By: Deborah FosterMay 19, 2012
People tend to associate the word psychopath with serial killers or
other violent criminals. The word conjures up images of anti-social
monsters who are unable to fit into everyday society. This makes sense
since everything in our media teaches us that psychopaths are predatory
murderers. Indeed, experts on psychopathy have estimated that up to 25%
of prison populations include people who could be labeled as
psychopaths. However, people with psychopathic personalities are not
exclusively found among criminals. In reality, they are often described
as “charming” and quite normal, even functioning in high profile
professions. Recently, Sherree DeCovney made controversial headlines by
making the
assertion that as many as 1 in 10 financial services workers on Wall Street were psychopaths,
which was probably an overestimation. But, DeCovney was on to
something. There are many highly successful people who can also be
observed to have psychopathic tendencies, and recently, evidence has
been piling up that one of them is none other than presidential wanna-be
Mitt Romney.
There are
three major patterns of qualities that characterize a psychopath:
1) interpersonal conduct such as dishonesty, narcissism, and arrogance,
along with a marked lack of consideration for the rights and well-being
of others 2) affective deficits such as lack of empathy or guilt, and
3) impulsiveness or risk-taking. Based on established criteria,
psychologists estimate that approximately 1% of the population or 3
million people could be classified as having a psychopathic personality.
However, these are people who meet the cutoffs for diagnostic criteria,
which make it seem like people either have it or they don’t.
Psychopathy doesn’t work that way. It occurs on a continuum with some
people having none at all and others having the range from a few
tendencies to a full blown diagnosable personality disorder. James
Silver, co-author of “Almost a Psychopath: Do I (or Does Someone I Know)
Have a Problem with Manipulation and Lack of Empathy?”
explains,
“Almost psychopaths differ from true psychopaths not in
the types, but, rather, in the frequency and intensity of their
remorseless and damaging behaviors.”
It would probably have been more accurate for DeCovney to have stated
that Wall Street employees had a greater than average overall tendency
toward psychopathy than to suggest that so many would fit the diagnostic
criteria necessary to be labeled with the actual personality disorder.
James Silver and his co-author, Ronald Schouten, explain in their
book that people who could be described as “almost a psychopath” are
quite plentiful. They estimate that up to 15% of the general population
fits the profile of people who use manipulation to get what they want
and who lack empathy or a capacity for guilt, all while displaying
grandiosity, egotism and disregard for others.
Mitt Romney ran Bain Capital, a company that operated a business model
nearly
exclusively built on firing employees, canceling pensions, loading
businesses with debt, taking millions in profit, and walking away.
His claim is that he saved businesses but nearly a quarter of those Bain
Capital touched went bankrupt; this occurred even with previously
healthy companies. Countering the notion that Romney and Bain Capital
were venture capitalists who developed new jobs, Aaron Goldenberg,
wrote:
“Mitt Romney was NOT primarily a venture capitalist. A venture
capitalist invests in early-stage businesses with the hope that they
grow and prosper…By contrast, Mitt Romney was primarily what is
affectionately known as a vulture investor. Bain Capital invested in
failing companies with the intention of either restructuring their
business or stripping the business and selling its assets.”
Goldenberg goes on to say that while what his company did may not
have been evil or immoral (which is debatable), it was absolutely
predicated on the belief that eliminating jobs was the best way to go
even when bankrupting businesses could have taken other measures. It
shows that Romney’s track record as a job-creating businessman is
abysmal. It would take a hardened heart to look in the mirror each day,
knowing that your business was in the business of forcing people out of
their livelihoods, regardless of the justification. But, in and of
itself, this fact doesn’t prove that Romney is a psychopath. Instead, an
alarming anecdote shared by Rachel Maddow on her show does point to
Romney’s issues with lack of empathy or remorse.
On May 10
th,
Maddow played an excerpt from an interview with Romney in which he relayed a story from his past along with many inappropriate chuckles:
Romney: “I have a few connections with the State of
Wisconsin. One of the most humorous I think relates to my father. You
may remember, my father, George Romney, was the President of an
automobile company called American Motors. And as the President of the
company, he decided to close the factory in Michigan and move all the
production to Wisconsin…they had a high school band that was leading
each of the candidates, and his band did not know how to play the
Michigan fight song. It only knew how to play the Wisconsin fight song.
So every time they would start playing, “On Wisconsin, On Wisconsin,” my
dad’s political people would jump up and down and try to get them to
stop because they didn’t want people in Michigan to be reminded that my
dad had moved production to Wisconsin.”
This was Mr. Romney’s idea of funny, people losing their jobs and getting upset when being reminded about it.
In the same segment, Maddow discussed two of Romney’s other psychopathic behaviors, the recent revelation that
he forcibly held down another teen in high school and cut off his hair as he cried and screamed and the now famous story where Romney strapped his dog to the roof of his car in a kennel for hours
in defiance of Massachusetts law
as he drove 60 miles per hour. In both cases, she played Romney’s
“apologies” for the incidents, in which he laughed inappropriately
throughout each.
These incidents and the insincerity of the apologies that followed
them provide some of the strongest evidence of his psychopathy. In the
case of the attack with the scissors against his classmate, Romney
claims to have no memory of an occasion that still haunts the
eyewitnesses to the event. Nevertheless, despite not remembering it, he
also claims he must not have done it because the boy was presumed gay,
because no one talked about homosexuality in the 1960s,
despite evidence to the contrary.
It takes a remarkably callous and disturbed individual to forget
causing another human being to scream out in terror, let alone to have
instigated the incident at all. With regard to the abuse of his dog, the
story takes a particularly disturbing twist when one learns that his
dog appeared to have developed diarrhea as a result of stress and fear. In response, Romney simply hosed off his SUV and continued the trip with the dog still atop the roof.
There is abundant evidence that Romney doesn’t maintain any strong
convictions, but rather forms opinions in service of his ultimate
political goals. For example, where he once promised to be “better than
Ted Kennedy on gay rights,” he now promises to be the most regressive
Republican presidential candidate on gay rights in over a decade. The
money he donated to Planned Parenthood has morphed into promises to shut
them down. This sort of deceit is characteristic of a psychopath.
Showing that he also displays the impulsivity characteristic of
psychopathy, there were recent revelations about his repeated issues
with losing his temper, including to the point of two
skirmishes with law enforcement.
Here he repeatedly shows contempt for people in positions of authority,
even getting himself arrested for directly defying the instructions of
an officer. If he weren’t an incredibly wealthy man, one wonders how
often his flaunting of laws the little people have to follow would have
gotten him in trouble.
While Romney may not display the level of psychopathy necessary to be
considered diagnosable as a psychopath, he does fit what Silver and
Schouten call, “almost a psychopath.” He demonstrates a lack of empathy,
no remorse or guilt for past assaults or mistreatment, a high degree of
narcissism, and a capacity to ceaselessly lie and manipulate to get
what he wants. If there was any doubt, his inability to stop laughing
while recalling these events, when others have been harmed, proves this
is a man with a highly questionable character.
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