KLEPTOMANIA. - An irresistible impulse to steal, connected with mental illness. It obsessive psychosis (v.), owing to the pressure of the fixed idea which irresistibly becomes lodged in the mind, overpowering the course of thought and binding the will (obsessive c.); it is more frequent in senile dementia, dementia (v.), hysteria (v.), manic excitement (demential c.).
K. develops through a succession of stages: obsessive idea of theft, increasing to a state of anguish; internal struggle to resist the obsessive impulse; commission of the theft which, by its characteristics (illogical, useless, sudden) and by the social and moral standing of the subject, demonstrates the defect of the will with which it is connected. The act is followed by immediate inward satisfaction through the discharge of the obsessive state. K. must be distinguished from the theft of the moral madman, who steals in obedience to a morbid instinct of ethical perversion.
The vitiated deliberation of consent removes from the kleptomaniac all legal and moral responsibility.