Stuff You Should Know - How Kleptomania Works

Episode Date: December 17, 2009

In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuck discuss kleptomania, a disorder in which people have an overwhelming impulse to steal unnecessary items. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark, the Chuck, the Chuck, the Chuck is on fire. How you doing, Chuck? You've been sitting on that one for a while. Distance yesterday. We've actually have not recorded in two weeks and I have a feeling Josh has been planning

that for two weeks. I just told you I came up with it yesterday. I was listening to your sweet voice while I swept the floors in my house. Okay. What do you think of dog hair, what do you think of me? I thought like, no, I thought it was your voice that made me think of you, jeez. I thought, man, I've been opening up the show pretty boring wise lately. Well, I'm glad you're talking about this now then.

Yeah. Anyway, Chuck, how you doing? Good sir. It has been a long time hasn't it? Uh huh. Okay, so you know it's stealing season, buddy. Is it? Yeah, it pretty much kicks off in November and really goes up through the roof on Black

Friday. It's much more difficult to steal during Cyber Monday, but as Christmas comes around people love to steal, people love to hold people up with guns, knives, threats of physical violence, that kind of thing. Wow. This is inspiring. Yeah. It is.

Actually, it turns out that this stealing season will probably be worse than usual because there was a report released called the Global Retail Theft Barometer. Okay. It was released mid-November a couple weeks back. The GRTV? Yeah. I'm a fan. I know you are.

Yeah. And it said that this year, retail businesses have lost $115 billion worldwide from stealing from theft. What's America? Do you have that? $45 billion. Wow, because in our article it says $10 billion, $10 billion is like an average, so that's a huge increase.

It is actually. I'll tell you what. Usually, I guess there's an increase every year and usually worldwide it increases by about 1.5%. I wonder if that's in direct relation to the cost of goods increasing? That actually does have something to do with it in this time article I read. This year, a 6% increase worldwide and in North America, there was an 8.1% increase. So people are just stealing left and right and the authors of this study, the Center

for Retail Research, apparently talked to cops, talked to shoplifters and said, what's going on? They talked to shoplifters? Uh-huh. How so? Do you know? People who've been busted for shoplifters. Oh, okay.

I thought you meant that had not been caught. No, they just hang around Macy's and they're like, you look like a shoplifter, you scuzzball. Or I saw what you did and I won't report you if you answer these five questions. Exactly. And give me a sawbuck. What is that, a 20? I think we've gone over this before. I think it's a fiver.

Okay. So- Or no, it's a 10. I bet we get some Lister Mill on this one. I bet it's either a fiver or a 10. So Chuck, what they found from talking to these people is that there is an increase in the perception that companies are making off with all this money while everybody else is having hard times and so they kind of feel justified in stealing.

Gotcha. We're seeing a much rise in the middle class stealing, people who can afford stuff and just aren't paying. And apparently this victimless crime, that's kind of another perception since you're stealing from a giant corporation, in the United States, we paid an extra 436 bucks a household in consumer goods prices. Yeah, that's what happens. Same with credit card fraud.

Yeah, same with credit card fraud. That's why, I mean, that's not all why, but one reason why the interest rates are so sky high because people say, I'll just charge a bunch of stuff and not pay it. Insurance fraud? Any kind of fraud. It's just, you know, that stupid credit card company is going to take the hit. But they don't. Although they should.

But they don't take a hit. They pass it all along. Of course they do. That's how it works. We're all slaves, Chuck. Suckers. Somewhere in that, those statistics, I just, you know, spewed out, but there are a very tiny percentage of that population that are kleptomaniacs.

I feel like I just gave birth to a watermelon. A square watermelon. Yeah. Yes, Josh, kleptomania is not exactly, in fact, it's not at all shoplifting. Everything is the means by which you would perform your kleptomania. That's an excellent definition, Chuck. And I've read this article too, and I know that that was not in there. That was a CD special.

I just made it up. Yeah. Good one. Although I would say you could steal from anyone and that would be kleptomania. It doesn't have to be a store. Yeah. But apparently it is generally stores or parties, but yeah, if you're going to steal from another, from an individual, it's usually at a party, I think.

But it generally is retailers. What differentiates kleptomaniacs from shoplifters? Well, there's actually a definition as outlined by the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. That says that they outline this criteria, Josh. The individual repeatedly fails to resist the impulse to steal items that are not needed for personal use or monetary value. That's the number one.

The individual experiences tension before stealing. The tension is relieved after stealing. And the theft is not due to anger, revenge, delusions, hallucinations, or impaired judgment. And I think there's one more. Psychological disorders can't account for the stealing behaviors. Different other psychological disorders. Let's do a little play acting, Josh. Oh, I love this stuff.

I'm going to be a kleptomaniac. You are going to be a tube of lipstick. All right. Okay. Hold on. Let me get into character. Man, you're a master. Okay.

I'm there. Okay. All right. So I'm walking into the store and I'm, you know, looking for some sunglasses that I intend to purchase. And all of a sudden, I feel this horrible tension. My stomach is tight. I'm starting to sweat a little bit because I just spotted Chuck, the tube of lipstick.

Who is sitting there as an inanimate object because if you talk, then that's delusion and it doesn't count as kleptomania. So I'm looking at Chuck. I'm feeling this horrible tension. I know that I'm going to steal. I don't want to steal, but I have to because it's the only way to relieve the tension. So I've just grabbed Chuck and put him in my pocket. And I don't even wear lipstick.

There's no explanation for this. I make it out of the store. And as I enter into the rest of the mall and start to feel like I'm not about to be caught, that tension goes away, maybe replaced with a little bit of a thrill, a kick, right? And then boom, I get hit by this crushing guilt. I've just stolen again. Not only have I stolen from something, from somebody, I have failed to yet again resist this overwhelming urge.

So I take the lipstick and I go to my grandmother's house, who's now dead, but in the scenario that she's actually alive, and I just put it in with the rest of her lipstick, go about my business feeling generally bad about myself. Ta-da! Can I talk now? Yeah. First of all, it was a little weird being in your pocket. Yeah.

Let me say that. I liked it. But yeah, dude, you just hit on a lot of the major points, tension, relief of tension, guilt, a rush, giving away what you stole, stealing something you don't need. Or hoarding. Or hoarding. Yeah. A lot of times people will hoard it.

I read a case of a woman in the early 20th century who was caught shoplifting, upper middle class, they caught her, went to her house and found all the stuff that she'd stolen with the price tag, clearly not used. There's not, no one, they don't use the stuff that they steal. I've got a hoarder for you, buddy. Let's hear it. This dude in April of this year in Israel was busted. They went to his house and they found motorcycle helmets, watches, Louis Vuitton handbags,

150 pair of shoes, 200 pair of sunglasses, olive oil, laundry detergent, all kinds of stuff, unopened in this guy's house, literally stacked in every corner of the house from room to room. He admitted that he'd been shoplifting for a decade. Every time he went to a store, he shoplifted for a decade. And he clearly lived alone. No. He has a wife and son.

Wow, he has a family who know how to keep their mouths shut. Well, this is the funny part. And of course, this is from an Israeli newspaper. It says, his wife and son are suspected of knowing of his activity, but doing nothing about it. I don't know if that's a formal charge. But he also was busted with a big roll of stickers that say, like, paid for, thank you for coming, that kind of thing.

Oh, so, wow. Yeah. So that was part of his deal. He would go in there and like put that on his big TV box or whatever. I wonder if that disqualifies him as a kleptomaniac, though. I don't think so. Why? Because he preplanned it?

Uh-huh. Because one of the things that Freud and Rich, is that how we say his name? Yes. The author of this article? Uh, Ph.D. No. It's Freundlich. Isn't it?

No. I thought it was Craig Freundlich. No, there's no L. Oh, there's not. Uh-huh. I totally invented that. Okay. I've been reading it that way for two and a half years.

We're going to call him Dr. Freud. Okay. Okay. Dr. Freud pointed out that people who are kleptomaniacs, true kleptomaniacs. Or, I think, from what I gather, we don't call them kleptomaniacs. We call them people with kleptomania. Right. Don't go into a store intending to steal.

They don't go to steal. They're just overcome by the impulse when they're in a store. Yeah, that makes sense. The other thing that makes that guy hinky as a candidate for a person with kleptomania is that he's a man. Yeah, women, more often, and this is a little hinky too, but women are more often diagnosed with kleptomania. That is slanted a little bit because I think it's said that women are less likely to admit

to it or to report it to their psychiatrist. That kind of thing. No, men who still go to prison, women who still get psychiatric evaluations. So that could definitely slant the population. But traditionally, people think that kleptomania is a feminine disorder. Yeah. You ever seen the ice storm? No, I need to.

Oh, really? Yeah, I do. That's a great movie. You said that shamefully. I do feel kind of ashamed, actually. The mother and daughter, Joan Allen and Christina Ricci, both shoplifted in that film at separate times. Oh, you're talking about heartbreakers.

That's Sigourney Weaver and what's her name? Jennifer Lofiouette. Yeah. No, I'm talking about the ice storm. I don't think so. Yeah. In fact, I think Joan Allen actually steals lipstick. There you go.

Maybe that was me. Yeah. It is one of my favorite movies. Yes, Josh, early teens and 20s, if we're talking more about the pattern, it's usually when it begins. Yeah, but it can run up to, I think they found kleptomaniacs in their late 70s. Yeah. Didn't we do a story about Japanese elderly that are stealing just so they'll get caught

and have a friend? Yeah. They're so lonely. They're trying to basically make friends with the police by being arrested. So that's not kleptomaniac. That's just shopping. No. I was thinking about, when I saw that in the late 70s, I thought of that Seinfeld episode

where Jerry finds out that his parents steal batteries and in turn finds out that almost all elderly people steal batteries. Yeah, yeah. That's good. Yeah. For their tip calculators. Is that what it's for? The Willard.

I'm ruined. You know, another thing, Josh, is you hit on it again with your little play acting. They usually steal stuff they can afford and stuff like shampoo it listed and sunglasses are big and they famously went on a rider, went on a Horowitz, excuse me. No. Yeah. Really? That's her name.

I had no idea. She famously stole several thousand dollars from Sex Fifth Avenue. Five thousand, I think. Yeah. She can definitely swing that. And I don't know if it ever came out that they, did they ever plead kleptomania or anything with her? No.

No. Just quietly tried to pay their fine. Yeah. And that brings up a pretty good point is a kleptomania defense is really, really hard to prove or to successfully get off on. It is. You know why? Why?

Well, your defense lawyer must argue, win the argument that there was no reason for you to steal it. Right. No financial gain, no revenge. They've got to prove all those things beyond a reasonable doubt, first of all. Yeah. That's one. You want to follow up?

Well, I know that the Justice Department doesn't recognize kleptomania as a defense, so if you're up for federal charges, don't even try it. Yeah, exactly. And that's like the Americans with Disabilities Act that's in legislation, so good luck. So Chuck, kleptomania. What is it? Is it an actual disease? Should it be covered in the Americans with Disabilities Act?

Should the DOJ finally open up their eyes and be like, okay, okay, such a thing as kleptomania? Well, we don't know for sure. There's some people think it's like tagged on to other psychological disorders like obsessive compulsive or personality and mood disorders. Okay. So it may possibly like it could be a symptom or a byproduct of a larger disorder, right? Yes. Okay.

So in large, it's classified as an impulse control disorder like gambling or pyromania. Fire-starting, awesome. Or trichotillomania. Yes, trichotillomania. Trichotillomania. I've never heard of that. Yeah. Obsessive hair pulling.

Yeah. I wonder if that means pulling your own hair or other people's? Probably both. I don't know. Huh. That's an excellent question, actually. And it got our producer Jerry Giggling, so you know it's going to be a good one. So it's either a symptom of a larger disorder or it's its own impulse control disorder.

One of the reasons we don't know is because treatments for kleptomania are hit or miss. Yeah. And they haven't studied it a lot. And the other thing is like it hit me like everything else with the brain, it's still sort of a mystery. It is. And one of the reasons why they have had trouble studying kleptomania is finding kleptomania. Right.

They found a study from 2002 that was just getting off the ground at Stanford. And these people were looking for 24 kleptomaniacs for their study. And we're having to go on TV, radio, everywhere to try to find like true kleptomaniacs. And one of this guy who was quoted in this article on the study, a guy named Will Kupchick, which is a pretty cool name if you ask me. Agreed. He's a Toronto psychologist. He said in the 450 cases I've assessed, probably only one or two of the people were actual

kleptomaniacs. Really? We're talking about a very, very small, fascinating part of the larger population. Didn't they, I think I saw someone in the article, they said maybe 5% of psychiatric patients admit to being or are diagnosed as kleptomaniacs. Right. And you just, you revealed something else too. I think a lot of it is admission.

Sure. You remember when me, the play acting kleptomaniac left and went into the mall is crushed by guilt. I remember that. And I wanted to get the object away from me, you remember? The desire to keep this secret, I think probably keeps a lot of people from coming forward. So we have no idea how large or small this population is. But I think from people who examine shoplifters, they find that the actual kleptomaniacs among them are very small populations.

Right. And you know who has studied it? The University of Minnesota School of Medicine, specifically psychiatrist John Grant. And he studied the brain and there are a few little, he posits a few theories here. One is that a defect in a molecule that transports serotonin might be messed up. Yeah. Oh, not the defect. It was messed up.

It would clearly be messed up if it was a defect. If the defect is messed up, then you're AOK. Potentially head trauma could cause something like this. It could damage the circuits in the frontal lobes. Right. That could maybe happen and decrease in the fine structure of white matter in the frontal lobe. But it's all in the frontal lobe.

Right. And the limbic system, which as of course we know is the brain's reward center. So that's in the frontal lobe. Right. Which also controls impulse or the frontal lobe controls impulse mood. There you have it, dude. Yeah. So clearly it could be its own disorder in the frontal lobe.

Right. So did we say that treatments don't work all that well? Like sometimes SSRIs work, but not all the time. Right. Cognitive therapy works sometimes. You want to talk about some of the cognitive therapy? Yeah. Cognitive therapy cracks me up a little bit.

It's like snapping a rubber band on your wrist when you have an impure thought. Right. Covert sensitization, Josh, is when a patient wants to steal and then all the sudden, you are trained to imagine the consequences. Which to me, that's like, I thought that's what you're just supposed to teach people. It's like, no, it's like spraying a cat in the face. Every time it does something you don't want with a little water bottle. Aversion therapy, that is if you feel the urge to steal, you will be told to do something

like holding your breath until it's literally painful. Oh, I'm sorry. That's the one that's spraying a cat in the face. Yeah, you are right. Yeah, with that. Covert sensitization, that is kind of what we as humans should be walking around doing at all times, right? Yeah, thinking about the consequences of your actions.

Sure. And then the last one that uses systematic desensitization, which is relaxation therapy and substituting relaxing feelings instead of the urge to steal. All of those are probably the most difficult thing kleptomaniac will ever attempt, too. I found another little study, though. Let's hear it, Chuck. In April of this year, they started a test where they gave kleptomaniacs or kleptomaniac, what do we call them again?

Those with kleptomaniac? People with kleptomaniac. I guess no one wants to be called a maniac in any way. They studied, they got 25 habitual thieves, men and women between 1775 and they gave them the drug naltrexone, which is what they give alcoholics and drug addicts to curb their bad behavior. Is that the stuff that makes your hangover really, really bad? I think so.

It's supposed to quell those impulses and it kind of worked. After eight weeks, they found that two-thirds of the people who had not given the placebo had no urge to steal and only like 8% had placebo did, so. They also ate their vegetables and went to bed when they were told to. It's a good drug. Yeah, we could use that, Chuck. Is that it? Almost.

Okay. Let's go back to the beginning now or this should have been at the beginning. Okay. Kleptomaniac was, I think it first appears in literature in 397 CE. St. Augustine admitted to lusting the thieves. St. Augustine was something else. He really was, if he existed at all. And then it ends up in the medical literature in 1816, a Swiss physician by the name of

Matthew wrote of a unique madness characterized by the tendency to steal without motive and without necessity. Do you have it? 1816. Yep. And then Freud came in and said that had something to do with penis envy. No kidding. And now it's a 45, well not sort of kleptomaniac, but shoplifting is a 45 billion dollar in

this country. Yeah. Took off from 1816 to 2009. Jeez. That's good stuff. All right. Well, that's kleptomaniac. If you want to know any more, you can read the article by our own Dr. Freud by typing

in kleptomaniac. Remember, it begins with a K and the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com. And since I just said that, of course, dear friends, this means listener mail. Josh, I'm just going to call this hippie rob followed up. Woo. Your old buddy hippie. Should you say something about hippie rob? Well, let's wait till after.

Okay. Hi, Josh and Chuck. I like them when they start that way. I don't normally write into TV shows or radio shows, et cetera, but I've heard Josh talk about hippie rob and at the end of the hangover podcast, he mentioned that he wanted to hear from people who knew of his whereabouts. I do in fact know a hippie rob and wanted to offer my knowledge of this person to determine if it was the same hippie rob.

And I've seen this email and I know that it's a real hippie rob because he capitalized the H and the rob. The hippie rob I know is originally from Venilhaven, Maine, a medium sized island off the coast of Down East, Maine. Let's say things weird up there, Down East. His full name. I didn't say his full name here, but it's Robert Blank and he has thick blonde redlocks. He sure telltale sign of a hippie.

Sure. He was about five, 10 and never talked about his age, but I would put him in the upper 30s and possibly lower 40s in 1998. He loves coffee, hates alcohol, and he mentioned one of his other habits that he loves, which we're not going to mention on the air, but his name is hippie rob, so fill in the blanks. He squatted at my apartment in Portland, Maine for the summer of 1998. This is so close. At the time he was living off of social security from a quote, permanent work related accident.

I think we've all known a hippie rob. But something told me that his permanent disability was not physically related. I would see him every few summers in Maine and he would shoot the breeze. We would shoot the breeze while drinking coffee and doing other things. He was a terrible mooch. I know that he loved to travel the warm places in the winter with his favorite being Hawaii. If you read this on the air, could you give a shout out to my girlfriend, Kristen, who is amazing sport about me listening to the podcast, Galen from Portland, Maine.

So Josh, is it hippie rob? No. There's a couple of things missing here. It is so close. I mean the age. One thing is no one knows the origin of the real hippie rob. No one knows where a hippie rob is from. Dreadlocks?

He does. Yes. And he's blonde, although you would say more like strawberry blondish. Not true blonde. Has a beard. Kind of a little guy. In 1998 he would have been late 30s or so. World class mooch.

Oh man. Big time. Yeah. We used to like, we'd buy beer and we'd buy Sierra Nevada beer and Rob didn't have any money for a while and then he'd get paid and it'd be his turn to buy the beer and he'd buy like a 12 pack of Milwaukee beast ice and we'd be like, this is not the same Rob. There's a dog missing and this is a very key point. The dog Sedona.

I'll have to tell you about him sometime. Okay. He's a wolf dog named Sedona. Hippie Rob owned? Yes. Okay. No, they were best friends. Of course he has a wolf dog.

Exactly. That's so appropriate. That he's best friends with. And then the real giveaway was that hippie rob loved alcohol. Right. He would never, even now he could have given up booze. No one would have, no one would say hippie Rob hates alcohol. He just doesn't drink it anymore and he probably still does.

Hippie Rob loves alcohol. So that was the one distinct. That was the telltale giveaway. All right. So not hippie Rob, unfortunately. Yeah. And I guess if you know where hippie Rob is, I've revealed some more clues here. Send us an email.

We still want to know. We're looking for him. And is it Kristen or Kirsten Chuck in the email, Galen's girlfriend? Kristen. Kristen, special thanks to you for letting Galen listen to us. We appreciate that. If you have any cool stories about your significant other letting you do something that you want to do, put it in an email.

Also, if you know where hippie Rob is, we want to hear that too. You can email Chuck and me at all times at StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?

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