The Banker as Psychopath

Quite a few readers have contacted me to say that I should not be feeling any “pangs of sympathy” for Sean Fitzpatrick, given that he has cost the country billions that could have been much better spent on schools ‘n hospitals. He has ruined and damaged countless people's lives. And now he has been released, for the moment.

I agree that he should be locked up forever, but I reserve the right to feel some sympathy for people. The difference between normal people and the psychopaths who run banks is that the latter are incapable of feeling ordinary human emotions such as sympathy, pity, empathy, guilt or shame. Psychologists say that sociopaths or psychopaths are simply missing the normal human moral emotions, and that is why they act as they do. They can feign feeling these emotions but they don’t really feel them. Some estimates suggest that 2% to 4% of men are sociopaths, to one degree or another. Hardly any women are sociopaths. Senior figures in politics, business and finance often display psychopathic behaviour. The stereo-type of the psychopath is that he must be a serial killer, but that's not the case at all.

In any event, although we should be aware of psychopaths, we should not become like them, since what distinguishes us from them is precisely the ability to feel compassion for the suffering of others.

The characteristics of pyschopaths are, in terms of clinical diagnosis:

1. Glibness/superficial charm
2. Grandiose sense of self-worth
3. Pathological lying
4. Cunning/manipulative
5. Lack of remorse or guilt
6. Emotionally shallow
7. Callous/lack of empathy
8. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
9. Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
10. Parasitic lifestyle
11. Poor behavioral control
12. Promiscuous sexual behavior
13. Lack of realistic, long-term goals
14. Impulsiveness
15. Irresponsibility
16. Juvenile delinquency
17. Early behavioral problems
18. Revocation of conditional release

As is clear, most of the above characteristics apply to the people who run our financial systems. The reason these kind of people end up in control of banks is precisely because they are psychopaths, since no morally normal person would do what is required in order to gain control of a bank. We should acknowledge this obvious fact and regulate banks accordingly. But we should strive to feel sympathy and compassion for everyone, even though it is often very difficult to do so.