Psychopath or sociopath?




A commentator in the Financial Times this week attempted to answer the question of whether the Caribbean conman Allen Stanford, who has been sentenced to 110 years in prison, and Rajat Gupta, the highly plausible ex-head of McKinsey & Co. found guilty of insider trading, were psychopaths or merely ‘sociopaths’.

Where psychopaths habitually disregard the feelings of others and the rules of society, sociopaths are emotionally balanced people who break the law because doing so is considered acceptable among their peers.

As Paul Babiak and Robert Hare put it in their book Snakes in Suits, psychopaths suffer from a personality disorder rooted in “lying, manipulation, deceit, egocentricity, callousness and other destructive traits.” Sociopaths, on the other hand, “may have a well-developed sense of conscience and a normal capacity for empathy, guilt and loyalty, but their sense of right and wrong is based on the norms and expectations of their subculture or group. Many criminals might be described as sociopaths.”

"And many politicians as well", I hear you add.

A study by Hare suggested that two percent of the US population score high enough on the scale to be considered potential psychopaths. I wonder what per cent of the Czech political and business establishment on Hare's scale would be considered, if not psychopaths, then sociopaths?

Below is Hare’s checklist of twenty behavioral traits common in psychopaths. I invite readers to make their own assessment of Miroslav Kalousek. I add a few comments of my own but these should be ignored as I am, in Kalousek’s own words, a ‘notorious liar’.

MK, a government minister and politician

1. Glibness –MK displays considerable rhetorical skills, in particular when sober and when deceiving his voters.
2. Grandiose sense of self-worth –MK has a habit of referring to himself in the third person when addressing parliament.
3. Pathological lying –Most politicians are economical with the truth and know when they are misleading their voters. But MK seems to believe his own lies and 'mystifications'.
4. Cunning/manipulative –Despite having been investigated by police for his links to a number of defence procurement scandals, MK has never been convicted of any wrongdoing whatsoever. It is always someone else's signature on the contract (that of Vlasta Parkanová for example).
5. Lack of remorse or guilt
6. Emotionally shallow
7. Callous/lack of empathy
8. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions –MK explicitly rejects the principle of individual ministerial responsibility when it concerns his own decisions and those of his party colleagues. CASA is one example. We shall see how willing MK is to take responsibility for what the Court of Auditors in Brussels calls, in a triumph of bureaucratic understatement, the “systematic adjustment” of reports on EU funding use in the Czech Republic prepared by MK’s ministry. Will MK accept responsibility for the dire consequences that would result if it shown that his colleagues in the finance ministry have been fiddling the books and up to forty percent of the EU funding already disbursed by the finance ministry is never reimbursed by Brussels?
9. Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
10. Parasitic lifestyle –MK has been on the state’s payroll for twenty two years. We may assume that his ministerial wages are topped up by Richard Háva, who lives off public procurements.
11. Lack of realistic, long-term goals –In my opinion, this is a succinct description of MK’s acquisition decisions taken as deputy defence minister in 1993-1998, and his budgetary policy decisions taken as finance minister since 2007.
12. Impulsiveness
13. Irresponsibility
14. Poor behavourial controls –MK was recently filmed repeatedly punching in the face a younger man, smaller and slighter than himself, directly outside the entrance to the parliament.
15. Early behavourial problems
16. Juvenile delinquency
17. Revocation of conditional release –MK displays pronounced recidivist tendencies, especially when it comes to alcohol, Háva and Martin Barták.
18. Criminal versatility
19. Many short term marital relationships
20. Promiscuous sexual behaviour

The Financial Times commentator concluded that Allen Stanford is psychopathic because of his complete indifference to the ruination he was inflicting on other people, whereas Rajat Gupta is 'only sociopathic' because he was conforming to behaviour, which though illegal, is common amongst his colleagues.

And so I ask you dear reader: Is Miroslav Kalousek a psychopath or a sociopath?