Aimless, easily led, and transparently shallow, Rebecca remained unmotivated in therapy, sometimes canceling appointments well ahead of their scheduled dates. And although her stated objective was to determine what to do with her life, her usual affect was unfeigned apathy.

Her father was a strong person, she reported, with whom she had a positive connection, but none of her relationships with other men had lasted very long or had been very deep. Her immediate goal, she said, was marriage and a family with a partner who would respect and care for her.

Treatment consisted primarily of engaging her intellect and emotions in order to heighten the awareness of her present lifestyle in all its dimensions, attitudes, and behaviors. The sessions ended after thirteen months when she traveled to California to pursue a graduate program of study and to explore a relationship that seemed promising to her at the time.

Professional observations: I've had several of these aimless clients and I'm always surprised that they come in at all. They tend to be likeable but challenging to me as a therapist. Certainly it is easier to work with more motivated individuals, and I have to remind myself that those who feel apathetic and purposeless (one of the common traits of children of wealth) deserve as much of a chance to fulfill themselves as anyone else. For them, I can be a hand, reaching in to help them out of something they don't even realize surrounds them: the spirit-sapping dark side of wealth.

Other inheritors feel a need to work, yet they haven't found a way to do it that seems right.

Michelle is a case in point. She became my client when she was thirty-five, an inheritor whose father had been hugely successful in business. She herself had already

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