The key failing of the psychopathy construct in psychology--

[Jackpine Radical]

The usual instrument, the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (Revised), was designed to assess psychopathy in "street criminals," and cannot assess the level of pathology in likes of the evil people on Wall Street and in the corporate boardrooms, who differ from street psychopaths in several ways, the most prominent being their better impulse control and ability to defer gratification, which 1) permit them to make and enact conscienceless, heartless and clever long-term plans and 2) make them thereby all the more destructive to society.

Milton Friedman elevated this kind of psychopathy into the Free Market Doctrine, daring to make the incredible claim that the only legitimate function for a corporate "person" is self-enrichment at the expense of all others.

Somehow, I don't see any of the foundations created by the Überreich families financing any research to develop such a scale.

[ananda]

1. Money and power put sociopaths out of the psychopathology loop.

They are considered sane and valuable.

It's a nutty, backward world we live in.

[PurgedVoter]

2. K&R But we need the eggs.

Psychotherapy, drug treatment and the like, are generally defined as successful if individuals stay in the program. Resolution of problems is not part of the issue. Unless dysfunction, failure or public revelation are involved, only ex's, bosses and parents are considered crazy.

Imagine that you have no rational fear of being destitute, hungry or unable to afford health care. Imagine that having a home where you want a party when you want and travel where you want has never and will never be an issue. Now imagine that you do not care one iota about the suffering of others or the destruction of the environment. Imagine that extinction is not an issue that is ever on your radar unless you can profit from others feelings about it.

If you look up a classification in the DSM iv/v and then take into consideration that having servants, money and the respect that come with money may prevent some of the symptoms from becoming visible., then it becomes rather clear that Sociopaths, Narcissists, and even the Bipolar actually dominate the wealthy.

The uberrich family form further reinforce this. The child who demonstrates the most willingness to profit, combined with the best success at profit, ends up being the child who becomes the next leader. Unless we start punishing families for the feeding and perpetration of evil, this pattern will be rewarded generation after generation.

Conservative Think Tanks are one of the greatest lies of all. Much better to call them Newthink Tanks. That sums up what they are and what they produce, fairly succinctly.

[hifiguy]

3. Large corporations are designed to reward and

encourage psychopathic and sociopathic behavior. IIRC it was Thom Hartmann who has discussed this at some length.

You have to have a certain mentality to rise to the top in such an organization. Josef Stalin once stated that "the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of 10,000 is a statistic." That's the corporate socio/psychopath mindset in a nutshell.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Yes, Hartmann did discuss it, but the idea has been fairly obvious

for years. I know I wrote about it some time before Hartmann (not that the world much takes note of what I write).

[DirkGently]

4. Greed's not good? Greed doesn't work? Crazy talk.

[Demeter]

6. Wasn't it ALWAYS This Way?

Did the colonies not revolt against the abuses of a HUGE corporation: the East India Tea Company?

Wasn't Dickens writing against this? And Buddha and Jesus?

What is the difference? That we have a counter-culture that will no longer tolerate "business as usual"? That was FDR's legacy, turning a 3rd-rate banana republic into something approaching a Worker's Paradise.

And 30 years of Reaganism hasn't wiped out that hunger, that goal, to be something like what the Founders intended.

[Reader Rabbit]

7. Actually, Hare acknowledges that a lot of corporateers are psychopathic.

Here's a pretty good article about it, from a couple of years ago:

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/96/open_boss.html