America in the Age of Narcissism

Although this is not scholarly, it is very interesting and well-informed.

Unlike psychopaths, narcissists are made, not born.

Families and even societies can be predisposed towards forming a greater percentage of narcissists because of the priorities they reinforce and the behaviours that they uphold and reward.

Among these are superficiality, personal entitlement, competitive pride that defines the person, a perverse sense of individualism, and above all a lack of empathy.

They can be professionally very successful, socially attractive and charismatic, bigger than life. But personally they are often inept and unfortunate, unable to sustain intimate relationships, morally ambivalent. They tend to react with coldness and rage when their desires and plans are thwarted.

They rarely accept responsibility or admit to errors. They project their failure onto others. They are empty inside, and seek to build externalities to make up for it. They try to fill their emptiness with things and money and credentials and other people. Their behaviour is a reflex in response to their emptiness.

Everyone has a need for recognition and validation. The difference is that in a narcissist the personal needs are so dominant that one becomes addicted to validation and a grandiose amount of recognition.

The malignant narcissist can easily become a white collar style of criminal, stealing from victims with little or no remorse, almost approaching the empathetic vacuity of a psychopath.

Losing all hope and empathy is their freedom. And in this way they fashion their own emptiness, and can become the lord and master of their own personal hell.

Snakes In Suits - Psychopaths and Cunning Predators in Positions of Power

“They often make use of the fact that for many people the content of the message is less important than the way it is delivered.

A confident, aggressive delivery style - often larded with jargon, clichés, and flowery phrases - makes up for the lack of substance and sincerity in their interactions with others ... they are masters of impression management; their insight into the psyche of others combined with a superficial - but convincing - verbal fluency allows them to change their personas skillfully as it suits the situation and their game plan.

They are known for their ability to don many masks, change 'who they are' depending upon the person with whom they are interacting, and make themselves appear likable to their intended victim.

Psychopathic workers very often were identified as the source of departmental conflicts, in many cases, purposely setting people up in conflict with each other.  The most debilitating characteristic of even the most well-behaved psychopath is the inability to form a workable team."

Paul Babiak and Robert Hare, Snakes in Suits

First, let me say that I am aware of the recent paper that seeks to 'measure' the level of psychopathy in various cities and put forward a list.   I read it, and found the methodology used to be wanting in anything like objective rigor.

I also have a bias against specifically diagnosing individuals or groups at a distance, especially by using anecdotes and non-quantified impressions, which are often just selective experience and bias.

This can be 'fun' to read and share, especially when they are used to confirm popular cultural or group bias.  And there is rarely a lack of people who are willing to engage in such faux analysis for paychecks or clicks.

I am also not hinting around that Trumpolini or any other particular popular figure is a psychopath.  It might be feasible to spot a sociopath at a distance, by the kinds and qualities of their behaviours.  But I could not presume to make such a specific diagnosis like psychopathy at a distance.

Although it does seem fairly evident that Trump himself is a narcissist— many politicians and popular figures who did not become famous by accident may be.  I mean, the guy is a flamboyant New York real estate developer and reality TV star.   The key question in this regard is 'what kind?'

A psychopath is someone who has an organic brain disorder that causes them to lack empathy and what we call conscience.  A sociopath is someone who knows what is right and wrong, but have learned to ignore their feelings and turn off conscience for their own purposes.  They may have been desensitized by childhood abuse, or a prolonged series of traumatic experiences.

So why bring this topic up at all?   

Because it strikes at the heart of all those Utopian schemes that assume that people are naturally good and rational.   Many people are.  But there is a significant portion of the population that is not.  And in order to curtail their destructive tendencies laws and regulations are created and enforced.  And when those laws and justice itself is under assault, which is almost always, the answer is to reform the system of law, not to abolish it.

Cunning predators are not afraid of chaos and lawlessness.  They count on it.  It serves their needs.  And so they foment it as a part of their overall assault on society, and the social fabric.  All that matters to them are their own lusts and powers. 

And the average person is at a disadvantage at the hands of a demagogue, because they cannot even imagine someone who they think are like themselves being that coarse, that out of proportion, that evil.  But over time they can be desensitized and lied to long enough so that they too can become less than human, compartmentalized, and tolerate monstrous things that would ordinarily horrify them.





This is from sources on the web, and is based on Robert Hare's psychopathy checklist.

1. Look for glib and superficial charm. A psychopath will also put on what professionals refer to as a 'mask of sanity' that is likable and pleasant.   It is a thin veneer.

2. Look for a grandiose self perception. Psychopaths will often believe they are smarter or more powerful than they actually are.

3. Watch for a constant need for stimulation. Stillness, quiet and reflection are not things embraced by psychopaths. They need constant entertainment and activity.

4. Determine if there is pathological lying. A psychopath will tell all sorts of lies; little white lies as well as huge stories intended to mislead. Psychopaths are gifted or dull, high functioning or low performing like other people. An untalented psychopath may harm a few; a highly talented psychopath may lay waste to nations. The difference between the psychopath and others lies in their organic lack of conscience and empathy for others. The sociopath is trained to lack empathy and conscience. The psychopath is a natural.

5. Evaluate the level of manipulation. All psychopaths are identified as cunning and able to get people to do things they might not normally do. They can use guilt, force and other methods to manipulate.

6. Look for any feelings of guilt. An absence of any guilt or remorse is a sign of psychopathy.  They will often blame the victim.  They will rarely admit that they were even wrong.

7. Consider the level of emotional response a person has. Psychopaths demonstrate shallow emotional reactions to deaths, injuries, trauma or other events that would otherwise cause a deeper response. Other people are satisfaction suppliers, nothing more.

8. A lack of empathy. Psychopaths are callous and have no way of relating to others in non-exploitative ways. They may find a temporary kinship with other psychopaths and sociopaths that is strictly utilitarian and goal-oriented.

9. Psychopaths are often parasitic. They live off other people, emotionally, physically, and financially. Their modus operandi is domination and control.  They will claim to be maligned or misunderstood to gain your sympathy.

10. Look for obsessive risk taking and lack of self-control. The Hare Checklist includes three behavior indicators; poor behavior control, sexual promiscuity, and behavioral problems.

11. Psychopaths have unrealistic goals or none at all for the long term. Either there are no goals at all, or they are unattainable and based on the exaggerated sense of one's own accomplishments and abilities.

12. Psychopaths will often be shockingly impulsive or irresponsible. Their shamelessness knows no bounds. You will ask, what were they thinking? And the answer was, they weren't because they did not care.

13. A psychopath will not genuinely accept personal responsibility. A psychopath will never admit to being wrong or owning up to mistakes and errors in judgment, except as part of a manipulative ploy.   They will despise and denigrate their victims once they are done with them.  If they have any regret it is that their source of satisfaction supply has ended and they must seek another.

14. Psychopaths lack long term personal relationships. If there have been many short term marriages, broken friendships, purely transactional relationships, the chances the person is a psychopath increase. Watch especially how they treat other people in weaker positions and even animals.

15. Psychopaths are often versatile in their criminality. Psychopaths are able to get away with a lot, and while they might sometimes get caught, the ability to be flexible and adaptable when committing crimes is indicative.

A Breed Apart Without Conscience - Psychopaths and Systemic Crisis

Psychopaths are social predators who charm, manipulate, and ruthlessly plow their way through life, leaving a broad trail of broken hearts, shattered expectations, and empty wallets.  Completely lacking in conscience and in feelings for others, they selfishly take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without the slightest sense of guilt or regret.

Psychopaths often come across as arrogant, shameless braggarts—self-assured, opinionated, domineering, and cocky.  They love to have power and control over others and seem unable to believe that other people have valid opinions different from theirs.

What makes psychopaths different from all others is the remarkable ease with which they lie, the pervasiveness of their deception, and the callousness with which they carry it out.

The most debilitating characteristic of even the most well-behaved psychopath is the inability to form a workable team.

The majority of people and therefore workplaces are easy prey, because we still want to believe that people are inherently good.  We don't really want to believe that such people exist...Wherever you find money, prestige and power you will find them.

We are far more likely to lose our life savings to an oily-tongued swindler than our lives to a steely-eyed killer.

Robert D. Hare, Without Conscience

And this is why people must come together, to create a system of laws and transparency, of checks and balances, of objective oversight.

It is difficult to believe that we have to remind otherwise intelligent adults, who might be temporarily, but too often enthusiastically, blinded by some utopian ideology too often crafted by devious intents, that not everyone is good, law-abiding, and honest.

Snakes In Suits - Predators Among Us

“They often make use of the fact that for many people the content of the message is less important than the way it is delivered.

A confident, aggressive delivery style - often larded with jargon, clichés, and flowery phrases - makes up for the lack of substance and sincerity in their interactions with others ... they are masters of impression management; their insight into the psyche of others combined with a superficial - but convincing - verbal fluency allows them to change their personas skillfully as it suits the situation and their game plan.

They are known for their ability to don many masks, change 'who they are' depending upon the person with whom they are interacting, and make themselves appear likable to their intended victim.

Psychopathic workers very often were identified as the source of departmental conflicts, in many cases, purposely setting people up in conflict with each other. The most debilitating characteristic of even the most well-behaved psychopath is the inability to form a workable team.

Paul Babiak and Robert Hare, Snakes in Suits


"I may have made an error in judgement— but one thing is beyond dispute: the man was able to work his way up to leader of a people of almost 80 million.  His success alone proved that I should subordinate myself to him."

Adolf Eichmann

A psychopath according to the latest research is both genetically and physically predisposed, through a cluster of characteristics, to being unable to form bonds with other people, even on the most basic level. In addition, certain aspects of their upbringing and environment seem to contribute to their deficiency or predisposition, to turn it towards what would be considered as malignant ends.

Most simply, a full blown psychopath is someone who is 'born without a conscience.'

Psychopathy is not categorical. It is not a black and white linear measure, wherein one crosses a single numeric score and can be diagnosed.   Rather, as Hare frames it so well in his revised checklist, there is a range of psychopathic predisposition that is more qualitative except at the extreme.

The neuroscientist James Fallon has a very amusing series of lectures in which he discloses how in his work he discovered that his own brain was wired in the same manner as a large profile of criminal psychopaths. And yet he is a high functioning and personable professional and family man.  And he is a remarkably entertaining speaker, and has a number of videos on youtube. So a mere physical disposition of some degree is not enough. There are clearly other factors.

And finally, and I must caution this most strongly, trying to diagnose someone at a distance and without proper testing and training is not possible.  And even for a professional is somewhat irresponsible. One may speculate on someone's behaviour, but it is generally skewed by their own biases and access to information, except in the most extreme behavioural examples.

Hitler, for example, never inclined himself to the psychiatrist's couch, but enough is known of his life and his actions to permit some analysis to be made even at a distance.  Dr. Fallon touches on some of this sort of thing in the second video where he looks at 'the Mind of the Dictator.'

The concentration of psychopathic and sociopathic personalities in positions of power, whether it be in the workplace or in political areas, emphasizes the need for balances of power, transparency, and the rule of law. What better place for a high functioning predator to find advantage over victims than in positions of power?

In general utopian designs for social organization that rely on the perfectly rational and natural self-governing of individuals is not very practical. But when one introduces the fact that for some percentage of the population, from one to five percent, the lack of a conscience is a very real factor in their own behaviour, knocks down flat anarchical frameworks where reliance is placed upon some assumption of 'natural goodness' of everyone. Quite clearly, not everyone is just like everyone else.

Put more simply, there is a reason why throughout human history good people have found it necessary to organize themselves for their own protection. Not everyone is good, and government provides for the protection of the weak, the vulnerable, and the innocent from the predators among us.

Psychologist Frank Ochberg has a different, practitioner's take on psychopathy. He doesn't care whether someone has gotten to their state of being either by nature and nuture, or just nuture. In other words, he makes no distinctions between the sociopath and the psychopath, which he calls 'splitting hairs' (or Hare's? lol Frank I hope that pun was intended). His major field of study is PTSD, and he is very, very good at it.   But he brings up some interesting points about the subject of psychopathy.




And for something utterly and completely different, here is a presentation by someone who I assume is a motivational speaker, who describes in some fairly colorful ways his own marriage to a female psychopath. I found him to be informative and entertainingly sincere, with caution on language. It is a good reminder that some psychopaths wear skirts. Marrying Medusa: How to Survive a Female Psychopath.

He also makes an observation that I found to be important. In his talk he notes that he most often would view people who did bad things as being merely 'stupid.' That is in line with the saying 'never attribute to bad intent what can be attributed to stupidity.' He says that he found out the hard way that there really are some people who are calculating, determined, and probably what one would call 'evil' because of their intent to harm others for their own gratification. And there is some merit in that. I have found this out as well in a different and much more boring, non-sexual venue in my own corporate career, and it was a shock to me.

This is based on Robert Hare's revised psychopathy checklist. Probably the most important distinction is the lack of conscience, because of a lack of empathy and connection with others. It is not a hatred of others, not in the least. It is more like the type of relationship that a fully functioning person might have with a basketball, literally. The lack of emotion is key, not from suppression or hardness; it is just not there.

1. Look for glib and superficial charm. A psychopath will also put on what professionals refer to as a 'mask of sanity' that is likable and pleasant. It is a thin veneer.

2. Look for a grandiose self perception. Psychopaths will often believe they are smarter or more powerful than they actually are.

3. Watch for a constant need for stimulation. Stillness, quiet and reflection are not things embraced by psychopaths. They need constant entertainment and activity.

4. Determine if there is pathological lying. A psychopath will tell all sorts of lies; little white lies as well as huge stories intended to mislead. Psychopaths are gifted or dull, high functioning or low performing like other people. An untalented psychopath may harm a few; a highly talented psychopath may lay waste to nations. The difference between the psychopath and others lies in their organic lack of conscience and empathy for others. The sociopath is trained to lack empathy and conscience. The psychopath is a natural.

5. Evaluate the level of manipulation. All psychopaths are identified as cunning and able to get people to do things they might not normally do. They can use guilt, force and other methods to manipulate.

6. Look for any feelings of guilt. An absence of any guilt or remorse is a sign of psychopathy. They will often blame the victim.

7. Consider the level of emotional response a person has. Psychopaths demonstrate shallow emotional reactions to deaths, injuries, trauma or other events that would otherwise cause a deeper response. Other people are satisfaction suppliers, nothing more.

8. Look for a lack of empathy. Psychopaths are callous and have no way of relating to others in non-exploitative ways. They may find a temporary kinship with other psychopaths and sociopaths that is strictly utilitarian and goal-oriented.

9. Psychopaths are often parasitic. They live off other people, emotionally, physically, and financially. Their modus operandi is domination and control. They will claim to be maligned or misunderstood to gain your sympathy.

10. Look for obsessive risk taking and lack of self-control. The Hare Checklist includes three behavior indicators; poor behavior control, sexual promiscuity, and behavioral problems.

11. Psychopaths have unrealistic goals or none at all for the long term. Either there are no goals at all, or they are unattainable and based on the exaggerated sense of one's own accomplishments and abilities.

12. Psychopaths will often be shockingly impulsive or irresponsible. Their shamelessness knows no bounds. You will ask, what were they thinking? And the answer was, they weren't because they did not care.

13. A psychopath will not genuinely accept personal responsibility. A psychopath will never admit to being wrong or owning up to mistakes and errors in judgment, except as part of a manipulative ploy. They will despise and denigrate their victims once they are done with them. If they have any regret it is that their source of satisfaction supply has ended and they must seek another.

14. Psychopaths lack long term personal relationships. If there have been many short term marriages, broken friendships, purely transactional relationships, the chances the person is a psychopath increase. Watch especially how they treat other people in weaker positions and even animals.

15. Psychopaths are often versatile in their criminality. Psychopaths are able to get away with a lot, and while they might sometimes get caught, the ability to be flexible and adaptable when committing crimes is indicative.

Without Empathy or Remorse: The Psychopath Next Door, In the Office, In the Halls of Power

"What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the will to power, and the power itself in man. What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is increasing— that resistance has been overcome.

Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but competence. The first principle of our humanism is that the weak and the failures shall perish. And they ought to be helped to perish."

Friedrich Nietzsche

There is a range in human behaviours. There may be a baseline, but not all are the same.

And this is why theories that assume that everyone has a basic world outlook that is the same like you, that all people have a natural desire to be friendly, helpful, and sharing falter out of either a good nature or from a good maximizing, selflessly reasoning behaviour, falter so badly when applied to the real world.

When a society fails to restrain the worst behaviours of those who prey on others through the abuse of power or money, their example brings out the worst in a much larger subset of the population. Bad behaviour breeds bad behaviour, and those who profit by it find ways to justify this through self-serving social and political theories.  People who have this weakness in their character are naturally attracted to high profile positions of power.  Psychopaths breed and nurture sociopaths, imitators who are able to extinguish their own empathy and remorse through ideology and excess.

What would you do to protect your children from people like this? Throughout history people have banded together in order to establish and maintain the rule of law against the tyranny of a few.

This is why romantic notions about markets and societies without law and transparent regulation are so harmful. They turn the power of the markets and the laws over to the least scrupulous and self-controlled in a society. This is why any social system without checks and balances, without transparency and restraints, will eventually deteriorate into a dysfunctional system of self-interest and looting.

People are not perfectly rational angels. It is hard to believe that one must say that to an adult audience, but ideology and conditioning can make people blind to their own faults. 'Men go mad in herds, but come back to their senses, one at a time.'

Society is generally based on consumption,  production, and cooperation.  A system that has become tainted by the sickness of the disordered mind and soul is based on debt, coercion and extraction, serving only money, power, and itself.

What then are we to do?

Do not spend your time trying to look into the minds and hearts of others at a distance, saying this one or that one is clearly disordered and evil, calling them out for it. Rather, look first into your own imperfectly human heart, and find the fear, selfishness, envy and greed within.

And with open eyes, having seen this inhuman behaviour for what it is, acknowledge it, bring it under your control, subdue it and extinguish it by having remorse for past wrongs, and a sincere desire to act up to your light, more fully and wholly human, in the future.

Put more simply in the words that echo down the long halls of history, see your sins, acknowledge them, repent and ask for forgiveness, ask for the strength to act up to your light, and then go and sin no more. For if the seeds of wickedness and inhuman behaviour are stilled within you, then the madness that roams the world like a roaring lion will not find a way to steal your humanity and your heart.

And that time is coming, always and again.

The Psychopath Next Door - Snakes In Suits - The Will To Power

What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to Power, and the power itself in man. What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is increasing— that resistance has been overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but competence.

The first principle of our humanism is that the weak and the failures shall perish. And they ought to be helped to perish. What is more harmful than any vice? Active pity for all failure and weakness — Christianity.

Friedrich Nietzsche

“They often make use of the fact that for many people the content of the message is less important than the way it is delivered.

A confident, aggressive delivery style - often larded with jargon, clichés, and flowery phrases - makes up for the lack of substance and sincerity in their interactions with others ... they are masters of impression management; their insight into the psyche of others combined with a superficial - but convincing - verbal fluency allows them to change their personas skillfully as it suits the situation and their game plan.

They are known for their ability to don many masks, change 'who they are' depending upon the person with whom they are interacting, and make themselves appear likable to their intended victim...

Psychopathic workers very often were identified as the source of departmental conflicts, in many cases, purposely setting people up in conflict with each other. “She tells some people one story, and then a totally different story to others...The most debilitating characteristic of even the most well-behaved psychopath is the inability to form a workable team.

Paul Babiak and Robert Hare, Snakes in Suits

Politicians do not get the attention that so many of them deserve in this documentary.

I think organizations, and even nations, can give themselves over to a kind of collective madness, and harden their hearts over time through fear and fashion.

One of the most concerning trends is the sanctification of violent, deceptive, selfish, and self-deluding behaviour in our society.   We fear nothing but power, respect nothing but power, despise and abuse the weak in our bitterness, and believe that anything goes in the service of greed and power.

And the worst is that with all this endless war culture of selfish thieving, we fancy ourselves to be a paragon of history, the culmination of progress, and exceptional for our virtue.   There is a downfall, and a tragedy, in the making.

Without Restraint or Remorse: The Severely Emotionally Detached

This is why nice, neat theories of perfectly rational economic behavior fall apart quickly in reality.

This is why regulation is necessary. Because there is a tendency in some people to break the rules, and to bend them over time to serve their disordered minds and appetites.

This is why there must be checks and balances on power. Especially when that power appeals to noble symbols as a cover for their excessive misdeeds and complex secrecy.

We have seen entire sections of corporate organizations bent to the will of persuasive psychopathy. And even when they fail, they will rise up to find a new place to obtain what they need, without shame or remorse, or even a genuine understanding of why they have failed, although they may get better at the execution of their schemes. They will blame everyone else for being unworthy of them.

 

And sometimes an entire culture can take on the character of the psychopath, especially under periods of intense or protracted stress, when they surrender their wills to the powerful wills of a few. And they will project their increasing deformity on to others, even as they descend steadily into the abyss. 

 

They maintain an emotional detachment, a kind of moral high ground in their own minds, by rationalizing the consequences of their increasingly monstrous behavior and excess by pointing out the failings of others.  'I did not make them believe my lies. They believed because they are inferior. They did not stop me, so they deserved it. '

 

If they ever speak frankly about their view of things amongst their confidants, the normal person would be stunned by their distorted world view, often writing off large segments of the population as unworthy and disposable, for the most part because they impede their desires, although they will often ascribe it to some irreparable defect in these others, making them unworthy of life.

 

The high performing psychopath gravitates towards positions of power, saying or doing whatever it takes to get the ability to satisfy their own desires which are insatiable, because they are caught in the hell of being unable to love and feel genuine love in return.   They are a black hole of desires and needs.

 

And psychopaths breed sociopaths, imitators who are able to extinguish their own empathy and remorse through ideology and excess including violence, sex, and drugs.

 

What would you do to protect your children from people like this?   Throughout history people have banded together in order to establish and maintain the rule of law.

 

This is why romantic notions about markets without law and transparent regulation are so harmful.  They turn the power of the markets over to the least scrupulous and self-controlled in a society.  This is why any social system without checks and balances, without transparency and restraints, will eventually deteriorate into a dysfunctional system of self-interest and looting.

 

People are not perfectly rational angels.  It is hard to believe that one must say that to an adult audience, but ideology and conditioning can make people blind.

The Hare Psychopathy Checklist

This is from sources on the web, and is based on Robert Hare's psychopathy checklist.

1. Look for glib and superficial charm. A psychopath will also put on what professionals refer to as a 'mask of sanity' that is likable and pleasant.   It is a thin veneer.

2. Look for a grandiose self perception. Psychopaths will often believe they are smarter or more powerful than they actually are.

3. Watch for a constant need for stimulation. Stillness, quiet and reflection are not things embraced by psychopaths. They need constant entertainment and activity.

4. Determine if there is pathological lying. A psychopath will tell all sorts of lies; little white lies as well as huge stories intended to mislead. Psychopaths are gifted or dull, high functioning or low performing like other people. An untalented psychopath may harm a few; a highly talented psychopath may lay waste to nations. The difference between the psychopath and others lies in their organic lack of conscience and empathy for others. The sociopath is trained to lack empathy and conscience. The psychopath is a natural.

5. Evaluate the level of manipulation. All psychopaths are identified as cunning and able to get people to do things they might not normally do. They can use guilt, force and other methods to manipulate.

6. Look for any feelings of guilt. An absence of any guilt or remorse is a sign of psychopathy.  They will often blame the victim.

7. Consider the level of emotional response a person has. Psychopaths demonstrate shallow emotional reactions to deaths, injuries, trauma or other events that would otherwise cause a deeper response. Other people are satisfaction suppliers, nothing more.

8. Look for a lack of empathy. Psychopaths are callous and have no way of relating to others in non-exploitative ways. They may find a temporary kinship with other psychopaths and sociopaths that is strictly utilitarian and goal-oriented.

9. Psychopaths are often parasitic. They live off other people, emotionally, physically, and financially. Their modus operandi is domination and control.  They will claim to be maligned or misunderstood to gain your sympathy.

10. Look for obsessive risk taking and lack of self-control. The Hare Checklist includes three behavior indicators; poor behavior control, sexual promiscuity, and behavioral problems.

11. Psychopaths have unrealistic goals or none at all for the long term. Either there are no goals at all, or they are unattainable and based on the exaggerated sense of one's own accomplishments and abilities.

12. Psychopaths will often be shockingly impulsive or irresponsible. Their shamelessness knows no bounds. You will ask, what were they thinking? And the answer was, they weren't because they did not care.

13. A psychopath will not genuinely accept personal responsibility. A psychopath will never admit to being wrong or owning up to mistakes and errors in judgment, except as part of a manipulative ploy.   They will despise and denigrate their victims once they are done with them.  If they have any regret it is that their source of satisfaction supply has ended and they must seek another.

14. Psychopaths lack long term personal relationships. If there have been many short term marriages, broken friendships, purely transactional relationships, the chances the person is a psychopath increase. Watch especially how they treat other people in weaker positions and even animals. 

15. Psychopaths are often versatile in their criminality. Psychopaths are able to get away with a lot, and while they might sometimes get caught, the ability to be flexible and adaptable when committing crimes is indicative.

If you should find yourself in a business or personal relationship with a psychopath, the best advice is seek counseling if you need, obtain assistance if you must, and run if you can. You are a diffused and multi-faceted person with many interests. A psychopath is powerfully focused on obtaining what he wishes from others, without many prohibitions or distractions. Avoidance is the best policy. Long term confinement is their best treatment.

I do not think the repetitive sociopathic behaviours and psychopathic tendencies of the Roman imperial leadership to be accidental. The mad emperors kept recurring because they were the creatures of what that culture had become, and they stood as emblems at its apex.

Men are social animals, and can go mad in groups, as well as alone. Psychopathy can be the black hole at the center of a whole galaxy of madness and sociopathy under the right conditions, and the results can be flamboyantly destructive, as we most recently saw in several places during the 20th century. 

The psychopaths can thrive anywhere that deception is an advantage, but their prime hunting ground is a system in crisis, a manageable chaos lacking transparency, a well defined rule of law, and effective enforcement of behaviour.

Bubble-nomics: The Federal Reserve Balance Sheet and the SP 500

"How could I have done this? I was making a lot of money. I didn’t need the money. Am I a flawed character?

I realized from a very early stage that the financial market is a wholly rigged job. There’s no chance that investors have in this market....It’s unbelievable. Goldman-- no one has any criminal convictions. The whole new regulatory reform is a joke."

Bernie Madoff


"Unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives, until it finally consumes itself."

Chris Hedges


"I preyed upon the weak, the harmless and the unsuspecting. This lesson I was taught by others: might makes right."

Carl Panzram, psychopath, serial killer

Not much is going to the real economy and the 99 percent, so it has to be going somewhere.

The creation of financial asset bubbles using the power of selective monetary inflation is 'trickle down' at its finest.

But certain assets may blurt out unpleasant truths, if they are allowed to speak.

This is not sustainable. What are they thinking?

Entitlement, indeed.

The Political and Social Continuum - What About the Outliers? Does Sin Exist?

As you may recall I have constructed this model to help me conceptualize the 'continuum' of political and social thought.

One of the motivations for this particular form was to help me to understand why those at the extremes can 'cross over' so easily from one to the other.

And in practice, the two extremes seem identical in many ways.

But I have struggled for some time where a sociopath or psychopath might fit in this scheme of things.

Today it struck me that sociopaths and psychopaths can fit anywhere they like, although given their attraction to power and control over others they would be mostly found at the extremes.

They can move about most easily because they are 'outside the continuum'  and by definition  are exceptionally under-socialized.   For whatever reason, they do not 'fit' within a social structure, but are essentially outliers because of their pathology, the way in which they have rationalized themselves.

They are a mutated form of the self-actualizing person. They may seem quite personally powerful, but inside they are hollow, almost histrionic. They would be products of broken homes, and have marriages of convenience, mostly their own.

The narcissists are often highly verbally acute and talented at using speech, with high IQs.  But the tell is their lack of consistency.  And they thrive in places of upper management where performance and personal responsibility can be rationalized and diffused.  They are corrosive for the long term.

And the same off model status might be said to apply to misanthropes and hermits, the extreme form of self-imposed isolationism. At some point their social maturity has failed. And then there are the many socially immature who have never progressed beyond adolescence most likely because of some trauma or lack of support for their development. They lash out in anger because they know something is missing in their lives.

Politicians and certain types of public figures can be tough to place on this model because they are often poseurs, in that they are motivated primarily by power, and will assume various modes and guises to obtain it. They are most notable for the lack of consistency between their public and private lives, their very disingenuousness.

Indeed their private lives can often be quite distinct from their public reputations, and remarkably so.

I have known many 'driven' figures who from a public face would seem to be quite successful, and often remarkably so. But almost invariably they are unhappy to the point of being miserable, and they spread their misery to their family and all that come close to them. They are broken but functional and for some their obsession gives them a remarkable focus. They are not distracted by sincere feelings and abstract principles such as 'justice.' People are at best trophies to be collected and more often objects to be used and discarded.

Do not get me wrong.  No one is perfect, and the definition of normal is broad given the natural diversity of creation.  And at the end of the day, we are all imperfect and often broken people.  It is how we react to these things that makes us what we are.  Some must struggle more valiantly than others.

I cannot give you a precise definition of 'sin' without reference to personal belief, along with the usual classical references, although I do believe it objectively exists.   I think the best way to explore this is to ask a higher power, sincerely and with some persistence, to show our own sins to us.  And that might prove to be interesting, especially among those who think they are without it and beyond it.

And although I cannot define what normality and sin are, I think I know what hell is.  To paraphrase Dostoevsky, hell is the inability to love and to be loved, even when it is true and freely offered.  That is the terrible curse of Tantalus, and the source of much anger and discontent and oppression in the world.

So there is my slight modification to this model, and my pass at practical psychology for today.

Strangers Among Us: The Fatal Allure of False Premises and Unstable Systems - I Am Fishead

People tend to think other people are like them: imperfect, but generally striving to be good.  Faithful in the important things, but weak and error prone in the small.  Our self-view itself is probably a bit of a self-serving self-delusion, but that is a topic for another conversation on some other day. But it does illustrate the need for some external standard, and the rigor of self-examination against it.

As you may have heard or observed, most people tend to write their own faults in water, and carve the failings of others in large letters written in marble.

But there are strangers among us, people who are quite different from most in how they approach things. In fact, the variance amongst people is greater than most will allow in their thinking. Not all people are constructed in the same way.

There are those who are not at all self-regulating in the rational way in which we would like to think we all are.   They may be different genetically, or from the way in which they grew up in their formative years, and most often a combination of both. 

But as in so many cases,  generalizations can lead to convenient assumptions, and those can often prove dangerous.  This can cause us individual problems, as anyone who has dealt with a family member or associate who has a serious problem will know.

But the greatest source of mischief, and too often tragedy, is when we design social constructs and commercial organizations that, for the well-intentioned sake of simplicity, assume that people are rational and reliably good, except for a small and easily identifiable minority of physical criminals.

This may sound obvious enough, but in fact such mistaken assumptions can and do happen.  Certain financial and economic formulations of risk for example, are laughable in their assumptions, but nevertheless obtained widespread acceptance and recognition, before it failed miserably.  Why? For a number of reasons, most of which have to do with practical convenience of thought that gets carried too far.

 People thinking in groups tend to eschew individual common sense, relying instead on a sort of shorthand 'group think' that substitutes for experience and the hard work of individual reason.   We are both emotional and thinking beings, and have our roots in pack behaviour and tribalism. 

The 'tell' for this phenomenon is that when confronted with contrary evidence from real life, they either studiously ignore it, citing largely irrelevant counter examples from biased and carefully chosen sources, or merely brush it aside, falling back on generalizations and above all slogans. And when harsh reality inevitably intrudes, it is met with shock, stubborn resistance, and disbelief.

So, and this is the point of this essay, when thinking about social or corporate organization, bear in mind that there are a small but potentially powerfully focused set of people who will not fall into your neatly reasoned assumptions. And this fact may cause your system to be founded on sand, on a fatal flaw, that may even be promoted by those who view it to their advantage in undermining and abusing that system for their own ends.   This is why they prefer to redesign and reorganize completely instead of reform.  It provides a greater opportunity to construct new loopholes for their own benefit.

No one can make a reliable diagnosis at a distance. We tend to distort and project when observing others. And people operate from a variety of motives and intentions. But that is not the point.

The point is that systems must be designed to be, what Taleb has called, 'anti-fragile,' that is, not so reliant on certain assumed norms to be vulnerable to corruption and collapse. In system design we used to call an effective system that was even incidentally reliable at the stated extremes to be 'robust.'

I believe quite strongly that the story of our own crisis is the failure to remember the lessons from the past, that there are people whom it would be fair to call evil amongst us, an that although they may be intelligent and superficially charming, they are every bit as dangerous, and probably even more, than the killer who wields a knife or a gun. And more than anything else, we have ceased to love the truth, for the sake of winning.

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.

And having no respect he ceases to love.”

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

And that is the descent into Hell.

Here is a brief excerpt from an essay put out by Aftermath, the group founded in part by Robert Hare to assist the victims of psychopathy. It is not intended as a diagnostic tool, because without years of specific training one is not capable of performing such a procedure reliably. But it is educative, to help us to understand that not everyone is the same, not like 'us' if such an 'us' really exists except in broad abstractions.

Below that, for your holiday viewing, I reprise the documentary film, I am Fishead.

Enjoy, and plan accordingly.

"There is a class of individuals who have been around forever and who are found in every race, culture, society and walk of life. Everybody has met these people, been deceived and manipulated by them, and forced to live with or repair the damage they have wrought.

These often charming, but always deadly, individuals have a clinical name: psychopaths. Their hallmark is a stunning lack of conscience; their game is self-gratification at the other person’s expense. Many spend time in prison, but many do not. All take far more than they give.

The most obvious expressions of psychopathy, but not the only ones, involve the flagrant violation of society’s rules. Not surprisingly, many psychopaths are criminals, but many others manage to remain out of prison, using their charm and chameleon-like coloration to cut a wide swathe through society, leaving a wake of ruined lives behind


Key Symptoms of Psychopathy

Interpersonal Emotional	Social Deviance
Glib and superficial	Impulsive
Egocentric and grandiose	Poor behavior controls
Lack of remorse or guilt	Need for excitement
Lack of empathy	Lack of responsibility
Deceitful and manipulative	Early behavior problems
Shallow emotions	Adult antisocial behavior

Glib and Superficial

Psychopaths are often voluble and verbally facile. They can be amusing and entertaining conversationalists, ready with a clever comeback, and are able to tell unlikely but convincing stories that cast themselves in a good light. They can be very effective in presenting themselves well and are often very likable and charming...

Egocentric and Grandiose

Psychopaths have a narcissistic and grossly inflated view of their own self-worth and importance, a truly astounding egocentricity and sense of entitlement, and see themselves as the center of the universe, justified in living according to their own rules...

Psychopaths often claim to have specific goals but show little appreciation regarding the qualifications required-they have no idea of how to achieve them and little or no chance of attaining these goals, given their track record and lack of sustained interest in formal education...

Lack of Remorse or Guilt

Psychopaths show a stunning lack of concern for the effects their actions have on others, no matter how devastating these might be. They may appear completely forthright about the matter, calmly stating that they have no sense of guilt, are not sorry for the ensuing pain, and that there is no reason now to be concerned...Their lack of remorse or guilt is associated with a remarkable ability to rationalize their behavior, to shrug off personal responsibility for actions that cause family, friends, and others to reel with shock and disappointment. They usually have handy excuses for their behavior, and in some cases deny that it happened at all.

Lack of Empathy

Many of the characteristics displayed by psychopaths are closely associated with a profound lack of empathy and inability to construct a mental and emotional “facsimile” of another person. They seem completely unable to “get into the skin” of others, except in a purely intellectual sense. They are completely indifferent to the rights and suffering of family and strangers alike. If they do maintain ties, it is only because they see family members as possessions...

Deceitful and Manipulative

With their powers of imagination in gear and beamed on themselves, psychopaths appear amazingly unfazed by the possibility, or even by the certainty, of being found out. When caught in a lie or challenged with the truth, they seldom appear perplexed or embarrassed-they simply change their stories or attempt to rework the facts so they appear to be consistent with the lie. The result is a series of contradictory statements and a thoroughly confused listener. And psychopaths seem proud of their ability to lie...

Shallow Emotions

Psychopaths seem to suffer a kind of emotional poverty that limits the range and depth of their feelings. At times they appear to be cold and unemotional while nevertheless being prone to dramatic, shallow, and short-lived displays of feeling. Careful observers are left with the impression they are playacting and little is going on below the surface. A psychopath in our research said that he didn’t really understand what others meant by fear.

Impulsive

Psychopaths are unlikely to spend much time weighing the pros and cons of a course of action or considering the possible consequences. “I did it because I felt like it,” is a common response. These impulsive acts often result from an aim that plays a central role in most of the psychopath’s behavior: to achieve immediate satisfaction, pleasure, or relief.

So family members, relatives, employers, and coworkers typically find themselves standing around asking themselves what happened-jobs are quit, relationships broken off, plans changed, houses ransacked, people hurt, often for what appears as little more than a whim...

Poor Behavior Controls

Besides being impulsive, psychopaths are highly reactive to perceived insults or slights. Most of us have powerful inhibitory controls over our behavior; even if we would like to respond aggressively we are usually able to “keep the lid on.” In psychopaths, these inhibitory controls are weak, and the slightest provocation is sufficient to overcome them. As a result, psychopaths are short-tempered or hotheaded and tend to respond to frustration, failure, discipline, and criticism with sudden violence, threats or verbal abuse. But their outbursts, extreme as they may be, are often short-lived, and they quickly act as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened...Although psychopaths have a “hair trigger,” their aggressive displays are “cold”; they lack the intense arousal experienced when other individuals lose their temper.

A Need for Excitement

Psychopaths have an ongoing and excessive need for excitement-they long to live in the fast lane or “on the edge,” where the action is. In many cases the action involves the breaking of rules. Many psychopaths describe “doing crime” for excitement or thrills... The flip side of this yen for excitement is an inability to tolerate routine or monotony. Psychopaths are easily bored and are not likely to engage in activities that are dull, repetitive, or require intense concentration over long periods.

Lack of Responsibility

Obligations and commitments mean nothing to psychopaths. Their good intentions-”I’ll never cheat on you again”-are promises written on the wind. Horrendous credit histories, for example, reveal the lightly taken debt, the loan shrugged off, the empty pledge to contribute to a child’s support. Their performance on the job is erratic, with frequent absences, misuse of company resources, violations of company policy, and general untrustworthiness. They do not honor formal or implied commitments to people, organizations, or principles. Psychopaths are not deterred by the possibility that their actions mean hardship or risk for others.

Early Behavior Problems

Most psychopaths begin to exhibit serious behavioral problems at an early age. These might include persistent lying, cheating, theft, arson, truancy, substance abuse, vandalism, and/or precocious sexuality. Because many children exhibit some of these behaviors at one time or another-especially children raised in violent neighborhoods or in disrupted or abusive families-it is important to emphasize that the psychopath’s history of such behaviors is more extensive and serious than most, even when compared with that of siblings and friends raised in similar settings...

Adult Antisocial Behavior

Psychopaths see the rules and expectations of society as inconvenient and unreasonable impediments to their own behavioral expression. They make their own rules, both as children and as adults. Many of the antisocial acts of psychopaths lead to criminal charges and convictions. Even within the criminal population, psychopaths stand out, largely because the antisocial and illegal activities of psychopaths are more varied and frequent than are those of other criminals. Psychopaths tend to have no particular affinity, or “specialty,” for one particular type of crime but tend to try everything. But not all psychopaths end up in jail. Many of the things they do escape detection or prosecution, or are on “the shady side of the law.” For them, antisocial behavior may consist of phony stock promotions, questionable business practices, spouse or child abuse, and so forth. Many others do things that, though not necessarily illegal, are nevertheless unethical, immoral, or harmful to others: philandering or cheating on a spouse to name a few..."

The Charming Psychopath: How to Spot Social Predators Before They Attack

Charles Ferguson: Predator Nation, Global Predator Class

"Over the last thirty years, the United States has been taken over by an amoral financial oligarchy, and the American dream of opportunity, education, and upward mobility is now largely confined to the top few percent of the population. Federal policy is increasingly dictated by the wealthy, by the financial sector, and by powerful (though sometimes badly mismanaged) industries such as telecommunications, health care, automobiles, and energy. These policies are implemented and praised by these groups’ willing servants, namely the increasingly bought-and-paid-for leadership of America’s political parties, academia, and lobbying industry.

If allowed to continue, this process will turn the United States into a declining, unfair society with an impoverished, angry, uneducated population under the control of a small, ultrawealthy elite. Such a society would be not only immoral but also eventually unstable, dangerously ripe for religious and political extremism.

Thus far, both political parties have been remarkably clever and effective in concealing this new reality. In fact, the two parties have formed an innovative kind of cartel—an arrangement I have termed America’s political duopoly, which I analyze in detail below. Both parties lie about the fact that they have each sold out to the financial sector and the wealthy. So far both have largely gotten away with the lie, helped in part by the enormous amount of money now spent on deceptive, manipulative political advertising. But that can’t last indefinitely; Americans are getting angry, and even when they’re misguided or poorly informed, people have a deep, visceral sense that they’re being screwed...

So I’m not going to spend much time describing ways to regulate naked credit default swaps, improve accounting standards for off- balance-sheet entities, implement the Volcker rule, increase core capital, or measure bank leverage. Those are important things to do, but they are tactical questions, and relatively easy to manage if you have a healthy political system, economy, academic environment, and regulatory structure.

The real challenge is figuring out how the United States can regain control of its future from its new oligarchy and restore its position as a prosperous, fair, well-educated nation. For if we don’t, the current pattern of great concentration of wealth and power will worsen, and we may face the steady immiseration of most of the American population...

Before getting into the substance of these issues, I should perhaps make one comment about where I’m coming from. I’m not against business, or profits, or becoming wealthy. I have no problem with people becoming billionaires—if they got there by winning a fair race, if their accomplishments merit it, if they pay their fair share of taxes, and if they don’t corrupt their society...

But that’s not how most of the people mentioned in this book became wealthy. Most of them became wealthy by being well connected and crooked. And they are creating a society in which they can commit hugely damaging economic crimes with impunity, and in which only children of the wealthy have the opportunity to become successful.

That’s what I have a problem with. And I think most people agree with me."

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation

This is not only an American phenomenon, but one deeply rooted in the Anglo-American banking cartel, and in the money centers and hidden wealth of Europe. Ferguson talks primarily of how the solution may come from the people of the US, but the true impulse for change may come from without, from the countries who have already been brutalized by the rise of the predator class.

See also this 2008 post from Le Café Américain , Predator Class and from 2010 Class Warfare and the Decline of the West.

Popular resistance against the decline of freedom and opportunity is often thwarted by the foolish self-interest of many who believe that they themselves have the ability to benefit from and become a part of the predator class, although they would never call it by that name. After all, they are successful, they have money and wealth, and they think they have the power to stand alone, but want more.

Weak and amoral people rationalize their service to what they come to realize, over time is objectively evil in a thousand different ways.  The most common is the expediency of a career, going along to get along.

"His success alone proved that I should subordinate myself to this man."

And frequently, if only in the back of their minds, is the thought that they too could be as gods. What they do not yet realize is that to the ubermensch they and their children are no different from the illegal immigrants and the poor, fit only for exploitation, who will do as they are told, until their time comes.  

This is the shock that was felt by the customers of MF Global when their money was brazenly and openly stolen. They were a part of the game, they were believers in the system, well educated, hard-working. But to the powerful insiders they were really just cockroaches, and another form of prey.

And not every psychopath chooses to use a knife.

"Psychopaths have a grandiose self-structure which demands a scornful and detached devaluation of others, in order to ward off their envy toward the good perceived in other people."

“He will choose you, disarm you with his words, and control you with his presence. He will delight you with his wit and his plans. He will show you a good time but you will always get the bill. He will smile and deceive you, and he will scare you with his eyes.

And when he is through with you, and he will be through with you, he will desert you and take with him your innocence and your pride."

Robert D. Hare, Without Conscience


"Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the truth? No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform...

He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."

J.H.Newman, The Antichrist

Harvard Business Review: Psychopaths on Wall Street

I think that the salient point in all this, the technical details of percent and depth of psychopathy in the US financial industry aside, is that self-regulation is at best a vulnerable strategy in any human concern involving trust, but is absolute folly in an industry where the emphasis and incentives are based on the ruthless pursuit of performance at any cost, and where such behaviour is lauded.

There is little doubt that strong personality types such as even marginal psychopaths can hijack an organization, a party, or even a sub-culture given the right environment of moral relativism and complacency. And if successful, they bring more of the morally ambivalent and weak-willed along with them.

"I may have made an error in judgement...but one thing is beyond dispute: the man was able to work his way up to leader of a people of almost 80 million... His success alone proved that I should subordinate myself to him."

Adolf Eichmann

The efficient market hypothesis is more a clever cover story than a legitimate scientific observation worthy of consideration in public policy discussions.   Transparency and oversight are absolutely essential in all financial matters.

The financial system, and their amoral enablers in politics and the media, have done enough damage to the world. It is time to have a stop.

Harvard Business Review
Psychopaths on Wall Street
by Ronald Schouten, MD, JD
Wednesday March 14, 2012

Psychopaths are the subject of endless fascination. We tend to apply that term loosely to people who engage in bad acts, ranging from pathological lying and repeated deception to major fraud and serial killing. Psychopaths rival pedophiles in the panoply of those we despise and fear. Given this fascination with psychopathy, and the public's current negative view of Wall Street (see Greg Smith's op-ed column in The New York Times about his resignation from Goldman Sachs), it is no surprise that Twitter, the blogosphere, and traditional media have been buzzing about "The Financial Psychopath Next Door," an article in CFA Magazine by Sherree DeCovny (subscription required).

The headline-grabbing factoid in the article was an estimate that 10% of people in the financial services industry are psychopaths. And that's a conservative estimate, according to Christopher Bayer, a Wall Street psychotherapist cited by DeCovny.

DeCovny describes "financial psychopaths" as individuals who seek thrills, lack empathy, don't care about what others think, are charming and intelligent, and are skilled at lying and manipulation. Citing Richard Peterson, managing partner of MarketPsych (a firm that provides psychological and behavioral finance training for the industry), DeCovny notes that these are some of the traits that also predict success on Wall Street.

To understand the implications of all this, it helps to define psychopathy. It is a psychological condition based on well-established diagnostic criteria. These include glibness and superficial charm, conning and manipulative behavior, lack of remorse and empathy, refusal to take responsibility for one's behavior, and others.

Determining whether a person is a psychopath is generally done using a test like the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), developed by Robert Hare and his colleagues. People who are "normal" invariably score a few points on such scales. True psychopaths score in the top 25%.

Using formal diagnostic criteria, researchers have estimated that about 1% of Americans — about 3 million people — are psychopaths. Based on statistics alone, there are some true psychopaths on Wall Street, as there are in all walks of life. The odds increase further when we consider the competitive advantage that some of the characteristics of psychopathy, including willingness to take risks, can provide in the field.

Psychopathy is mistakenly regarded as an all or nothing affair: you either are a psychopath or you aren't. If that were the case, saying that 10% of people on Wall Street are psychopaths could actually be somewhat comforting, since it implies that the remaining 90% are not and so shouldn't cause us any concern...

But there is good news. First of all, it is possible to screen out almost and full-blown psychopaths during the hiring process and after. Some of the key indicators are:

Glibness and superficial charm
Lack of empathy
Consistent decisions in their self interest, even where it is ethically questionable
Chronic, sometimes transparent lies, even with regard to minor things
Lack of remorse
Failure to take responsibility for their actions, and instead blaming others
Shallow emotions
Ignoring responsibilities
Persistent focus on gratifying their own needs at the expense of others
Conning and manipulative behavior

The only way to deal with a true psychopath is to get him or her out of the organization as fast as possible. While full-blown psychopaths are not deterred by fear and do not learn from punishment, "almost psychopaths" can get the message that adverse consequences will follow misconduct. As a result, strictly enforced firm policies can be effective in deterring those who may be tempted to engage in illicit conduct. As long as the firm wants to deter them.

Read the entire article here.

What I find most disturbing is that checklist sounds like a screening tool for political candidates.

Corporate Psychopathy: An Interview With One of the Researchers of the Hare Project

This interview was done by my friend 'Davos' who has agreed to post it here in addition to his own site, Psychopathic Economics 101.

I had always felt that there was something not right with one of the higher up bosses I had in a major division of a Fortune 100 company. Now there is little doubt in my mind that he was a psychopath.

He had the verbal acuity to talk his way in and out of almost anything, and was quite proud of it, and of being hard to pin down. And he gathered a subculture around himself, both above and below, of similar personality types and sycophants, with a few captive enablers who were technically very competent.  His powerful personal style fatally marked everything.

I left, not because I could not deal with it, but rather because I saw where this all was heading.  The only reason he  lasted as long as he did was because the CEO was hands off and weak, and the board was servile and largely clueless. His reputation caught up with him and I heard he did not fare well, and ended up being indicted and went to prison. He ruined the lives of thousands of people. To this day he admits no guilt and no regrets, except in getting caught.

It should be said here that just because you don't like or understand your boss does not mean that he or she is a psychopath, or even a bad person. There are places where people who don't like their bosses meet to discuss it. They are called bars, and they meet there every Friday night.

I was interested in what the researcher called The Dark Triad of Personality: Machiavellianism, Psychopathy & Narcissism.

Why is this study of corporate psychopathy more than a morbid concern? Because it drives a spike in the heart of the assumption that on the whole people in business (and politics for that matter) are rational and naturally good, and that this therefore permits us to forge an economic structure based on self-restraint and self-regulation (or little to no regulation at all for that matter), the so called efficient markets hypothesis. 

Anyone who has acted in the real business world knows this is utter nonsense.  The unscrupulous can not only act for many years without hindrance, they can often prosper and thrive, and distort whole sections of an economy through preying on the weaknesses of even the most ordinary of men.

And yet an economic theory based on this assumption of perfect rationality shaped American culture for the past thirty years, from the days of Reagan at least.

As they say, the devil's greatest success is in convincing people that he does not exist.

First Study Where Fortune 100 Executives Were Screened For Psychopathy [Podcast] Interview With Dr. Daniel N. Jones, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Researcher for Dr. Robert Hare Ph.D.
Posted on March 2, 2012 by Davos

I Am Fishead caught my eye on Jesse’s Café Américain. In this documentary psychopathy researchers “fish for psychopaths” inside Fortune 100 corporations.

Dr. Robert Hare is in the movie. He was a familiar face. I had remembered him from the documentary The Corporation. In that documentary Dr. Hare analyzes a corporation, a soulless entity given the rights of a person. A person whose DNA makes him put profit above everything else—even his fellow citizens. In The Corporation, the corporation is compared against the WHO’s psychopathic diagnostic checklist. Corporations meet the criteria. I wrote about this problem in Why We Are Totally Finished. The movie is linked within that piece.

The second thing I realized after watching the other documentary that Dr. Hare was in, I Am Fishead, was that I had a ton of questions. ”The Dark Triad’s” negative externalities that we’ve had to endure are pretty apparent after the crash of 2008: Unemployment is 22.5%; 47 million Americans are on food stamps; our children have been saddled with even more debt which went to bailing out insolvent institutions who deserved to fail; prime foreclosures now rival subprime foreclosures; home prices are through the first floor and will be subterranean soon; 25% of kids age 18-34 live in mom and dad’s basements; 46% of kids 18-24 have no job; 12% of homes are vacant; there are schools just for homeless children; tent cities have sprung up; and 60 Minutes now runs stories of children living in cars with their unemployed parents.

So I wasn’t surprised to hear that there was a magnetism between corporations and psychopaths. What caught my ear was that in I Am Fishead, Dr. Hare said he interviewed 203 employees at Fortune 100 companies. He then went on to say that 8 of them had very high scores. Sample the population and you’ll find 1% of them are psychopaths.

Eight out of 203?

I also wondered how this came about. I mean, I just couldn’t picture a Fortune 100 company calling anyone up and saying, “Hey, I think not only is the corporation a psychopath, but I’m concerned many of our executives are as well.”

Dr. Daniel N. Jones

Here is a summary, of which some of the following is verbatim, some isn’t, quotes were omitted, please listen to audio as it is far more precise, I’m an economic blogger, not a transcriptionist ;-).  The summary is merely for those in a rush who want to tune into what is of interest, and also for the search engines to find.  Not only do I think this is fantastic work, a super cause but I truly feel it is something that should be utilized a lot more.

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Psychopathic Economics Interview: Psychopath Study Conducted at Fortune 100 Companies

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• 0:05 Genesis of Fortune 100 psychopathy study as seen in the movie documentary I Am Fishead.
• 0:16 Dr. Paul Babiak Ph.D, Dr. Crag S. Neumann PhD., Dr. Robert Hare Ph.d got together and worked on that particular project.
• 0:30 Dr. Paul Babiak is a consultant for industrial organizational psychology, does consulting work for various organizations.
• 0:40 They approached Dr. Babiak because they wanted some high-level executives screened.
• 0:48 Dr. Babiak felt it would also be appropriate to screen for psychopathy, in this particular instance, as an informative measure.
• 1:00How the test was administered, he gave the Psychopathy Checklist Revised, the “Gold-Standard” of psychopathy assessments.
• 1:12 Twenty items, standard clinical interview administered to employees being considered for executive level positions.
• 1:39 Individuals are extremely cooperative, very happy to help.
• 1:43 One thing we know about people individuals high in psychopathy, through the literature, they don’t think there is anything wrong with them—it’s just the rest of the world that is screwed up.
• 1:52 If they run into problems it is not their fault.  Or at least that is how they perceive it.
• 2:00 Individuals were extremely happy to help and cooperative.
•  2:15 Individuals who scored high in psychopathy were rated as much more effective in their communication skills and their creativity, so these individuals that were actually, we considered toxic people both in society and corporations, were actually evaluated higher than others in their communications skills and creativity.  Which I find to be kind of a scary thing.
• 2:50 Psychopathy is measured by the psychopathy checklist which breaks into four different aspects.
• 3:00 Aspect 1.)  Being a manipulative person or a liar.
• 3:05 Aspect 2.) Callous, kind of a lack of empathy towards others.
• 3:08 Aspect 3.) Impulsivity, or more specifically a lack of impulse control.
• 3:15 Aspect 4.) Antisocial behavior, some kind of breaking rules, whether it be social rules or legal rules.
• The first two aspects were particularly related to positive overall outcomes in the sense that they were evaluated as more effective leaders and communicators.  They were more creative. 
• 3:44 But what these first two aspects giveth, the second two aspects taketh away.  Evaluations were lower, productivity was lower and their ability to work with others.
• 4:10 Depending on the short or long checklist you consult, you get 4 to 5 percent of these executives that were interviewed meeting the threshold criteria for being a psychopath.
• 4:30 That is quite frightening when you consider that in the general population that you have about 1 percent of people walking among us that are psychopathic.  Maybe 1.5 percent of men and 0.5 percent of women.
• 4:44 So that is startling a 4 to 5 fold increase.
• 4:50 NONE of the CEO’s met the threshold for psychopathy!!!  It was really the up and comers, vice presidents, senior managers, middle managers.
• 5:25 Good theories as to why that is.
• 5:38 All the malevolence doesn’t come from just one type of person.
• 5:50 There is actually a cluster of traits that we refer to as, “The Dark Triad of Personality” called Machiavellianism, Psychopathy & Narcissism. 
• 6:00 Overlap, but are distinct their unique aspects.
• 6:10 Machiavellian’s are liars and callous but they also have a lot of long-term planning.
• 6:30 The narcissist is the spokesperson
• 6:37 The henchmen are the frontment, aggressively climbing his way, that is really the psychopath.
• 6:50 When you get these 3 together in an organization it is a particularly toxic outcome because they feed off each other’s unethical behavior.
• 7:15 Asocial Offenders and Antisocial Offenders.  Asocial Offenders are introverts, socially awkward, unable to communicate.  Antisocial Offenders gets along quite well impersonally.  It’s just they Antisocial Offender has no regard for rules.
• 7:45 B-Scans (Business Scans). How to better equip and inform corporations and other organizations for providing more information.  No one gets fired or disciplined.  It is extremely confidential.
• 8:15 We want to work with corporations to better inform them where there might be problematic areas.  We really try to work at the departmental level if there is a cluster of red flags in finance or you are struggling with personality clashes in HR.  Want to be able to provide corporations with tools to flag problematic  areas and ultimately deal with people at the corporate level who don’t see the mission of the corporation properly.    Helping also screen at the entry level.  Solutions for chronic problems.
• 9:37 The B-Scan is written in business not criminal language.  Context appropriate.  The B-Scan is not divorced from the target audience.
• 12:11 Over 800 stories given.  Individuals higher in psychopathy were less likely to go through the penal justice system.  The higher the score the more they stole and the less they got caught.
• 13:20 Bernie Madoff and average psychopath and the people below Madoff.
• 14:00 Just scratching the surface.  Everything before has been leadership and fostering cooperative work environments.
• 14:19 We’re only now beginning to realize how these clinical and personality research can really form kind of derailing type of behaviors that we see in corporations.  Now never has it been more critical at this juncture.  Forty-three percent of all corporations report some major fraud at some point in the past few years.
• 14:50 There research reports estimating anywhere between $160,000,000,000.00 to $600,000,000,000.00 annually are pumped out of our economy as the result of corporate fraud.  People are loosing their livelihood essentially because of these individuals.
• 15:09 It’s amazing and baffling to me that we are almost starting now to ask these questions.
• 15:17 Corporations are relatively new.
• 15:32 Hervey M. Cleckley and Robert Hare both kind of fed off each other.  It was really late 1970s early 1980s before we really kind of had any working conception of what a psychopath really was.
• 15:50 Startlingly fast considering the history of the organization versus the working conception.

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