Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work (7 page)

When Bad Is Good:

A d o p t i n g t h e P s y c h o p a t h i c L i f e s t y l e The attitudes and behaviors of individuals with many psychopathic features are systemic, a natural and pervasive part of their general lifestyle. In a sense, they are what they are. However, there are others whose nature is less psychopathic than prag-What You See May Not Be What You See
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matic; they adopt some of the trappings of a “psychopathic lifestyle” in order to succeed or excel at their work or profession.

They are encouraged in this process by all sorts of pop-psych self-help books that promote a philosophy of aggressive greed, self-entitlement, and “looking out for number one.”

In his book
What Would Machiavelli Do?
, Stanley Bing, perhaps tongue in cheek, tells how to
get what you want when you
want it whether you deserve it or not. Without fear. Without
emotion. Without finger-wagging morality.
The following are some of his exhortations:

• Be coldhearted:
Replace decency and thoughtfulness with insensitivity and hardheartedness.

• Work hard to become bad:
Most people aren’t naturally hor-rendous . . . but with work we can improve.

• Be narcissistic:
View others solely as a function of your
needs . . . You have enormous selfishness within you . . . Let it
out.

• Be unpredictable:
Very nice. Very mean. Big, big swings. Gi-gantic pleasure. Towering rage.

• Be ruthless: For your competitors and those who would bring you down, “
Crush them. Hear their bones break, their wind-pipes snap.”

Of course, the more psychopathic one is, the easier it is to follow Bing’s road map to amoral personal and corporate success.

For most of us, though, social brutality and predation are somewhat more difficult. Even if Bing’s book is viewed as a satire, it reads like a blueprint for a psychopath.

ASSESSMENT PHASE

The chance to con and manipulate others is a primary motivator for someone with a psychopathic personality disorder; psychopaths like to
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play games with people. They often are on the lookout for individuals to swindle or scam, and this first phase of the psychopathic approach involves identifying and assessing targets or prey. Some psychopaths are opportunistic, aggressive predators who will take advantage of almost anyone they meet, while others are more patient, waiting for the perfect, innocent victim to cross their path. In each case, the psychopath is constantly sizing up the potential usefulness of an individual as a source of money, power, sex, or influence. People who have power, celebrity, or high social status are particularly attractive.

In the business world, it is relatively easy to spot those in power—big offices and fancy titles are obvious ways to help us identify who’s who in an organization. But do not think that just because you don’t have a big office or fancy title that you lack power or assets that a psychopath might find useful. Are you a secretary who controls access to your boss and his or her calendar? Are you a union representative who can smooth over employee conflicts and difficulties?

Are you plugged into the grapevine in your company, and do you have access to information that is circulated to everyone in the know?

Or maybe you are the person in the mailroom who goes the extra mile to make sure important documents reach their destinations on time? These are examples of informal power, an important form of power that is the subject of study in business schools and by organizational psychologists. Your informal power or special authority is a useful asset that corporate psychopaths can use to further their larger, personal objectives.

Besides assessing the potential gain from others, psychopaths assess their emotional weak points and psychological defenses in order to work out a plan of attack. Individual psychopaths do this in different ways and to varying degrees because personal style, experience, and preference play a role in this assessment as well. Some psychopaths enjoy a strong challenge, such as that posed by a confident, well-insulated celebrity or an astute professional with a strong ego.

Others prefer to prey on people who are in a weakened or vulnerable
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state. These might include people who are lonely or in need of emotional support and companionship, the elderly on fixed incomes, the underage and naive, or those who have recently been hurt or victimized by others. Although the usefulness of this latter group may not appear to be obvious from a strictly monetary standpoint, their perceived “ease” of approach makes them attractive to the criminal psychopath who weighs the investment in time and energy.

Chaos: Opportunity Knocks

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, Louisiana, and large parts of the American Gulf Coast. Although the property damage and the human suffering were staggering, the resulting chaos and confusion provided a unique opportunity for those more concerned with their
own
coldblooded self-interests than with the carnage around them.

At the time, Patrick Meehan, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern Dis-trict of Pennsylvania, had this to say: “If the lessons of September 11 and the Asian tsunami are learned, some coldhearted, evil scam artists will use this occasion to perpetrate fraud, lining their own pockets at the expense of the hurricane victims.” His statement was less prophetic than it was a sober comment on the fact that there are lots of common thugs, criminals, and predators ready to make a buck out of someone else’s tragedy. Some of their depredations no doubt were related to poverty, mob mentality, and understandable survival instincts. However, for many opportunistic psychopaths—on the street and in the boardroom—their egregious acts were simply business as usual.

Several psychopathic traits come into play in this phase. While on the surface psychopaths generally want to come across in public as at the top of their game and wear the suit of status, success, and socia-bility, many are actually playing out a parasitic lifestyle. They prefer
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living off the work of others rather than their own efforts, so being a drifter, moocher, or wastrel is a common lifestyle choice despite declarations to the contrary. In service of this lifestyle, they have no mis-givings about asking for and often demanding financial support from other people. Often, the supporter is a family member or friend, but it can easily be a stranger whom they seduce or con into providing food, shelter, and a source of income. It is not unusual, or wrong, for people to rely on the help of others, including public aid, during rough times in their lives, but psychopaths remorselessly use others even when able-bodied and capable of supporting themselves. Not all psychopaths are out of work, of course. But even psychopaths who have jobs like to mooch off others in overt and covert ways; they take from coworkers and employers alike.

Psychopaths lack empathy and possibly even the most basic understanding of human feelings. Characteristically, the economic and emotional impact of their selfish behavior on others is irrelevant to them, in part because they believe everyone in this dog-eat-dog world is as greedy and unfeeling as they are. Also, they seem unable to construct an accurate emotional facsimile of others, wrongly concluding that the emotional life of everyone else is as shallow and bar-ren as their own. People do not exist in their mental world except as objects, targets, and obstacles. Psychopaths also lack feelings of remorse and guilt, part of the internal moral sense that prevents the rest of us from acting out some of the fantasies we occasionally have about using, manipulating, or hurting others. Some might suggest that psychopaths are such effective predators because they are not plagued by doubts and concerns raised by a conscience.

In addition to their parasitic nature and lack of empathy, there is evidence that psychopaths need considerable novel stimulation to keep from becoming bored. This need, which recent research suggests may be rooted in their brain physiology, often leads them to search for new and exciting opportunities and to move casually from relationship to relationship. Most people are able to endure tedium and hard work over long periods in order to do significant things in their
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lives, such as completing a college degree, apprenticing, or working at an entry-level job in hope of a promotion. Psychopaths search for easier routes to the same ends. Many do manage to graduate from college or obtain professional credentials, but in most cases it is less through hard work and dedication than through cheating, getting others to do their work, and generally “working the system.” Once on the job, they tend to avoid tasks that become monotonous or difficult, or that need some long-term, serious commitment to complete. They can’t imagine how or why anyone, including coworkers, would wait their turn—or work hard—for anything they wanted.

Their need for stimulation is reflected in a penchant for high-risk, thrill-seeking behaviors. Many nonpsychopathic people seek the adrenaline rush associated with such behaviors, but unlike psychopaths, they typically do so by evaluating the risks to themselves and to others, and without putting others in harm’s way. Sadly for society, the psychopath’s need for stimulation shades easily into antisocial and criminal behavior.

“It’s in My Genes”

Evolutionary psychology provides another reason for the no-madic lifestyle of many psychopaths: the search for multiple sex partners. Psychopathy is characterized by casual sexual relationships that are devoid of genuine, long-term emotional and personal attachments to partners. Frequent liaisons, the use of sex as a weapon, and the callous treatment of intimates are common features of psychopathic individuals, both male and female.

Recent theory and research in evolutionary psychology suggests that there are genetic reasons for such attitudes and behaviors. In this model, psychopathy is a heritable, adaptive life strategy in which the goal—reflected in the early emergence of aggressive sexuality—is to provide genetic continuity. As indicated in
Without
Conscience
, passing on one’s gene pool can be accomplished in a number of ways, including the careful nurturance of a small number
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of offspring. The psychopathic pattern appears to be quite different, but equally (or even more) successful: the production of a large number of children, with little or no emotional and physical investment in their well-being.

This pattern involves the use of a persistent and callous pattern of deception and manipulation to attract potential mates, a readiness to abandon them and their offspring, and the need to move on to fresh mating grounds.

Psychopaths have a great sense of superiority and entitlement, and think nothing of helping themselves to property that belongs to others. Their grandiose sense of self-importance leads them to believe that other people exist just to take care of them. Because they see most people as weak, inferior, and easy to deceive, psychopathic con artists will often tell you that their victims deserved what they got.

Sometimes their sense of superiority is so great that they will say that they are conferring a gift by letting their victims support them. This is obvious in the many cases of cult leaders who are charlatans or outright psychopaths, but can be seen in more subtle cases as well.

This condescending air toward others comes across as cocky and egotistical to many observers, but, as we will discuss below, some may find this behavior somewhat charming, even charismatic.

MANIPULATION PHASE

Following identification of individuals who may be useful to them, psychopaths begin to create a shroud of charm and deceit that we have labeled the psychopathic fiction. This is the beginning of the manipulation phase.

The first goal here is to gain the trust of the individual through ingratiation and various impression-management techniques. Perhaps one of the most effective skills psychopaths use to get the trust of people is their ability to charm them. They often have an engaging manner and make great first impressions on people. Upon this first impression,
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they may build an elaborate fictitious character, persona, or mask. A psychopath can appear strong, naive, dominant, honest, submissive, trustworthy, worldly, or whatever he or she believes will get others to respond positively to manipulative overtures. Some rely on social stereotypes to help them create a useful façade. For example, they might foster impressions of a suffering artist, a misunderstood spouse, a successful businessperson, a celebrity, a member of a respected profession, or a person with connections to the rich, famous, or infamous.

The French Branch of the Rockefellers
A few years ago, French-born Fabian Ortuno was arrested in the United States after cutting a swath through Long Island’s high society by pretending to be a Rockefeller. Although many of his victims wondered about his French accent, they succumbed to his charming ways, and were bilked of large sums of money after investing in a variety of his get-rich schemes.

Once arrested, Ortuno posted bail and promptly disappeared, only to reappear in Vancouver as Christopher Rocancourt, a Formula One racing driver. He was a big hit on the local celebrity ski circuit before he was accused of defrauding a West Vancouver businessman of $200,000. He was arrested but still managed to appear on
60 Minutes,
claiming that he never stole, only borrowed. In Vancouver, he was sentenced to time in custody and extradited to the United States.

Facing a possible twenty-year sentence, he plea bargained and was sentenced to five years in prison. Authorities in several countries wish to question him about a variety of unsolved crimes, including fraud, smuggling, bribery, and perjury.