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kleptomania

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kleptomania

Psychol a strong impulse to steal, esp when there is no obvious motivation
Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

kleptomania

[‚klep·tə′mā·nē·ə]
(psychology)
An obsessive desire to steal; stolen objects are usually petty and useless, being of symbolic value only.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Kleptomania

 

an irresistible periodic pathological urge to steal.

Kleptomonia is a symptom of psychological disturbance that is attributable to impulsive tendencies. It is seen most often in persons suffering from psychological disturbances and psychopathy. There is no mercenary motivation in kleptomania; the stolen goods are not, as a rule, sold for profit. Kleptomania is eliminated by treating the primary condition.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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References in periodicals archive
The kleptomaniac cycle starts with an unbearable urge to steal something, not with the intention of profit but as an impulsive push.
Unlike the perfect Juhu Janes in Bollywood, she's gawky, has quirks that include eating toothpaste and is a borderline kleptomaniac. When she's tripping out on pills she tends to blink furiously and do weird things with her face.
It must be this stress that has turned her into a kleptomaniac - but as she sees Janine gazing at a family photograph she spots a way out of her dilemma.
A POSTMAN was dubbed a kleptomaniac in court after targeting valuablelooking packages and failing to deliver more than 9,000 items.
The Middle East is awash with oil money and determined, this time round, to spend some and invest some (in sovereign wealth funds), not lend it to western banks to squander on loans to kleptomaniac dictators (as in the 1970s).
Kat's voice is one with which many will identify regardless of whether or not they possess any kleptomaniac tendencies.
Bakhtin, who, in the effort to finish an essay on the rules governing the relationship between author and character, rents a room in a dacha owned by a family--an unfaithful wife, a tyrannical grandfather, a kleptomaniac teenager--whose problems so absorb Bakhtin's attention that he cannot pull himself away from the domestic drama long enough to write about the author's struggle to separate himself from the characters he has created out of himself- For all of the ironies and philosophical play, Bakhtin and Others develops characters of flesh and blood.
For the record, pic also features co-scripter Elvira Lindo as a kleptomaniac and Lindo's husband, novelist Antonio Munoz Molina, as one of Miguel's patients.
Paul Zindel's Amulets Against the Dragon Forces, a new play at the Circle Repertory, is another sort of Gothic drama, putting a dying widow, an alcoholic gay longshoreman, a hustler, a kleptomaniac itinerant nurse and her misfit adolescent son under one roof in Staten Island in the 1950s.
According to scuttlebutt, GT is a full-blown kleptomaniac.
Out Thursday The life of a kleptomaniac charted by the objects he steals, a love story told backwards and a rollicking tale of an actor on the run for his life are just some of the subjects of this elegant collection of short stories.
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