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This is a series of essays in memory of George Kriegman, the first psychoanalyst to practice in the Commonwealth of Virginia and a founding member of the Virginia Psychoanalytic Society. It takes its theme from his posthumously published paper, "Entitlement Attitudes: Psychological and Therapeutic Implications," which also forms the first chapter of this book.
Kriegman thought of disorders of entitlement as those in which concerns about human dignity, social status, respect, or economic benefits appear paramount. Horney first used the term to describe neurotic patients, such as Freud's exceptions, who expected to be treated in a special manner. Contemporary psychoanalysts tend to think of this as an aspect of pathological narcissism. Kriegman attempted to solve the riddle of whether socioeconomic or intrapsychic trauma plays the salient etiologic role in these conditions by examining evidence gathered in the course of clinical psychoanalytic work. He concluded that the developing individual's relationships within the family, particularly with a mother whose capacity to provide a secure sense of self-worth is defective, are the critical genetic factor in these disturbances.
Two papers draw on psychoanalytic developmental theory. In this category, Maurice Apprey follows the work of Anna Freud in proposing a five-step developmental line "From an Inchoate Sense of Entitlement to a Mature Attitude of Entitlement." It includes: (1) preoedipal sense of entitlement characterized by envy, grandiosity, and self-centeredness; (2) oedipal transformation of aggressive wishes into identifications with admired objects; (3) postoedipal expansion of the concept of social right and responsibilities; (4) adolescent consolidation of a stable sense of self and object that supports the shift from familial to extra-familial ties; and (5) mature