In 2007 I was laid off in a corporate restructuring from UBS, the Swiss investment bank that resulted from the merger of Swiss Bank and the Union Bank of Switzerland. While still employed I made the following proposal for the creation of an office dedicated to dealing with possible internal sociopathic transgressors.
Obviously, UBS did not take me up on this offer or I wouldn’t be writing this. In my opinion, the biggest problem UBS/Swissbank has with sociopaths springs from the holocaust gold reputation of Swiss banks. The holocaust gold crime and its justification, explication, and defense are all sociopathic in nature (even if not in fact always carried out by actual sociopaths) — essentially all sociopaths would recognize this. Asking a sociopathic banker whether he was troubled by the source of holocaust gold would be like asking a sociopathic athlete whether he was ashamed to have gained the top of the podium by cheating. They would both think that the questioner was the one with the problem. It is my opinion that sociopaths might seek employment at UBS hoping for the freedom to carry out their own white collar crimes.
I believe all large-scale corporations should have such an office. Mega corporations provide far too many opportunities for confidence crimes. It is my belief that you simply cannot understand white collar crime without a deep understanding of sociopathy. Thus I am sharing this letter and the ideas it contains.
Finally, the only true kind of economy is a value-added economy. If a company asked to be chartered (incorporated) so it could run a business with a printing press and print more dollars, it would not be allowed. Such a business would add nothing to an economy. Well, how about speculative bubbles and runaway speculators? What’s the difference? There is no such thing as a bubble economy, kept afloat by inflating one bubble after another. Sociopaths cannot understand this, adult cause and effect are beyond them. Their analysis stops at ‘money in my pocket, good,’ ‘money not in my pocket, bad.’ To this day, sociopaths continue inventing perpetual motion machines — cause and effect are truly beyond them. A speculative economy is the economic equivalent. A Dow of 35,000 — sure, why not? A triple-A rating — sure, why not?
As this speculative binge gets wrung out of the economy, investment banks will need to rebuild the public’s trust in them. I believe such an office as I suggested would help any bank regain that trust.
The issue of corporate sociopathy is going mainstream. For example, see Snakes in Suits, Babiak & Hare (included in Links to the right) or The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, Joel Bakan.
As far as I’m concerned UBS is a psychopathic/sociopathic entity and should lose its corporate charter. This is borne out in it’s history — its close working relationship during WWII with Nazi Germany and its later Holocaust Gold scandals. I have never worked with higher percentage of psychopaths in management anywhere else. The woman, who hired me, simply walked out one day with zero notice and went to work for another Wall Street firm. It was my understanding that she had found her authority frequently ignored with no consequences, which is what one would expect in an organization dominated by a secret male sex club with members from all levels, which is what one would expect from a psychopathic business entity.
Forgive me because I’ve only read a couple of entries on this blog (that appears to be inactive, now) but regarding UBS… Ever hear the term “the Synagogue of S****”? That pertained to the original “money lenders” who spawned what we know as banking and banksters. Of course, the profession is full of sociopaths and psychopaths. It’s the nature of the beast. The very foundations of banking are the creation of money out of thin air and charging interest on it. It doesn’t get any more con job than that.
As for all of that “Holocaust gold”: how do you think those who it was stolen from obtained it in the first place?
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In terms of your second question on how to keep sociopaths out of compliance and HR departments, I can think of three ways. The first two are very hard and many people might consider them subjective or perhaps not indicative of anything. First would be analyzing individual personalities. There are various ego-driven traits that are specifically sociopathic, such as a certain type of arrogance, an incredible self-regard, and a general contempt for non-sociopaths. I’m not suggesting that every obnoxious jackass is a sociopath, but I believe the true percentage would astound people. One of the main problems with this approach is that it is not really teachable (but it is learnable — too complicated of a situation to go into here). The second approach arises out of a peculiar sociopathic use of language and words and the strategies behind such use. The writing of individuals could be analyzed for such peculiarities, particularly if the writer is not concerned about the opinion or power of the intended reader. This has the advantage of being teachable, in fact the analyzers wouldn’t even need to believe in sociopathy themselves, in my opinion. However this would still be very difficult and might not convince third parties. The third way is very simple but down a troubling path. Simply tell the departments that in three months DNA would be collected to be checked in the future for sociopathy (when that test becomes available). Sociopaths have no need to wait for science to tell them what they already know, that they are the way they were born to be. My prediction would be that most sociopaths would leave, it would certainly be a very direct test of this theory.
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Wallingford, thanks for the questions. I choose not to answer your first question on alternate credentials. I do have a pretty good idea of what constitutes my alternate credentials, but I’m not trying to sell my credentials. The point of credentials is that people then don’t have to judge your knowledge themselves, that it’s easier to judge your credentials than your knowledge. For this site I wish to encourage the intellectual and emotional exploration of sociopathy. I hope visitors are nudged to think in a different direction from their prior thinking. I don’t present myself as an expert bringing knowledge “down from the mountain.”
As a partial answer though, I do believe I have a very intimate knowledge of sociopaths and their thinking patterns. I have always gotten along with sociopaths very easily. Even in elementary school slightly odd classmates (who I now recognize as being sociopaths) I hardly knew would make my acquaintance, to tell me things and ask me questions, as though I might have some insight into their experiences. To this day sociopaths continue to share their viewpoint.
Recently, a sociopathic, totally emotionless Don Juan (who is so talented he doesn’t need to work, his girlfriends are happy to loan him money) shared this joke with me: he was jogging on the river path outside of town (he told this joke in the first person) when he came upon this young woman sunning herself by the shore. Now this woman had no arms or legs, and she was crying. He asked her what was wrong. She pleaded, “Please hug me. No one has ever hugged me.” OK, so he picked her up and hugged her. Passing by her again, she was again crying, “Please kiss me, no one has every kissed me.” OK, so he picked her up and kissed her. A third time passing her by, she was again crying. “Please screw me. No one has ever screwed me.” OK, so he picked her up and threw into the river. “You’re screwed now!”
This is quite a joke. I believe he’s saying that sociopaths know that non sociopaths cast them in their fantasies and that they resent this. While he uses lovers and others as objects to be manipulated, his lovers use him in a fantasy he is excluded from. As a lover, he’s selling a fraud – a fake loving, caring and passionate relationship but his women are buying a fantasy. As sociopathic conartists always say, people believe what they want to believe.
As another instance, a young woman not long ago was telling me that she thought something might be wrong with her because she had never felt guilty in her life. I didn’t respond but just listened to her. Once she spoke of being passed around as a junior banker to various senior bankers for various tasks and joked, “I haven’t been passed around like this since high school. . . That’s just a joke of course.” I didn’t catch that she was joking at all actually. Depending on circumstances, sociopaths often would be delighted to be passed around sexually. There is nothing personal or intimate going on anyway, just childhood sex games with orgasms thrown in. She probably felt not only was she getting lucky, but she was getting really lucky. She also spoke about the humor in the Austin Powers movies, the bodily function humor, that she found utterly hilarious, while her mother and others found it disgusting. I couldn’t tell her that the explanation was that she was sociopathic. One of the traits of sociopathy is this arrested development psychologically and emotionally.
With these two examples (neither of which did I instigate), I’m trying to demonstrate that my claimed insight into sociopathic behavior and thinking patterns comes from direct interactions with sociopaths.
In terms of your second question on how to keep sociopaths out of compliance and HR departments, I can think of three ways. The first two are very hard and many people might consider them subjective or perhaps not indicative of anything. First would be analyzing individual personalities. There are various ego-driven traits that are specifically sociopathic, such as a certain type of arrogance, an incredible self-regard, and a general contempt for non-sociopaths. I’m not suggesting that every obnoxious jackass is a sociopath, but I believe the true percentage would astound people. One of the main problems with this approach is that it is not really teachable (but it is learnable — too complicated of a situation to go into here). The second approach arises out of a peculiar sociopathic use of language and words and the strategies behind such use. The writing of individuals could be analyzed for such peculiarities, particularly if the writer is not concerned about the opinion or power of the intended reader. This has the advantage of being teachable, in fact the analyzers wouldn’t even need to believe in sociopathy themselves, in my opinion. However this would still be very difficult and might not convince third parties. The third way is very simple but down a troubling path. Simply tell the departments that in three months DNA would be collected to be checked in the future for sociopathy (when that test becomes available). Sociopaths have no need to wait for science to tell them what they already know, that they are the way they were born to be. My prediction would be that most sociopaths would leave, it would certainly be a very direct test of this theory.
Finally, on what did I hope to accomplish — well, I certainly hoped to be taken up on the offer. Though it would have taken the direct interest of one of addressees (of course, not all of whom may even have seen the letter). Two of the corporate buzzwords I heard over and over again during my corporate career are “outside-of-the-box thinking” and “proactive.” So I gave it a shot, thinking my offer qualified under both. In reality in corporations almost nobody dares think outside-of-the-box. It’s more like a chain gang where everyone is shackled ankle to ankle, wrist to wrist, neck to neck, shuffling along, not even raising their heads — no dares think original thoughts. While I certainly realized it was a very long shot, if I were them I would have hired me on at least a trial basis but apparently no one else would have.
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OK, I’ll bite. Three questions. You say you don’t have standard types of credentials, so what are your alternate credentials? How would you keep sociopaths out of Compliance and HR departments? Finally, what were you hoping to accomplish with this letter?
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