Moral Insanity: Psychopaths & Sociopaths II (Update)

The head of the IMF was pulled from an airplane and arrested for the violent sexual assault of a hotel maid

A few days ago in Moral Insanity: Psychopaths & Sociopaths, I compared sociopaths and psychopaths, concluding that the latter are usually high functioning predators that can be found concentrated in the financial industry. I concluded the post with this:

That the most adept psychopaths have the advantage is indisputable, reflected in recent economic stats that show the greatest disparity in wealth in the USA since the Robber Barons ruled The Gilded Age. It’s as if their lack of individual moral restraint had found societal expression in the form of financial and environmental deregulation, allowing them free reign to take whatever they want; as if their lack of conscience had produced a culture of unaccountability, where even if they are caught plundering the masses they receive Get Out of Jail Free cards.

Oh, wait…

Right on cue Mr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, a position that outs him at the very top of the world’s financial hierarchy, was dragged out of his first class seat at JFK Airport last night moments before his plane was to fly to Paris. He was arrested  for sexual assaulting a maid at his $3,000 night hotel and arraigned this morning in a NYC courtroom on two sexual assault charges and one [attempted] rape charge. He was also denied bail for being a flight risk, so no Get Out of Jail Free card for him. (If he’d made it to Paris, he would have likely defeated any extradition attempts –think Roman Polanski who admitted to raping a 13 year old girl but fled to Paris just prior to sentencing.  Kudos to NYC’s finest.)

Maybe DSK will use a variation of the Newtster Defense. Just the other day, now presidential candidate Newt Gingrich explained in an interview with the Christian News Network that he had been under a lot stress when he illegally laundered over $300,000 dollars of tax exempt donations  and cheated on his former wives:

“”There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.“

As the head of the IMF, the world’s most predatory financial institution and the main purveyor of what Naomi Klein has termed disaster capitalism, DSK also has a lot on his plate, what with having to “rescue” Greece, Ireland and Portugal in the wake of the Great Bush Financial Meltdown, not to mention his expected bid for the French presidency (running as a member of the Socialist Party— what’s up with that?)

In my previous post I noted the pioneering work of of Dr. Robert Hare, who spent 35 years investigating criminal psychopaths inside the Canadian prison system. I included a summary of his findings by Robert Hercz in his essay titled PSYCHOPATHS AMONG US.

[V]iolent criminals are just a tiny fraction of the psychopaths around us. Hare estimates that 1 percent of the population — 300,000 people in Canada — are psychopaths.

He calls them “subclinical” psychopaths. They’re the charming predators who, unable to form real emotional bonds, find and use vulnerable women for sex and money (and inevitably abandon them). They’re the con men like Christophe Rocancourt, and they’re the stockbrokers and promoters who caused Forbes magazine to call the Vancouver Stock Exchange (now part of the Canadian Venture Exchange) the scam capital of the world. (Hare has said that if he couldn’t study psychopaths in prisons, the Vancouver Stock Exchange would have been his second choice.) …

It would appear that DSK has jumped the “subclinical” shark. Maybe Dr. Hare will get a chance to study him  up close and personal at a New York Federal Correction facility soon.

UPDATE: For a different view of DSK’s background, see this post by Steve Clemons.