Bloomberg Law presents a fascinating chronicle of the "tragedy" that has outlived Bernie Madoff.
The focus is on those who lost so much money in the fraud and still haven't been able to recover any of the funds.
The subtext on that is that among them are sufferers who didn't indicate in the article how much it was that Madoff swindled from them. They include Alexandra Penney who afterward published "The Bag Lady Papers" and eighty-something Burt Meerow.
That phenomenon of non-disclosure resonates with myriad human beings who also had found themselves victims. That probably goes back to the tendency to blame the victim. In Psychology Today, David B. Feldman explains that doing that "may be programmed in the mind at a deep level."
For example, if Penney or Meerow revealed that either had lost X millions of dollars, the blame-the-victim response might be: "Why didn't your diversify, putting part of your funds in different kinds of investments with different investment professionals!"
The victims are wise not to hand over data that they could be blungeoned with.
Another explanation is that saying the number could simply be too painful. Time can heal. But that healing can be delayed by continual repetition of the details.
A third could be the hope that most of that money isn't lost. When things are settled that person could be made whole. Magical thinking? Maybe. Maybe not.
Fortunately, for human beings there are many ways to distance ourselves from our suffering.
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