I was reading an article over at CNBC entitled “Think Your Boss Is a Psychopath? That May Be True.”
In a recent study of more than 200 executives, nearly 4 percent scored at or above the traditional cutoff for psychopathy using the Psychopathy Checklist, which researchers regard as the “gold standard” for assessing this personality disorder, said Paul Babiak, one of the researchers who conducted the study and co-author of the book, “Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work.”
By contrast, just 1 percent of the general population is categorized as having psychopathic tendencies. Admittedly, it’s just one study, but it suggests that business leaders could be four times as likely to be psychopathic than the average person….
In fact, he often uses the phrase “parasitic predator” to describe corporate psychopaths. “They are parasitic in that they are looking for a host to support them,” he said. “A big company is an easy place in which to hide.”
I have to wonder about this study and the way that CNBC presented this article. It makes it sound like business leaders who are psychopaths are a dime a dozen. Why are they picking on business leaders and the corporate world? Is it because the study authors or CNBC have it in their own minds that corporate bosses are corrupt, kind of like the author of this kooky article entitled “Capitalism: A System Run By and For Psychopaths”?
I have taken a continuing education course from Robert Hare, the co-author of the book mentioned above and in the course, he told us that it is a very dangerous thing to diagnose someone with psychopathy. We dealt in the course with adults and juveniles who were jailed for violent and other crimes. Often times, Hare and his colleagues would warn us to be very careful in our diagnosis, lest someone who was charged with a crime end up being discriminated against because of the psychopathy label if untrue. Shouldn’t his co-author, Paul Babiak, use the same good advice? Should he use a study of only 200 people to make such a generalization?
Why business leaders? Why not study SEIU members or liberal politicians? Where is that study?
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I suspect you would get the same findings if the leadership of any group were surveyed. But you’d think they’d have studied politicians, they’d probably have had even more striking results there.
I personally knew a psychopath of this caliber, and the only way I figured it out was by spending days and days with her on corporate retreats, traveling and what not. She was good at covering her tracks. But when you’re outright lying to the chairman of the board- over relatively minor stuff, too- there’s a problem. She moved to a bigger and better position, of course, out of our company where her track record was starting to catch up with her.
The thing is, these people are nearly impossible to fire, and once you suspect you have one, you just want them gone as soon as possible, they’re just poison. So they can keep fooling people right on up the corporate ladder.
I’ve got to admit, the notion that a goodly proportion of bosses are psychopaths certainly fits my anecdotal experience.
the notion that a goodly proportion of bosses are psychopaths
According to this post more than the general population — but really — 4% is a “goodly proportion”?
But yeah — I would guess that leadership of many groups and movements include more “psychopaths” than the general population. Leadership represents power and certain personality types are attracted to power for power’s sake, regardless of the business, religious or social goals of the group. Or even in spite of … And sometimes because of ….
To be fair, this is an article at CNBC, whose studios are right next door to another branch of the NBC family, which historically has been filled by the likes of Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Sharpton, etc. This may have skewed the sample base of psychopathic bosses slightly.
CNBC’s studios are not, and have never been, with the rest of NBC. They’re headquartered in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and were in Ft. Lee, NJ before that. The employees certainly have to shuttle to 30 Rock once in a while for work-related reasons, but generally speaking the network has always been shielded from the collective psychoses that infect MSNBC and NBC News.
Many of CNBC’s anchors and reporters are rather openly conservative, or at least pro-business. They just don’t beat you over the head with it like MSNBC does, because they’re, well, not liberal.
Dense…but that’s not nearly as bad as being a psychopath.
Instead of parasitic predators, I’d call them “ruthless opportunists,” willing to sacrifice anyone and anything for their own goals and sometimes incomprehensible purposes.
Hmmmn. Who does that remind me of?
Simple. Academics (losers) jealousy of businessmen (winners).
Nice shred job, Dr. Smith. No wonder teh Instapundit luvz you!
I’ll bet the same test of 200 lawyers would bring back a result over 10%. Lawyers are the real parasites: They create nothing, produce nothing, and provide no essential service, all the while bearing false witness for a living. You’ve got to be warped to get up every morning looking forward to lying for money. Prostitutes are more honorable than that.
Then again, psychiatrists and psychologists are at about the same level of sophistication as practitioners of voodoo and santaria: It’s all speculative and nothing is known for certain.
I’m in a particularly misanthropic mood today. If only God would smite all of my enemies. lol.
I’d estimate lawyers at closer to 75%; coming in a distant second to federal* politicians who I’d put at around 98% to 99%. (*State & local politicians may or may not be just as bad, I don’t know).
“Looking closely” (below) has a good definition of psychopathy:
“The term refers to a person who is utterly concerned with self, lacks empathy, is manipulative, and is preoccupied with obtaining and exercising power. These are people who constitutionally only care about themselves.”
I find the 4% for business leaders to be lower than I expected, and I hold no special grudge against businessmen — even ruthless ones. It is not so surprising that people who are relentlessly driven to pursue only their own self-interests while using and abusing others, tend to achieve those interests.
My own father happens to be a psychopath. He is also President and CEO of a bank despite having none of the knowledge, education, experience, or insight one would expect of a Presiden/CEO. This is how the psychopath works. Fooling and manipulating others into providing them what they want, and then manipulating and using new aquaintances to make their next leap up the ladder. To make another video game reference (showing my age), the psychopath is the player in the old atari game “Pitfall”, leaping across a swamp on alligator heads — except that in real life those alligator heads are actual people.
It took me about 30 years to figure this out about my father. It usually takes long experience with a person to realize that they are a psychopath. (not usually 30 yrs, but that was family) If they stay in one place too long, they inevitably get found out. But staying in one place holds no interest to them anyway. They’re off on another conquest, moving up whatever ladder they’ve chosen, after the usefulness of their current friends, associates, employees, and co-workers has been exhausted.
In the old days, a psychopath was someone with severe factual delusions; for example, he might believe himself to be his own mother, who is trying to protect her son from sexy women. Nowadays it appears that “psychopath” is not much different from “sociopath”. In the old days, a sociopath was an extremely evil person with no conscience. Nowadays it appears that a sociopath is someone we don’t like who manipulates others to get his own way.
These authors are psychos.
To be clear here, the term “psychopath” and “sociopath” are, and have always been, synonymous. These are individuals who are solely concerned with themselves, and no have no empathy or remorse, etc.
Again, the popular conception of the term isn’t entirely congruent with the medical definition. “Evil” isn’t really a psychiatric term, and probably best avoided in psychiatric classification.
Confusing things further, there is a clear distinction in meaning between the terms “psychopathy” and “psychosis”. The two words sound similar, but they refer to totally different conditions.
Someone who is has psychosis, ie is “psychotic” (to be distinguished from “psychopathic”), is experiencing a break from reality.
So this is the person who believes that they are Jesus or some other famous figure, that the television is talking to them, or that the CIA has implanted electrodes into their brain, etc.
Classically schizophrenia causes symptoms of psychosis. But the same symptoms could be caused by extreme sleep deprivation, exposure to certain drugs (eg hallucinogens like LSD, prolonged exposure to amphetamines or other stimulants, etc), and in some cases brain tumors.
Apart from the fact that they are describing two totally different conditions, the most important distinction between psychosis and psychopathy is that in many cases, psychosis can be controlled with medications, or even (depending on the cause) cured. There is no known effective “therapy” for psychopathy.
Its also worth mentioning that almost by definition psychopathic individuals don’t believe that there is anything wrong with them. They’re fine. . YOU’RE the one with the problem.
First, psychopaths make up anywhere from 1-3 percent of the population according to most estimates, so 4% is hardly even an aberration. Second, most psychopaths are males (don’t freak out, there is likely a perfectly good natural selection reason for it) and CEO positions are mostly filled by males, so that could contribute to the slight statistical tilt. Finally, anybody who understands psychopathy in a reasonably informed lay person kind of way can see plain as day that the corporate world does in fact reward things that a psychopath might be particularly good at. It’s not a lefty attack on business for goodness sake, it’s just an interesting observation and valuable bit of general knowledge of particular potential interest to those in the business world. ‘Snakes in Suits’ and Hare’s other book ‘The Psychopaths Among Us’ both make great cases for educating yourself.
I think the real criticism here is not what WAS studied, but what was NOT studied. Psychopaths would naturally be attracted to positions of power, so it would ber natural that CEO’s would have a slightly higher than normal rate. But why study just businessmen, why not politicians, university professors, lawyers, high ranking gov burocrats, heads of large non-profits, etc? That is the real question here.
Would like to see the results for your average union leader…or Democrat
Of course you’d have to go to a source other than CNBC. One not linked to NBC nor of the many manipulative journo psychopaths running the media at large.
I assume that with a media company such as CNBC, the people in charge are 100% are weasels.
The percentage may be too high but the same thing occurs in any organization with bureaucratic structure. Psychopaths can be very ingratiating when they want something and that may work well in a bureaucratic structure for a while. The military has the same problem. The book, “Once an Eagle”, which required reading for students at the Command and General Staff School, is a novel about the careers of two men, one a psychopath. In David Hackworth’s book about his battalion in Vietnam he described a senior officer very similar to the one in the novel. I was in e-mail contact with him then and I asked him about the comparison, with which he agreed.
I’m sure politicians would yield a significant percentage of psychopaths and SEIU probably is full of them.
I’ve been unfortunate enough to know two true psychopaths [for sure] in my 60+ years. I have known a great many bosses and managers and corporate officers and such. None of them was a psychopath, at least in what appears to be the clinical sense.
I suspect that the single-mindedness of some people could easily be confused with the psychopathic trait of not caring what impact their behavior has on others. Not the same at all, of course.
I have also known quite a few ‘bosses’ who were more than a little neurotic, ignorant, careless, inattentive, uncaring and so on, any of which could be mistaken for more serious problems.
The only raging narcissists I’ve known were politicians. ;->=
I was in the Air Force for 24 years. During that time I had two—out of about 20–crazy bosses. Afterward, I taught in the public schools. Two out of three of my bosses there were sociopath crazy. I was amazed. I retired early.
Were Hitler, the National Socialist and Stalin the Soviet Socialist were psychopaths. Mussolini had problems, was he a psychopath? How about Saddam Hussein?
Worked for NYS for a while, 12 years in the Department of Corrections. Didn’t get along well there. Seems sociopathy is a way of life for adminstrators in that particular bureacracy.
But then, I had a neighbor who had worked in the same system as a chplain, and left for other work after 2 years. It was his observation that no one, not anyone, should be allowed to work in the prison system at any job for more than 5 years. According to him, it corrupted the soul. He had a good point. At least from my observations. Don’t think it infected me that much; I had little contafct with inmates or guards.
I’d extend the chaplain’s recommendation to include law enforcement officers as well as Department of Corrections personnel. Both are careers in which ones job is to dominate (or assist indirectly) in the domination of others and after being immersed in that environment for 8 hours a day, an environment in which one expects to be lied to and assaulted by people one must be suspicious of at all times, ones personality becomes warped. The habits necessary for physical and psychological survival on the job are not easily switched off when one comes home to family and friends.
The moral destruction caused by the prison environment to those who must keep charge of convicted criminals – especially those found guilty of the most heinous crimes – is overlooked by Catholic bishops who imagine that lifetime imprisonment is a more moral substitute for capital punishment. The lives of corrections personnel – innocent lives – must not be sacrificed on an altar of misplaced “compassion” for the dangerously guilty when an alternative, capital punishment, is available.
I think a higher percentage of politicians are psychopaths than any other profession. When it comes to the Democrats, I’d say the percentage is damn close to 100%.
I think many people who get to positions of leadership, whether in business or politics are narcissists. Some of these have borderline personality disorder and would otherwise be known as sociopaths. Of course, my worst scores on the boards were in mental health, so what do I know? I have just spent most of my life working around these personality types. It’s part of the reason I’ve been campaigning for them to not have special recognition from the government in the form of a licensing monopoly. Doing this with narcissistic physicians is just as stupid as doing so in crony capitalistic PPP’s.
While they may share some behaviors (eg grandiosity), borderline personality disorder and sociopathy are really quite different disorders.
In response to your assertion about medical licensing, there are MANY different categories of licensing for medical professionals: There are allopaths, osteopaths, chiropractors, nurses, dentists, veterinarians, pharmacists, medical technologists, etc, etc, and each of these professions have their own training and professional licensing requirements.
While I think there exists considerable room for debate about what the role is for the gov’t in regulating these professions, I don’t think the right answer is “no regulation”. I just don’t think we ought to let just anyone say “I’m a neurosurgeon” or “I’m a veterinarian” and proceed from there, and this is speaking as someone who strongly believes in free market policies and “less gov’t usually means better gov’t”.
Milton Friedman began the call for elimination of licensing in his 1961 book Capitalism and Freedom. In fact the Nobel laureate said that he would make his point by tackling the toughest case, medical. Turns out medical licensing is a modern innovation, but a twist on an old farce. The modern form of licensing has only been around for a hundred years, but there have been various successful attempts to get public acceptance of a monopoly guild since antiquity. We should note that it wasn’t twenty years after the current monopoly on medical licensing and education was put in place that governments began co-opting the situation for partisan advantage. It is plain and simple audacious greed that got us where we are and if we don’t stop it we will destroy Western civilization. I know you mean well, but you need to take off your blinders. YOU are the kind of person I’m talking about.
True you don’t want just anybody billing themselves as a doctor. But why not just have a test, like the bar exam, that would test the terms and knowledge that any good doctor should know. And make it so anybody that passes the test, ie they have the required knowledge, can practice. Doctors would want to make it hard, but not so hard that their kids getting medical degrees could not pass. So if you pass the bar exam you can practice law, and if you pass the medical exam you can practice medicine, even with no degree. This would allow many people who have acquired the knowledge by experience, like combat medics, nurses, surgical technicians, anatomy professors, etc, to become doctors if they wish, without having a medical degree. Require that any degree be displayed, or if they dont have a degree that also be displayed, where the patient can see, and let the patient choose. This would allow those who have acquired medical knowledge, but no degree, like that one black surgical technician that did the famous heart research at Johns Hopkins, to become doctors if they have acquired the knowledge. It would also filter out those that got a degree, but didn’t acquire the knowledge.
The term “psychopath” has a specific psychological meaning, but its sort of “loaded” since the Alfred Hitcock movie “Psycho” the public conflates the term with serial killers and the like. While the majority of serial killers are psychopaths, most psychopaths aren’t overtly violent, let alone murderers. I think a better term for this is “sociopath”.
The term refers to a person who is utterly concerned with self, lacks empathy, is manipulative, and is preoccupied with obtaining and exercising power. These are people who constitutionally only care about themselves.
And as might be expected, if you look at jobs that occupy positions of power (eg politicians, lawyers, corporate executives, law enforcement, military), you’ll have a disproportionate percentage within each of those groups that are sociopaths, for the simple reason that sociopaths naturally gravitate towards those types of occupations/positions.
As mentioned, in certain corporate or bureaucratic settings, being utterly ruthless and not caring about who gets hurt by your actions might actually be rewarded.
Good capsule summary of how sociopaths typically operate in hierarchical organizations here:
http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stories/2004/10/04/smallb4.html
In response to the above, I think Saddam Hussein was a textbook sociopath. There is quite a bit of debate about which psychiatric classification best fit Adolph Hitler, but sociopath is certainly quite plausible. Other possible diagnoses for Hitler include schizoaffective disorder and even Asperger’s syndrome.
Don’t tell Michael Lewis. He’s busy looking at Hitler’s other end to figure out why he was crazy.
Along the same vein: Did you hear about the doctor that died and went to heaven? (By the way he and his lawyer were killed in the same car accident. The lawyer was nowhere to be seen at the pearly gates). Anyway, the doctor walked the front of the long line confronting him and he was stopped by St. Peter who asked him where he thought he was going. He said, “I’m a doctor, I’m going to the head of the line.” Peter replied that he needed to wait his turn quoting something from Romans about all Christians being equal, or some such thing. The disgruntled doctor was on his way back to the end of the line when he saw an elderly looking gent with a beard, a black bag and a stethoscope around his neck walk right on through the pearly gates and he proceeded to follow him. St. Peter stopped him once again and he pointed at the elderly gent and started to bluster some defense of his actions when Peter looked back and turned ashen. Waving his hands to silence the angry doctor he explained, “Don’t let him hear you. That’s God. He thinks he’s a doctor.”
I wonder if psychopaths don’t fulfill a socially useful function in business. A psychopathic politician seems almost certain to be a net loss to society, but a businessman, in order to be successful, has to actually produce some good.
It figures that an academic study would focus on psychopathy in business, given that most academics trend leftwards ideologically, but the study I really want to see is one that correlates political success and/or dominance with psych/socioopathic personality traits.
A rationally self-interested sociopath is functional in society;
The Lefties want to label businessmen ‘Psychopaths’ as a first step
to taking away their power, their liberty, and their lives; The cure
would be worse than the disease.
Do not forget the Rosenhan Experiment, where ‘normal’ people got themselves admitted to mental institutions, where they were all labelled with a variety of mental illness. Some were not released for over 2 months despite telling their doctors they were fine (their fellow patients were more effective in identifying them as imposters). All were given a variety of drugs and were forced to sign documents acknowledging they were in remission from some mental disease as a condition for release.
The study concluded, “It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals” and also illustrated the dangers of dehumanization and labeling in psychiatric institutions.
There have been other studies as well. Other than for the severely mentally impaired, the psychiatric profession struggles in both diagnosis and prescription, much less Progressive media with an agenda.
Liberal establishment dimwits keep on shouting “Capitalism is bad!” and then wonder why the people who classically have ZERO concern for society (in particular them) go into business and excel. It’s because you tell me it’s wrong to succeed that drives to me to succeed and then try to destroy the little liberal utopia you’ve built.
BTW I’m a 17 on the Hare checklist.
I am sorry if this is too long, but I have something important to get off my chest.
In regard to the CNBC article, the fact of the matter is that in Robert Hare’s book “Without Conscience”, he quotes the number of psychopaths in North American populations is around 2.5 percent. In the “The Sociopath Next Door” Psychologist Martha Stout who spent over 20 years treating a number victims of psychopaths/sociopaths, indicated she had seen data suggesting the 4 percent in a given population is the norm for North American psychopaths/sociopaths. Therefore the figures offered by Perman are questionable at best and offer no basis for any conclusion whatsoever.
Psychopaths are everywhere. Anyone who says they are not is naive, or disingenuous, or engaged in wishful thinking. By the same token, we must understand that psychopaths are attracted to power – the power to violate the lives of others, the power to make people jump, the power to make them cower, the power to tear them down in self-esteem. Psychopaths are vicious in word and deed.
Now where could we find such people in abundance? Well let us see. Outside of prisons, where would we look? Of course they would have to appear in some number anywhere, but we can safely say that they are more common in politics. Now what sort of politico or politically active person might a psychopath become in this context? To what faction, movement, or party might he or she be attracted?
Well he would want to have the power to impose HIS will over others, to show others who is boss. If he works for the government, he would want to administer activities, the more the merrier, and the wider the power the better. He or she would ultimately want to overrun every possible area of discretion by all individuals or groups in society.
As it stands today there is one political position or faction, more than any other, which demands more regulation, more administration, wider mandates, more treasure from all of society’s members. That position is PROGRESSIVISM.
I maintain the practical realization of Progressivism is a sort of social psychopathy, where a fair number of its leaders pursue psychopathic goals. But I would not want to say that every progressive is a psychopath. Far from it. I say there are enough psychopaths to support the Progressive goals of an imperial state, a state that directs imperialism towards nearly all its citizens, at state big enough to make all citizens cower. The cutting edge of that political psychopathy is to say such things as “We must abandon NARROW individual self-interest”. You see, ANY motivation at all can be made to look “narrow” with enough newsprint. The overt programs of Progressives, to the degree that it does not care about individual wishes is in fact psychopathy writ large. Aside from psychopathic elements there are other irrational elements. Psychopaths we understand as being individual, clinical cases who are drawn to power and therefore are in higher proportions in power structures than we find in the population generally. This makes sense. However, there is another kind of dysfunctional element which might be asserted of Progressivism.
Fundamentally, Progressivism regards facts as ultimately irrelevant, and they regard facts as important ONLY if such facts support their pet theories. They simply ignore the inconvenient facts, or the ideas, values, and passions of those whom they want to dominate as being trivial in the face of their own groundless whims. It does not matter whether it be economically crackpot ideas like the labor theory of value or Keynesian management of industrial capacity. Intellectually, they have not a leg to stand on. But such theories can be pleasant rationalizations for Progressives employ to daydream of the Grand Nation-State where everyone is happy.
Since that Progressive happy state is what they dream about, anyone who raises an objection to their schemes or “narrative” or who provides countervailing facts is merely, they say, being obstructionist, rather than an honest observer or earnest searcher for truth. Now if the Progressives as individuals consistently were to reject all cognition of reality in favor of their personal delusion, this would clinically be called psychosis. Unlike psychopaths, however, psychotics seem not to be attracted to power as such. They are probably more inclined to be become palm-readers than to be politicians or bureaucrats. No, the psychosis we see here would be strictly a CULTURAL psychosis, born of treasured beliefs and supported by psychopaths.
It is obvious that Barney Frank, John Maynard Keynes, the Obama administration, public unions, and other such bastions of Progressivism are generally clueless about economics and are incapable of learning about it; otherwise, they would have long ago abandoned their ridiculous notions and plans about economics and everyone would reap the benefits. Of course Progressive failure of understanding is not limited to economics – it is spread from the fevored minds of Progressives, to medicine, to environmentalism, and to purported global warming. They even take issue with logic. There is some truly stupid and inadequate philosophy to support these evasions, but that is far afield from this topic and would be inappropriate to discuss here. I do in fact have detailed answers to Progressive philosophic voodoo, to which, I will give a thorough and detailed presentation elsewhere.
Since Progressivism is so dysfunctional, it is not surprising that they should accuse their opponents of the same sins, projecting a sort of psychological mirror of their own inadequacies. It is also a classic tactic that psychopaths accuse others of being psychopaths in order to try to cover their own tracks. In line will all this, I say it is crystal clear why CNBC promoted the article by Perman or such kooky articles as “Capitalism: A System Run By and For Psychopaths” appear frequently leftist publications: the reason such stuff appears is the psychopathic nature of Progressivism itself. And opponents are called everything else in the book, from depraved, to stupid, to being out of touch, or not caring about other people, to dressing funny and having halitosis. That last may be amusing, but I know they certainly harped on Palin’s or Bachmann’s attire, and I am sure you can literally find reference to bad breath, if you look long enough through Progressive articles.
Sincerely,
Johnnie Garner
Anyone notice that over half the source articles comments are spam?
Robert Hare’s enthralling “Without Conscience” is an excellent introduction to the special world of the psychopath/sociopath. Although Hare became familiar with the breed while working in the prison system, he gives in-depth information about how non-criminal psychopaths function (and often prosper) in society.
One thing to keep in mind is that psychopaths don’t choose to act they way they do; they literally are unable to feel empathy, guilt, pity or other normal emotions. Like Dexter, the TV serial killer, they have to teach themselves how to behave socially, which gives them an extra gloss of charm that helps them to accomplish their ends.
I’ve known one truth psychopath, a guy who (among his other flaws)tried to seduce a young co-worker until three days before his wedding. He eventually became a congressional aide who left his post under mysterious circumstances. The last I heard, he’s now the director of a statewide environmental activist organization. God help us all.
If anything, I think the percentage is low. It’s not that they are in business, it’s that they are in a large organization where they can hide and manipulate others. They are never the sort to create a business, they come along afterwards and like a parasite take over the functions.
I used to work at Dell Computer and saw it happen before my eyes. What started as a company with a great idea, as it got bigger and more successful became infected with middle and then upper managers that only knew how to manipulate others. Engineering projects were initiated based on fraudulent accounting by ambitious managers who excelled only at trying to take control of each others’ meetings through fear and intimidation. Gone were real innovation and sense, mostly what remained were managers who measured each other by how many people worked for them, no matter what those people were doing or how they were improving anything.
From what I can tell, GE has been much worse for much longer. Even the military can at times encourage this behavior.
Big business is more akin to the ethics and culture of government than to what we normally associate with free enterprise because as the business increases in size, individuality and creativity tend to be lost in the bureaucracy and the sociopaths can operate freely.
Same thing – exact same thing – at Microsoft. And I imagine the same thing is going on at Apple, Google, etc, etc.
I think the difference between businesses and things like unions and political parties is that businesses start out innovative and “normal” but become infected by sociopaths over time. Unions and political parties start out as vehicles for sociopaths to get their jolllies.
Well, now that some of the readers who are especially knowledgeable about the matter under discussion have explained that the percentage of psychopaths among “business leaders” is about same as what one would find among the general population, what do you suppose will happen first:
* CNBC makes a public Emily Litella-style retraction, or
* hell freezes over.
I expect that Real Soon Now some female-interest magazine’s cover will display the tease “Is your boyfriend a psychopath?” (Yeah, it’s a certainty this has already happened. I should have added “again,” I suppose.)
would any of you experts answer this question:
Is our president a sociopath?
Of course, if one doesn’t buy the professional psychobabble misrepresenting itself as medicine and science for the last century, this entire discussion is meaningless from the start.
I’ve had many bosses over the years, and some of them I liked, and some of them I didn’t, but I only had one boss I believed was a real psychopath. I learned later that he was addicted to cocaine, which explained a lot of his psycho behavior.
“Capitalism: A System Run By and For Psychopaths”. Does this person expect to be taken seriously by adults?
Apparently, these public school educated experts have never studied the sordid history of authoritarian socialist/communist/fascist systems. Imagine working in a system under a leftist dictator like Pol Pot, Stalin, Ceausescu, Castro or Mao, where your boss literally has the authority to jail you or even have you executed. In such a system, suggesting your boss might be a psychopath would be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
To paraphrase the old joke, “Capitalism is the worst economic system we have……except for all the other ones.”
First, Psychology is not a science and they know it. Second, have you met a
psychologist who is normal( why do you think they become psychologists in the first place)? Third, if not for capitalists who would pay for the nonsensical
blather?
“Capitalism: A System Run By and For Psychopaths”.
What idiocy. You could just as easily say “government, a system run by and for psychopaths”, or universities, or law. Actually I would say that gov is worse. It is much easier to get rid of a psychopathic CEO than a psychopathic politician or high burocrat.