You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This paper describes the psychoanalytic treatment of a man involved in an unusual, but prolific form of white-collar crime. Unlike the majority of narcissistic and overtly antisocial individuals who comprise the heterogeneous group of white-collar offenders, this man's personality structure most closely resembled that of the vulnerable narcissist. Entitled expectations as well as moral motives were dissociated, immuring him in a cycle of resentment, shame, and inauthenticity. Dissociation curiously promoted attachment security by eliciting mirroring responses from significant others. The implications of these clinical findings are framed in terms of a broadened psychoanalytic view of integrity. Specifically, it is argued that integrity is complex and dynamic, involving processes that are both consciously self-directed and volitional as well as those that are unconscious, nonvolitional, and intrinsically linked to character. In addition, although the roles played by rational assessment and deliberation must not be underestimated, the study of moral behavior establishes the equal importance of unconscious processes that effectively short-circuit deliberation and culminate in the refusal to discount core beliefs in the face of uncomfortable realities. The paradox of integrity is that it involves both openness to and willful foreclosure of alternatives and new possibilities. Never completely the product of reflection or of dispositions fixed in early life, integrity betokens a creative reworking of unconscious identifications and motives as well as norms and new learning into choices that accord with one's sense of self as an ethical actor.