Review Of Snakes In Suits

Review of Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work by Paul Babiak and   Robert D. Hare, Regan Books (Harper Collins) N.Y. 2006 Copyright 2008 by James M. Craven/Omahkohkiaayo i’poyi

I cannot recommend enough, to enough people, the book "Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Workby Paul Babiak and Robert Hare. These authors, both highly qualified on the subject of psychopathy, walk us through, and so richly illustrate, not only with cutting-edge theory and research, but also vivid case studies, the "ABCs" of Psychopathy: No Anxiety; No Bonds; No Conscience. They also illustrate how the corporate world is increasingly a “target rich” environment for psychopaths. By the term “corporate world”, they mean, not only corporations, but other entities and institutions we increasingly find corporatized: politico-legal, sociocultural, educational, religious, etc.. As Robert Hare, inventor of the PCL-SV and PCL-R Checklists for Psychopathy put it: "I always said that if I wasn't studying psychopaths in prison, I'd do so at the Stock Exchange.” According to the authors, the corporate world, and other entities run like corporations, are increasingly a “target-rich” environments for psychopaths for four basic reasons: 1) Some core psychopathic personality traits (“talents”) may superficially seem attractive in job applicants and get them hired (excessive assertiveness and confidence; ability to

appear genuine when faking sincerity and honesty; ability to quickly assess vulnerabilities of people and manipulate them; shallow affect and expertise in schmoozing and networking; etc); 2) Superficial notions of “effective management” and “leadership” (focus on hierarchy; taking charge; exercise of top-down power and decision-making with avoidance of accountability; etc) play right into the hands of psychopaths whose own proclivities for megalomania, malignant narcissism, manipulation, intrigue and using/treating people as mere useful objects or instruments, may appear, to those also not real managers or leaders, or even to fellow psychopaths, as “decisive management”, and even “leadership”. 3) Changing organizational structures and models, from pyramidal bureaucracies in the 1960s to 80s, to sleeker, flattter. more free-form and faster-paced organizational structures, with more scope for lower-level decision making, led to increased focus on managerial traits that psychopaths easily fake: confidence; willing to rattle cages to get things done quickly; decisiveness; callousness disguised as “professionalism”; ruthlessness in firing and discipline; etc;

4)

Psychopaths, known for no “Bonds” or “Bounds”, willing to break rules, regulations and laws “, plus their cunning and conning, all under the banner “ to get things done”, appear as organizational saviors in in flexible, fast-paced, highly competitive, high-risk, high-profit and transitional organizations;

Perhaps Plato, one of the first recorded analysts of psychopathy (one can also add the Taoists), noted: "Those who seek power are invariably the least fit to hold and wield it." Plato understood, perhaps instinctively, or perhaps from examples around him, that those who would self-annoint, self-proclaim, self-credential themselves as "leaders", to be parachuted "down" on--and over--those they purport to "lead", demonstrate a certain level of hubris, absolute—and unfounded--certainty, malignant narcissism and megalomania that is breathtaking and extremely dangerous. As an old Chinese aphorism goes: "Power is something a good person will not seek and a bad person should not have." But lust for power and domination, coupled grandiosity and a monstrous sense of entitlement, superiority and being destined to rule others, is at the center of everything the psychopath does and how he/she does it. Traits and capabilities such as lying, revenge, using people as objects, manipulation, deceit, charm, schmoozing, networking, assessing vulnerabilities of targets, intrigue, callousness, assertiveness, supreme confidence, sophisticated masks, etc are all but instruments and weapons in the overall arsenal of the psychopath.