More than 300 psychoanalysts and business leaders attended a public forum last January 24, held as part of APsaA's 2003 Winter Meeting. The timely topic, “Integrity and Self-Deception in Corporate America,” was introduced by Kerry Sulkowicz, chair of the APsaA's Committee on Public Information and a corporate management consultant. He moderated a lively panel discussion by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Associate Dean for Executive Programs at the Yale School of Management; Carol Hymowitz, senior editor of the Wall Street Journal; and Kenneth Eisold, a psychoanalyst who also consults to organizations.
Sulkowicz framed the discussion by observing the impact analysts can have “when we help organizations and their leaders become not only more effective, but more ethical and humane.” He noted that the recent unfortunate wave of corporate scandals has been characterized by self-deception on a mass scale and that “self-deception is a state of mind that stands in opposition to a distinctly psychoanalytic value: self-awareness.” He called for our understanding rather than blame of those “CEOs whose names are engraved in the pantheon of greed and corruption”: “Without understanding more deeply the roots of our current crisis in business, we're doomed to perpetuate it.”
Sonnenfeld began by acknowledging his mentor, Abraham Zaleznick, who has conducted many studies of power and leadership. He described “the culture of charisma” in corporate America and the pre-eminence of charismatic CEOs, many of whom have recently fallen from grace. He candidly admitted that his own writings have unfortunately extolled the successes of many of those corrupt CEOs.
Sonnenfeld outlined some of his thinking about the culture of corporate boards. He concluded that an ethical corporation requires a board with a social system that improves trust and candor. Open dissent and controversy should be considered a good thing. People are afraid to be mavericks, he noted, citing the classic social psychological experiments in social conformity. Sonnenfeld wants to help promote good government in corporations, to insure internal accountability, and to foster ways of evaluating board performance. He called upon psychoanalysts to help clean up the system.
In her presentation, Wall Street Journal columnist Carol Hymowrtz (winner of APsaA's Excellence in Journalism award in 1999) examined the issue of integrity on an historical basis. She described the 1980s boom on Wall Street, the subsequent 1990s boom characterized by technology-driven entrepreneurship, and the resultant market bubble. In the 1980s, there was a great change in compensation: American CEOs were exorbitantly compensated and “paid for performance” on the basis of how well their companies were doing. This system led to a focus on short-term results and greed as the prime motivator. Once people or companies stepped over a certain “tricky line on integrity” they became more and more corrupt. Other people closed their eyes to the increasing ethical lapses because they were benefiting from what was going on.
Hymowitz gave her own perspective as a member of the press. The press had clues about corrupt practices, but until there was proof they could not print anything. All of this took time to uncover, and much of what was revealed came out because of “sex and romance,” with angry wives suing for divorce because of their husbands' infidelities and taking revenge by exposing their corrupt practices and exorbitant compensation packages.
Hymowitz believes that we have now entered an age of cynicism in which we believe that even darker things than we are told are lurking underneath. It is a time of disbelief. She asked: “Can you regulate integrity?” and “How do you get a team working together to question things?”
The psychoanalyst Kenneth Eisold emphasized the role of self-deception and noted how it has been encouraged in corporations and government. He described the complex layering of motives in groups wherein, for example, members want to belong, to preserve the cohesiveness of the group, to maintain self-esteem, etc. Groups sometimes allow bad things to go on for long periods of time, making it difficult for individuals to think or act.
Eisold called the audience's attention to Irwin Jonas' notion of “groupthink” (Jonas was influenced by Bion). For example, during the run-up to the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, President Kennedy's advisors ignored all evidence supporting reasons not to invade. This was unconscious catastrophic blindness that served group cohesion and loyalty to a leader These were not “yes-men” but major leaders.
Eisold applied this notion of “groupthink” to the functioning of boards of directors who do not really understand their true role. They select the CEO and they get insider access to consulting, contracts, etc. “Groupthink” flourishes due to the group members' limited access to key information and the high priority on group cohesiveness and goodwill. In these situations, the board colludes in ignoring bad information. However, when stock values go down, there is often a panic and a frantic search for a new CEO. The old CEO often had been chosen as the corporate savior, and the boards claim ignorance of any wrongdoing. It would be interesting to study how boards permit themselves to be ignorant.
Eisold sketched the “psychology of the insider” There are various layers of insider groups within large corporations, for example “winners” tapped by the CEO who are dazzled by the prospect of big bonuses and other perks. Motivated by the desire to make it in a world not otherwise open to them, they aggressively work to increase profitability but can
Janice S. Lieberman, Ph.D., is a training and supervising analyst and faculty member of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and a member of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York. She serves on TAP's editorial board and on CGRI. She has written Body Talk: Looking and Being Looked at in Psychotherapy.
turn into scapegoats for CEOs' ethical lapses.
Sulkowicz kicked off the lively discussion that followed the presentations, asking how the three panelists could work together to do something about the issue of corporate integrity. AII agreed that there is a great need to disseminate the suppressed information that helps corrupt CEOs to undermine integrity, to write about it, to discuss the issue of where to draw the line between ethical and unethical behavior, to say what is usually unsaid about corporate wrongdoing.
Several members of the audience commented and posed questions. It was apparent that there is an important role for psychoanalysts to play in thinking about group dynamics, both conscious and unconscious, and in communicating their theories and observations to business leaders in the hopes that this crisis in integrity will not be repeated. Psychoanalysts can also play a critical role in bringing business leaders together and getting them talking about these issues. It's a very practical, consultative role, and one that analytically informed consultants are uniquely qualified to play.