This is an extract from Theodore Millon's "Personality Disorders in Modern Life", Antisocial Personality Disorder section:
At the very boundary of normality and pathology, we find persons who have never
come into conflict with the law, but only because they are very effective in covering
their tracks. Although these individuals share with most antisocials a guiltless willingness
to deceive and exploit others, they are not overtly physically cruel. Instead,
their premeditated restraint often makes them seem more sadistic than antisocial.Stereotypes include industrialists and entrepreneurs who flourish in the gray area of
legal technicalities, as well as savvy corporate executives who exploit some market position, monopoly power, or regulatory loophole for huge advantage, even at great costs to others. Individuals who systematically dismember corporations for their own self-gain through hostile takeovers, for example, cannot be regarded as completely normal, much less altruistic.Similarly, for many politicians, the deception of doublespeak is a talent necessary for
survival. Skirting the edge of deceitfulness, they “spin” objective events by minimizing
negatives and exaggerating positives. When cornered, they focus attention on mitigating
circumstances and lie by omission by failing to report the total circumstances and full
motives of their actions. Moreover, they deliberately create public policy so complex
that any particular aspect might be singled out to impress the special interest of the moment.All are “premeditating antisocials.” In everyday life, they flourish in the form of
the smooth-talking businessman and the less-than-forthcoming used-car salesman.
Their damage to society is not as vivid as that of the murdering psychopath, but it is
more common and just as great and constitutes an important reminder than any scientific
theory of the antisocial personality must span both normality and pathology.
And this one is from Wikipedia's "Personality Disorder" page:
In 2005 and again in 2009, psychologists Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon at the University of Surrey, UK, interviewed and gave personality tests to high-level British executives and compared their profiles with those of criminal psychiatric patients at Broadmoor Hospital in the UK. They found that three out of eleven personality disorders were actually more common in executives than in the disturbed criminals:
Histrionic personality disorder: including superficial charm, insincerity, egocentricity and manipulation.
Narcissistic personality disorder: including grandiosity, self-focused lack of empathy for others, exploitativeness and independence.
Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder: including perfectionism, excessive devotion to work, rigidity, stubbornness and dictatorial tendencies.
According to leading leadership academic Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries, it seems almost inevitable these days that there will be some personality disorders in a senior management team.
Comments