The Symptoms of a Sociopath: Putting Corporations and Big Finance on the Couch

As the fascination with the Showtime's series (Dexter) about the serial killing medical examiner climaxed in the show's fourth-season finale, I began to ponder on a documentary titled, The Corporation , which was released about 5 years ago. In it, they postulate that since the corporation is a legally recognized person, they can be guilty of certain anti-social and amoral tendencies or pathologies that are exhibited by some individuals in our society. Having acquired rights of unending persons, what kind of person is the corporation? By law, the corporation can only consider the interests of their shareholders. It is legally bound to put its bottom line before everything else, even the public good.

There have been diagnostic tools and conceptual frameworks that have been used to rate or gauge a person's psychopathic or antisocial tendencies. People, who are psychopathic or sociopathic (although the sociopath is more socially adept than the psychopath), prey ruthlessly on others using charm, deceit, violence or other methods that allow them to get what they want. The symptoms of psychopathy include: lack of a conscience or sense of guilt, lack of empathy, egocentricity, pathological lying, repeated violations of social norms, disregard for the law, shallow emotions, and a history of victimizing others.

Let us look at some of those behaviors as outlined by noted psychiatrists and psychologists:

• Manipulative and Conning
  They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
• Grandiose Sense of Self
  Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
• Pathological Lying
  Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests.

• Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
  A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
• Irresponsibility/Unreliability
  Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
• Need for Stimulation
  Living on the edge. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Promiscuity and gambling are common.
• Callousness/Lack of Empathy
  Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
• Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
  Rage and abuse, alternating with small expressions of love and approval produce an addictive cycle for abuser and abused, as well as creating hopelessness in the victim. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
• Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility
  Changes their image as needed to avoid prosecution. Changes life story readily.

Other behaviors may include :

1. Contemptuous of those who seek to understand them
2. Does not perceive that anything is wrong with them
3. Authoritarian
4. Secretive
5. Paranoid
6. Only rarely in difficulty with the law, but seeks out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired
7. Conventional appearance
8. Goal of enslavement of their victim(s)
9. Exercises despotic control over every aspect of the victim's life
10. Has an emotional need to justify their crimes and therefore needs their victim's affirmation (respect, gratitude and love)
11. Ultimate goal is the creation of a willing victim
12. Incapable of real human attachment to another

Case histories can be used to diagnose the kind of personality that makes the corporation an externality-creating machine. Externalities such as harm to employees through the use of sweatshops: the exploitation of Third World countries' employees resulting in a huge discrepancy of price versus cost.

Other externalities such as pollution and adverse health effects emerge. These include the genesis of the petrochemical industry and links to cancer, birth defects and other toxic effects. Another externality is harm to the biosphere or the environmental costs resulting from the way corporations operate costs that will be passed off to future generations. What sort of sociopathic monster have we created?

A corporation exists to dissolve the responsibilities of the human beings who run it. For example, Company A decides to pollute a river. If anyone has a problem with that, they'll have to sue Company A, not the 12 members of the board or the investors. Most individuals would be ashamed to be named in a pollution suit, a fact which might deter them from committing such a crime. Company A has no shame, however.

Lacking remorse is another characteristic that defines sociopathy/psychopathy. That is, having done something terrible, you don't feel badly about it. A corporation I would imagine would be much the same. Unless one is caught (for example when a sociopath/psychopath who is caught for committing a crime maybe they will say: "yeah I'm really sorry, I did it. I feel remorse").

Only when caught, however; and at most corporations it appears it would be much the same. If some sort of regulatory body finds out what they're doing and if it's considered to be illegal, only then do they admit any culpability; only then can they say: we're really sorry . But otherwise they're not likely to do that (lack of remorse or guilt).

Prison can be a great equalizer. The richer you are, the less a fine will harm you--but a year is still worth as much to a rich person as to a poor one. Unfortunately, you can't lock up an abstraction and the directors have little or no criminal liability. Fines become another cost of doing business. Of course, when pollution turns a profit, individuals divide the money. Enron and other scandal-plagued corporations may have been forced to pay the piper, but in relation to corporate wrong-doing as a whole, this isn't even a drop in the bucket.

Everyday feeling, human beings are enmeshed in a network of obligations and competing goods. We'd all like to make money, but we recognize that other people's rights and feelings matter, unlike sociopaths, who feel entitled to do whatever they want. If empathy and ethics aren't enough to keep us reasonably sane and on the straight and narrow, we can be deterred by punishments ranging from social ostracism to death. Even human psychopaths can be deterred by the threat of punishment. The corporation, by and large, has no such compunction.

Take for example the news in January of this year that Merrill Lynch paid out $15 billion in bonuses. Merrill Lynch took $10 billion from the TARP, allegedly to fill holes in its balance sheet. But instead of using that to repair its financial health, it simply put the money into the pockets of its employees.

There has always been this sense of entitlement on Wall Street (it became even more enlarged during the bubble years). Many simply cannot believe that they do not deserve huge pay packages. The sociopathic mind can't grasp the concept that they are working in broken institutions that would be unable to pay to keep the lights on if not for the fact that they are the beneficiaries of billions of taxpayer dollars (grandiose sense of self).

Another example of corporate sociopathic behavior, are the health insurance companies' policies and practices. The purging of millions of people for everything from an infant being too big or too small or acne; to rape being considered a preexisting condition. Now, while they are engaging in such practices, they want the public to view them as wondrous benefactors. This paradigm cannot work unless your victim doesn't know that they are a victim until it's too late (exercises despotic control over every aspect of the victim's life).

In regard to corporate responsibility and reliability, we have seen that illusion vanish before our very eyes in this financial implosion. You see, sociopaths tend to be irresponsible. And that means that their behavior doesn't take into account what's likely to happen to somebody else. They will put others at risk; their own behavior puts other people at risk all the time.

In an attempt to satisfy the corporate goal, everybody else is put at risk. This could be other companies. As a matter of fact, I suppose one could argue that this is good in the business sense. I mean if your competitors fall by the wayside because you are acting irresponsibly with respect to them, that's just fine as long as you get some sort of goal out of that, some sort of benefit (irresponsibility/unreliability).

I'll end with the corporation as sociopathic serial-killer. I wrote a recent piece about the Bhopal disaster 25 years ago where thousands died as a result of corporate malfeasance; the close to 45,000 a year that die because of lack of health insurance (and the thousands more who die because they are under-covered); the U.S. government's involvement with the corporation Blackwater (now known as Xe) and it hit squads that are responsible for many deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan; the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska that claim 570 lives (with 8,394 claims of personal injury as well) and this list could go on and on.

We, in my opinion, live in not a democracy, but rather a corporatocracy. We have become in many ways their willing victims and the believers of their pathological lies. We are the willfully-ignorant pawns in their cons and manipulations. Their foundations and charitable works may have an air of benevolence to them, but for the most part, it shields a more selfish and insatiable motive or bottom line.

We as a society and nation have become like the fans of Dexter: we have become emotionally-invested in the sociopath; we have, sadly, too often rationalized for the serial-killer. However, they lack what makes a person truly accountable; in that, although the corporation is a legally recognized person, they are persons with no bodies to imprison and no souls to save.