husband; and finally a handicapped male that has been paralyzed since he was four years old.
Scholinski’s story begins with the rationale of why she was placed in a mental institution at fifteen-years of age. She states, “the doctors came up with the idea that I was an inappropriate female” (Scholinski, 1997, pg.6). This diagnosis was based upon several factors: her lack of interest in make-up, her tom-boyish dressing style, her interest in rough/contact sports, and her lack of sexual engagement with the male gender. Considering these factors, Scholinski was diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder (GID) and placed first in the Michael Reese Hospital (Chicago) where she was familiarized with psychotics (i.e. Dalmane to sleep and Thorazine injections to retrain her). Next, she was transferred to Forest Hospital (Illinois) where her treatment focused on wearing more make-up, behaving more feminine, and spending more time with male patients. Lastly, her
The main difference is that a kleptomaniac does not plan to steal items but a shoplifter does. I was able to understand RJ, the kleptomaniac, better and to why he always steals the chips
“Kleptomania comes from the Greek word meaning “stealing madness” (p426).” Kleptomania can be defined, as the irresistible impulse to steal objects, however researchers have not found substantial evidences to prove this. Kleptomania is included as a behavioral disorder in the DSM-5, because it can be identified as an impulse disorder. “Lloyed Klemke suggests that kleptomania is a psychiatric label with roots at the turn of the twentieth century (p.426).” Kleptomania is a rare phenomenon occurring in about 4 to 24 people who arrested for shoplifting. In a study done by Sarasalo, Bergman and Toth they found that out of all the shoplifters they interviewed none fulfilled the DSM criteria for kleptomania. A majority of information on kleptomania
Freud and other psychoanalysts used various methods to uncover repressed ideas, and to permit the client to gain insight into his or her unresolved problems. As a form of therapy the approach uses hypnosis, Freud and Breuer treated a twenty one-year-old women called Anna O, who suffered from several neurotic symptoms such as nervous coughs and paralysis. Hypnosis uncovered a repressed memory of Anna O hearing the sound of dance music coming from a nearby house as she was nursing her dying father, and her guilty feeling that she would rather be dancing than looking after her father. Her nervous coughing stopped after that repressed memory came to light. However, patients are either hard or impossible to hypnotise and people under hypnosis become very suggestible.
experience was traumatic. The person must face the issue, confront it and go through the
For a diagnosis of hoarding disorder, the behavior must either cause distress to the individual or impairment in the person's
Although Gender Identity Disorder (GID) and homosexuality has been in the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) for many years, I was personally unaware of the controversy that surrounded it. I realized that I needed to educate myself in the issues and changes that have occurred in the DSM regarding GID and homosexuality over the years.
In today’s society, the phenomenon of malingering is not being recognized as a mental illness, but rather an intentional faking of mental illness. Malingering had captured the attention of many forensic psychologists and is now a growing concern due to the potential consequences of misdiagnosis in clinical or correctional setting. Malingering defined as a deliberate act by a person pretending to have some form of physical or psychological symptoms in order to avoid a negative outcome such as a prison sentence, or to gain a positive outcome such as financial compensatory.
Today, in this world there are many psychological disorder but one disorder that I found interesting was kleptomania. Kleptomania is the urge of stealing objects everywhere a person goes regardless of its need for use or any financial problems. Kleptomaniacs do not steal for the value of the object but rather they steal for the reward they get by their brains. If they force themselves not to steal, they get severe anxiety attacks and get nervous. They do not think stealing things is a problem to others but they do not do it to hurt others either.
In this Fascinating book Love’s Executioner and other Tales of Psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalom, we can appreciated different techniques used in a session of Psychotherapy, this book was easy to read and understand and especially it was very addictive, making it the perfect tool and inspiration for psychology students who are starting to appreciate this career more deeply. There are ten different cases offered in this book, some patients share similar symptoms but still have different mental dysfunctions. Out of the ten cases I picked three:
Kleptomania is the urge to steal physical possessions even if they are not needed. On many occasions, Joseph Brodak robbed banks, and he eventually went to prison for his impulsive actions. Joseph’s actions caused many difficulties within his family. At first, Molly, the narrator and Joseph’s daughter, thought he was a normal father, but “one day it was like a membrane breached: before, Dad was like all other dads, and then he was not” (Wagoner 297). Joseph not only stole money from banks, but he stole many items out of their household to provide for his gambling addiction. There were many instances in which Joseph lied to his wife about her prized possessions that suddenly went missing. They returned home one day to find that their savings, his car, his wedding ring, and every penny he could find had vanished. He would claim
Kleptomania means urge to steal without regard. This explains a lot of what was said before. The patients with Kleptomania were also found to have high rates of substance abuse or mood swings. Most patients with this disorder will not care if there is a sign saying “DO NOT TOUCH” they are going to touch it no matter what. The highest reason why it happens is because a high layer of stress is flowing inside of their system and their body. These waves of stress are going up to the brain and start saying things
When a doctor understands a patient completely and the patient seems to have no understanding of himself, an analyst will frequently accuse the patient of resistance. It is recommended that if an analyst holds all of the understanding, then he should stress where he lacks understanding of the patient. Even if an analyst comes to a sound conclusion of the meaning of a dream, but the patient is reluctant to agree, the therapist should not push this understanding on the patient. In this case the analyst should work with the patient to come to a mutually gratifying conclusion. This will result in an understanding not only in the brain, as in the first case, but also in the heart which will eventually help cure the patient of his neurosis.