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September 11th, 2011 at 9:10 pm
Ilene: Thank you for your elaboration. As I am neither an academic nor a psychologist, I wouldn’t venture into the area of psychopathy in a serious way. Psychopathy appears to exist in the human population [1/20 was a calculation as to how many a human population would support without the entire population changing its own behavior towards others], and there are undoubtedly various degrees of it. I have known some — one literally ate a full meal in front of a starving person closely related to him while commenting on how good it was and the next time the person had some money they should definitely check out the restaurant. On Christmas Eve — no joke.
What I object to is that the business behaviors described herein are not confined to psychopaths. Being selfish and manipulative is often a learned behavior, and it is nothing short of silly to suggest otherwise, unless you define psychopathy backwards — all people who commit unethical, manipulative and supremely serving-acts are per se psychopaths. I doubt any serious psychologist would make such a statement. Although it may come naturally to psychopaths, there are plenty of people who simply learn that being unethical and manipulative has a decent risk / reward profile, particularly if you are good at it — and that doesn’t mean you are clinically psychopathic.
And DR, for goodness’ sake, why would you think I have "a bad attitude towards this article" because I have some moral objection to the idea that there are psychopaths in the business world, but somehow believe they are all crawling around back alleys with butcher knives like some bad movie? [Have you not heard the name "Madoff"?] Is it not possible to express an intellectual opinion — that this article shows some inconsistent and sloppy thinking, is mildly sensationalist [appealing to emotion] and adds nothing to my knowledge of either of unethical business people nor psychopaths — without you having to question my psychological motivations? Can’t I say a rock is a rock without having a raw materials complex?