Deviance Biograpghy

Deviance Biography

Susan Smith was born into a traditional, middle class family. One of five daughters, Susan displayed a higher willingness to shoulder responsibility than her siblings at a very early age, which led to her parents' turning to her, for support, very frequently. The support sought was initially in the form of household chores, and then financial, once Susan was able to work, and especially after her marriage to a man who rapidly climbed the rungs of corporate success. Susan, herself, never resented her role in supporting her family's needs and in fact, based her self-esteem after the fact. Almost a model dutiful daughter, wife and mother, anyone who knew Susan in those years would have found it hard pressed to believe that Susan would one day be seen as a 'deviant,' and that she would increasingly resort to antisocial and criminal behavior.

A closer look would, however, reveal that the seeds of Susan's later behavior were, in fact, sown in her childhood with Susan's family committing an 'act of omission' in neglecting Susan's own emotional needs. This led to a marked personality fixation in Susan casting her in the typical mould of a personality who seeks 'participation' through identifying the ego with external persons and symbolic constructs and seeking to lose its separate identity through fusion (Shoham, 2000).

Susan's lifestyle changed considerably with each step upwards that her spouse took into the corporate world. Susan welcomed the changes, taking pride in her husband's achievements and enjoying its fruits. Both Susan and her husband embraced with delight social activities such as partying and social gambling, initially driven by their somewhat misguided anxiety to 'belong.' Unfortunately, what began as social gambling led to Susan growing into a pathological gambler when faced with a situation where a series of bad career moves finally led to the financial downfall, broken spirit and eventual death of her spouse.

Susan's turning into a pathological gambler fitted her profile of being reared in a family where her own emotional deprivations were not addressed. Add to that, the frightening loss of social status caused by her husband's downfall from corporate social circles and the trauma of his death, and one can easily trace the causes of Susan's deviance into compulsive gambling. Like most cases of pathological gambling, Susan, too, sought the high of winning for a sense of excitement, confidence and accomplishment. She even deluded herself into thinking that gambling would provide her with a livelihood encouraged by a streak of early wins and a big jackpot during her days as a mere social gambler. Eventually, Susan like all other addicts began stealing in order to finance her gambling.

Susan's intentions were never dishonest to the extent that she always intended to pay off her debts with the next big win and to that extent was no different from the definition of a pathological gambler as defined by the task force on gambling addiction in Maryland: "...formerly intelligent, honest person...weakened understanding between right and wrong...." (1990, December).