SUSPECTED SOCIOPATH (DIAGNOSIS AND PROGNOSIS)

TO: Health Care Professionals

FROM: Dr. Povanda, Psychological Practicioner

DATE:Feb. 5, 2003

SUBJECT: Suspected Sociopath

1. The subject, George B., currently occupies a responsible executive position in a large conglomorate deriving its income from two main subsidiaries. One is in the oil production and marketing sphere. The other provides armed security guards for managers appointed to supervise foreign subsidiaries under oil cartel control.

2. The subject inherited his position from his father , George H.W., after an eight year interval in which the company was administered by a straw man. Ab initio George B. embarked on a policy of virtually unrestrained deficit spending. In this he was encouraged by his father's former comptroller, crony, and now general factotum. The company's internal script, the "Holler," has steadily fallen against both gold bullion and the new Euro. There are no appreciable signs of reversal, given the prospect of mounting deficits and the continuing prospect of of the company consuming more than it earns. The subject fired the company treasurer who, after a tour of Africa with a sexy rock star, announced his preference for a soundly-backed script (the "strong Holler"). He also took the axe to his private financial adviser, who had warned that taking over oil fields in a hostile takeover from a regional competitor would cost in excess of $200 billion US, for which the company held insufficient funds.


3. Whilst circumspect in public, the subject has frequently stated his firm is under continual threat of attack by fanatical terrorists. Last year he attacked the Afghani gas fields, removed the previous managers, and through manipulated proxies and a controlled stakeholders' assembly (the "Big Tent"), installed his own front man as manager on an ethnic reservation (Chief Hamid the Bold). For the last fifteen months he has manifested the behavior of a typical stalker, pursuing the once formidable but now superannuated manager of a semi-ruined regional oil competitor, either because he fears the old-line owner has weaponized his employees, or entertains malevolent thoughts in secret, or is dodging an international audit, or represents in his abhorrent person the quintessence of human evil. His company has continued to seek and sign secret undertakings to divide the opponent's property among the most slavish of his subsidized adherents ("lynching by the willing").


4. The subject frequently manifests inconsistent ultra-nationalistic and ultra-conservative convictions. He recently visited a sectarian Southern university where Blancos and Negros among the disparate nationalities in his employ were (until his visit) forbidden to date. He has stated orally that he favors diversity in the workplace, yet his company recently filed suit to terminate affirmative actions programs for minority nationalities. He is a stong public proponent of the so-called "right-to-life" ideology. He has forbiden the company clinic to distribute birth control implements or medication. He has refused to pay dues to an international organization on the East Coast because it distributes birth control information which might facilitate abortions in overpopulated China. On M.L. King's memorial weekend, he issued a proclamation fervently reaffirming the "sanctity" of life. Not ten days had passed before he announced an eleemosynary gift to a distant African town, to subsidize the distribution of drugs against AIDS and condoms (perhaps to restrict the reproduction of Negros).


5. He has undertaken the largest company reorganization in 40 years to unify, strengthen and coordinate (Gleichschaltung) the security guard and to restrict access to company property. He has begun interrogating, registering and fingerprinting foreign workers and even visitors to company grounds. He has complained that open parklands on his northern boundary are open to visitors, residents, immigrants, terrorists, and moose alike, and urged that his property line be secured by armed patrols.


6. Each time the possibility of a workers' action arises, he employs legal subterfuge to postpone the action ad infinitum. The leader of the company union has acquiesced, postponed union elections for two years, and disappeared from the public eye. Further to his ostensibly religious ends, the subject has advocated "faith-based employment" and introduced company chaplains (C-in-C's) into his basement command bunker. He has not shrunk from distributing photos that subliminally suggest that he is the Son of God.

7. His chief operating officer, one Dick "Torquemada" Cheney, scion of an old Boston family, exercises predominant planning functions and implements executive functions far exceeding his statuatory authority. He once chaired a search committee to select a deputy chairman which astonishingly chose himself. This eminence gris acts as a virtual recluse in an undisclosed location. George B. is a trained broadcaster with cultivated forensic skills. This cultivated ability is displayed, however, only on formal or "set piece" occasions. When forced to improvise, he is remarkably tongue-tied. Consequently he dodges the press at every opportunity, enjoys minimal contact with elected worker representatives, none with Negro organizations, and even shuns unchaperoned contact with his own company specialists. It is conceivable that his immediate entourage, inherited (or self-selected) from his father's administration, understand the limitations of his abilities. They have apparently formed an "iron ring" to insulate their employer of record from unrehearsed public intercourse. Flora, his wife, is further suspected of exercising domestic disciplinary authority over her wealthy but unstable husband. George B. continues to conduct company business with foreign clients at hole-in-corner locations, without competent experts present, at a mesquite-overgrown Texas spread or at a gated reclusive lodge in Maryland's Catatonic Mountains. His press spokesman announces George's unilateral decisions before a compliant press assembly so often that he is often (if mistakenly) assumed to be the Acting Company President. His personal secretary, Sissy Nice, a former California road-house waitress at "The Farm" restaurant not far from sophisticated San Francisco, is more adept at entertaining foreign male executives than in administering, advising, or restraining her employer. (She reserves her dominatrix tendencies for regaling competitors.)

8. In sum, because of his persistent aggressive and violence-prone advocacy ("Keep on killin' 'em! We'll kill 'em all!") , duplicity in pronouncements and policies, excessive secretiveness and extravagant spending habits--the heir to a rich oil dynasty, trained in manners at exclusive Ivy League colleges, he has never acknowledged the requirements of fiscal discipline--George B., a recovering alcoholic, is to be remanded to the Guantanamo facility for involuntary treatment as a "sociopathic personality."

Bazarov-Nosferato Psychological Clinic
Rapallo, Germany

NB--The original clippings from academic studies are no longer accessible. Psychologists in attendance are urged to consult the literature, in which the dividing line between "sociopath" and "entrepeneur" is distinctly blurred.