Attitudes of Entitlement is the first in a book series sponsored by the Virginia Psychoanalytic Society. It honors the seminal work on the subject by the Society's cofounder, the late George Kriegman, whose 1983 paper, “Entitlement Attitudes: Psychosocial and Therapeutic Implications,” constitutes the organizing focus for this well-edited and well-developed monograph. Its editors, Vamik D. Volkan and Terry C. Rodgers, and the other six contributors complement, expand, and extend the nature of entitlement issues fastening the subject to clinical experience in varieties of ways.

Kriegman delineates three basic entitlement attitudes: normal entitlement, excessive entitlement, and restricted entitlement, or nonentitlement. The normal variety issues automatically from healthy rearing. The second constitutes a typical defense