Stealing nothing

Cause and effect of theft

Abstract

What can psychoanalysis contribute to an understanding of the criminal act of shoptheft? While the focus of social science research is the prevention of shoptheft in order to minimize its effects upon the economy — and thus its concern is with the object not the subject of the crime — by comparison, psychoanalysis is concerned with the effect a criminal act has for the subject who commits the crime. According to Lacan, psychoanalysis does not dehumanize the criminal and instead emphasizes the role that theft has in the problematic human relationship to pleasure and satisfaction. By comparing post-Freudian theories of theft with a Lacanian approach, this paper discusses how the drives and desire are of relevance to the subjectivization of theft.