In 2002, Time Magazine named Eliot Spitzer, when he was New York State Attorney General, “Crusader of the Year,” due to his relentless pursuit of corporate crime. He went after the giants of Wall Street, extracting large fines for illegal and unethical behavior.
That’s why his very public downfall has drawn so much interest. And that’s why, now he’s resigned as governor of New York in disgrace, the stories of his aggressiveness, his bullying, and his apparent belief that the rules did not apply to him, are so widespread.
When I first heard that Spitzer was implicated in a prostitution ring, I figured that if anyone had the dirt, it would be the New York Post. How right I was. Frederic U. Dicker, the state editor for the Post, wrote about Spitzer in an article entitled, Bully gets his comeuppance. Here’s how it started:
“A disgraced Gov. Spitzer has been publicly and privately described for more than a year by New York’s top political figures as a ruthless, sanctimonious, amoral man whose righteous public persona was regularly contradicted by the realities of how he conducted his political life.”
Whoa!
But it got better. Eliot Spitzer described himself as a “f***ing steamroller” to Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco. Dicker wrote that Tedesco—a muscular, one-time star college athlete—confided to an associate, “This guy scares me.”
The New York State Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, who had been targeted by Spitzer, was quoted as saying, “There’s something wrong with Spitzer, something wrong in his head.” Bruno also said, according to Dicker, “he’s a liar, he’s a hypocrite and he cannot ever be trusted.”
Then Dicker wrote, “Even friends described Spitzer as a man whose mood can swing in seconds, as a once pleasant cast undergoes a frightening Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-like transformation after a perceived personal slight or policy disagreement.”
This was beginning to sound like all of the stories told on Lovefraud. Eliot Spitzer was beginning to sound like a sociopath.
Accusing the titans
Spitzer made his name prosecuting corruption on Wall Street. But as I continued to research Spitzer, I found a telling incident. In April, 2005, Eliot Spitzer went on ABC-TV’s Sunday morning news show and accused Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, the former chairman of AIG, an insurance giant, of misleading the public about the company’s dealings. “The evidence is overwhelming that these transactions were created for the purpose of deceiving the market. We call that fraud,” Spitzer said. “It is deceptive. It is wrong. It is illegal.”
Shortly after that, John C. Whitehead, the former chairman of Goldman Sachs, wrote an op/ed piece for the Wall Street Journal entitled Mr. Spitzer has gone too far.
“Something has gone seriously awry when a state attorney general can go on television and charge one of America’s best CEOs and most generous philanthropists with fraud before any charges have been brought, before the possible defendant has even had a chance to know what he personally is alleged to have done, and while the investigation is still under way,” he wrote. Whitehead accused Spitzer of damaging Greenberg’s reputation.
After reading the op-ed piece, Eliot Spitzer phoned John Whitehead. Whitehead was so shocked by what Spitzer said that he wrote it down: “Mr. Whitehead, it’s now a war between us and you’ve fired the first shot,” Spitzer said, according to Whitehead. “I will be coming after you. You will pay the price. This is only the beginning and you will pay dearly for what you have done. You will wish you had never written that letter.”
Whitehead was astounded. “No one had ever talked to me like that before,” he said. “It was a little scary.”
After his very public statements on television, Spitzer never brought criminal charges against Hank Greenberg.
What was he thinking?
When news of Spitzer and the prostitution scandal broke, the question all the pundits were asking was, why would Spitzer do such a thing? What was he thinking?
The Associated Press put out an article that asked exactly that question entitled, Why do smart people do dumb things?
A variety of psychologists and political analysts speculated: Does risky behavior precede the powerful job? Or does something about being in power cause the behavior?</p >
“There’s the psychology of the exception,” said Leon Hoffman, former chairman of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s public information committee. “People in power sometimes feel they can do things that us, mere mortals, are forbidden to do. There’s a sense, as with adolescents, that ‘I won’t get caught.'”
The consensus in the article seemed to be that power corrupts. No one mentioned that the corrupt seek power, especially when they have a personality disorder.
Talking heads on Larry King
Just to see what else people were saying about Spitzer, I watched Larry King Live last night—something I don’t usually do. His guests included New York State Senator Joseph Bruno, Dina Matos McGreevey (wife of the New Jersey governor who also resigned in disgrace over a sex scandal), Dr. Drew Pinsky, a cop who busted prostitution rings, a TV newscaster, and a former sex worker.
I found the comments of Dr. Drew, as he is know, most interesting. Dr. Drew, who is an internist specializing in addiction medicine, hosts a radio talk show called Loveline, and is the host of Celebrity Rehab on VH1. Explaining how people are able to live double lives, hiding unbelievable things from the people closest to them, Dr. Drew said:
“What I see— and I think is the case here with Governor Spitzer—they tend to have difficulty experiencing other people’s feelings. They tend to be very aggressive and sometimes even ruthless, as he was in his case. And they really are out for their own sake.
“And when they get the power that they’re looking for, oftentimes they sort of feel special and excepted from the kinds of things that they’re expecting of everybody else and they minimize it, decide that it’s okay for them, and they just sort of rationalize it and off they go.”
Okay, he didn’t use the term sociopath, or psychopath, but that seemed to me to be what he was describing.
Then Larry King asked Dr. Drew, “What is the governor going through?”
“You know what, the guys that perpetrate things like this, the men oftentimes feel a deep sense of shame,” Dr. Drew answered. “And it is frightening to them to get anywhere near shame. And so they seem to us to be somewhat Teflon, like they’re skating past it.”
I wasn’t buying that one, at least in Spitzer’s case, but the show continued. Larry King asked Dina Matos McGreevey if she thought her husband, Jim McGreevey, loved her.
“No, I don’t think that he loved me. I think he married me for political expediency,” Matos said. “He wanted to be the governor and he believed that he needed a family in order to do that.”
“I’m not sure that’s true,” Dr. Drew replied. “Dina, you’re describing sexual addiction, sexual compulsion there. Those guys do love people to the best that they’re able.”
I’ve written about the McGreevey case before. In my opinion, Jim McGreevey is a sociopath. So I think Matos was right and Dr. Drew was wrong—Jim McGreevey never loved his wife.
After that, Larry King asked Dr. Drew, “Does the governor need help?”
“I think so,” Dr. Drew replied. “And that’s one of the things that concerns me. I don’t see the kind of contrition that I see from ”¦ someone that would really reach out and be willing to change. I just don’t see it.”
“But he needs help?” King repeated.
“In my opinion, all the things we have talked about tonight have treatment,” Dr. Drew said. “They work. I treat people like this all the time. They get a lot better.”
I started yelling at the television.
Psychopathic qualities
So did anyone get it? Did anyone think that Eliot Spitzer might have a personality disorder?
Yes— Frederic U. Dicker of the New York Post.
After he wrote the article I referenced above, Dicker was interviewed by Matt Lauer on the Today Show. Lauer asked him to comment on the strong feelings people had about Eliot Spitzer.
“There is sense on the part of a number of people, you have to put it psychological terms, of a psychopathic quality,” Dicker said. “He was a guy who couldn’t connect with people emotionally. He would say one thing to you, and a minute later, he would say just the opposite to someone else. He didn’t show emotion in dealing with people, he never had a personal connection, which is so vital in politics.”
So why did the reporter get it right when the medical professionals got it wrong? Quite simply, the reporter knew Eliot Spitzer, knew his personality and knew what he had done. The medical professionals were talking in generalities.
The key to identifying a sociopath, or psychopath, is in the person’s actual behavior. When you know what to look for, the behavioral clues are easy to spot.
As I read the first tidbits about Spitzer’s activities, the sociopath alarm bells I now have were clanging loudly. All the articles about why he did this, why men cheat, why powerful men cheat were ridiculous. He’s a personality disordered monster parading around in a sanctimonious man suit. I really feel for his wife. While not on the same scale, the xs’s crimes were printed in our paper for all to see mere days after I learned the horrific truth. (He was charged with sexually abusing one of my children.) I was still reeling and then had to try to piece my and my kids lives back together with the whole town watching. It was awful.
I join you in yelling at the TV. I am often yelling: Psycho! He’s a psycho. Yes, makes me look less than sane : )
I almost butted into a conversation I overheard today about him, but held my tongue. I think we’re afraid to label, because it’s as if we’re tainted just by knowing, thinking such a way.
It’s hard as hell for victims to get the conscienceless of psychopaths- imagine a “lay person?”
We all want meaning, to know the why, evil is verboten to even mention today. But they are just plan evil.
Spitzer’s chilling threats reminded me of my psycho. And that panel could have been anyone I ever tried to explain the psycho to. You know maybe it’s because he was a bedwetter….
I’m sure the problem with Spritzer is that his mother didn’t breast feed him and she served him way too many Twinkies, and was very harsh in potty training him, and probably he has ED and is ashamed to take “the blue pill” but whatever it is I am sure there is a cure for it and that the TV psychologist has just the thing to help Spritzer become a human being.—PUKE.
My ex was involved in politics at the local level for a few years and met Spitzer at a mutual friend’s house before he was govenor. My sociopath told me he couldn’t stand him and he was an a$$hole. What’s the saying?- It takes one to know one:)
I’ve been yelling at my screen too. Especially when O’Reilly said he thought Spitzer wanted to get caught because he’d have to be crazy to think he could get away with it.
Crazy or a sociopath!
Yes, as much as I had liked Spitzer, I have to say the terms being used to describe him by people who interacted with him really set off the P/S/N red flags.
That said, do a little research on Dicker. “Frederick U. Dicker, a New York Post reporter known for getting under the skin of leading politicians of both parties” also has a talk show that inflames more than it educates.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/13/nyregion/13farrell.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Google him. You’ll see he’s the print equivalent of Bill O’Reilly, who is also, based on his actions, very much a pathological. Dicker’s also been accused of shady ethics and using leverage to have Governor Pataki name his own girlfriend as a Commissioner.
Am beginning to think everyone with power and a pulpit is sociopathic.
While I see that Spitzer is definitely one, it appears his main accusors are big P’s, also.
Narcissists, politicians and sex.
I am not sure if my ExBf is a narcissist or not, he does, however, show some traits that make me think: he courted me for almost five months and when he finally asks for exclusivity, exactly one week after, he breaks up with me because I needed more time to see how serious he was before becoming sexually intimate with him.
During his courtship he was very nice and took me to nice places but I remember him telling me (via email, for our second date) that I could come to his house and stay for the nigh because he didn’t want to drive me back to my X city and then go back to his city.
Also, he once mentioned “I am so tired of the endless friendship thing, I want a relationship so this is why I got RID of a girl who didn’t want a relationship”
The word *Got Rid of Her* strike me in my stomach and I thought this is not right, where is HIS responsibility in all this *failed* relationships?
Also, he was like”emotion less, I don’t know”.like he couldn’t connect, like I didn’t feel connected; its not that he didn’t listen to me, but it’s just a *feeling*.
He did not ask for money but there were other things that made me think”
Also, after he asked me for exclusivity, he didn’t take his online-dating-profile down (Match.com, where we met), I asked him about it, if it was ok to have our profiles up and he replies “it’s just an online profile, like My Space but if you want to, I will put it down of course”. He did not; actually, he broke with me one week later after he asked me to be his GF.
He also mentioned that he has never had a relationship that lasted more than 4 moths or something like that and he is 37; it’s not like he is 18.
Also, he travels a lot, he likes to travel, he is always going somewhere and he doesn’t use his home address just in case he needs to move and not make a big deal about it, he only uses a *mailing address*; I don’t he is a cheater.
But ANW, the issue here is that he is a very *active* politician:
I don’t know if this is a pattern in democrats or not, I know nothing about politics but what happened with the Governor made me feel very sad because my ExBf, who is a democrat and a very *active* one (so active that if I say his name and where he volunteers for the democratic party, you will find him or know who I am talking about), courted me for a few months and after only a week of exclusivity, he dumped me because (we weren’t intimate):
“I am sorry but I cant wait anymore for sex, I have been waiting for some time now and I cant continue with this; also, I am afraid that you have no sexual experience and that it might not work between us, actually, its not going to work; I don’t know how someone can expect fidelity and have a relationship when there is no sexual relationship”
This, after 5 minutes of exclusivity, he dumped me because we weren’t sexual and because I wasn’t sexually experienced.
It was a very sad moment, you know”after asking me to be exclusive had plans, etc and then he dumps me.
Everybody thinks that he is so nice and yes he is, but the sexual issue bothers me so much, so I wonder if these guys are wired the same…
Well, this is what I told him:
“Don’t feel sorry, go get yourself a whore who will give you free sex after a few hours of dancing and drinking at a bar, let alone after a few months of hanging out”
No, not really, I did not say this; actually, I took my things and came back home. Crying and very upset because one week before I was asked to be his GF, he talked about maybe me staying with him one night at his place, said he missed me, etc.
As I said, I am not a democrat nor republican, nothing, actually, I don’t vote ( I am more than enough old to vote and I can vote, its just that I don’t vote); but then again, I question myself what has happened with the governor (sex issue), reminds me of my Democrat Ex and of course, Clinton (sex issue).
I can only imagine how the wife feels, she must be very, very sad.
Donna,
You said, “The key to identifying a sociopath, or psychopath, is in the person’s actual behavior. When you know what to look for, the behavioral clues are easy to spot.”
I was just saying something like this to a friend.
I was saying that in a way, I feel more qualified to “diagnose” the Bad Man than to have someone else tell me a diagnosis because I was there to witness the subtleties of what he was doing.
You can have a person that has read a bunch of books about Sociopaths and then you can have the person that lived the ordeal. To one person, it’s just a concept… to the other, it’s a real thing.
And when I read the stories of others, I always pick up something.. a theme or a vibe or a behavior or a “CLUE”, and though the names and details and places are all different, it the behavior that I recognize.
It is so hard to capture in words what happened. And for the most part, I can’t remember the “reasons” he was mad most of the time or the “thing” I said or did that set him off… because there was so many accussations and so much confusion.
I think this is why this Blog is so important for all of us that are healing from a Sociopathic Encounter. We heal through telling our stories and through hearing other stories that are different and yet… they are just like our own.
Telling our “story” to someone that doesn’t understand is unsatisfying and humiliating. I can tell them a long list of what he did… but it is hard to describe the underlying behavior… I can’t even say what I am trying to say now.
Sociopaths are really so outside of most people’s undestanding… and yet, chances are they have brushed elbows with one. They are the unreasonable neighbor, the power hungry Boss that steals your ideas, the Road Rage guy in rush hour. All these types could be… one of them.
Dear Wine. There are many points in your story that struck me. He is not respecting the pace and form that you want to take the relationship. You have reservations about him, his behaviour is erratic, demanding committment – then dumping you. Like you I held off with sex, because I actually said to him ‘I wanted to be sure who I was mixing my energies with’! But he played it clever, was not sexual to me at all (strange for a young man) and I think he was just waiting for me to make the first move and falling into his web. Your exBF hasnt proved that he is worth the committment.
Listening carefully to the way he phrases words was something I did, which gave me alot of clues. For me the biggest statement you made was that you had a feeling that there was no connection. I had that very same feeling from a man who was telling me one thing, but pretending to love me, and I didnt feel that and realised he was pretending. Whether your exBF was a N or P, he was not acting in a genuine loving consistent way and probably best out of your life.
Grr! Sometimes these pop psychologists get me so mad! Eveybody wants to put their two cents in about what was wrong with him. I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but when people with credentials make misjudgments about someone, everyone tends to believe them.
Aloha, it’s so true that reading about S’s in a book is NOT the same thing as experiencing it first hand. Some psychologists get it intellectually but they don’t GET IT because they have no experience identifying the signs and behavior and don’t really know what sociopaths are capable of.
And by the way, who the hell is Dr. Drew to tell McGreevey’s wife that her husband loved her? I would think she’d know a little better than him!
Wine,
I think you probably sense what was wrong with your ex and that’s why you’re here. That sounds just like what happened to my friend who was targeted by a S. Although you must be hurt, you are lucky that he is not in your life anymore and didnt do as much damage as he could have. Just be wary if he tries to hook you again, they like to play with victims by stringing them along. No contact is the best policy.
Ariadne. 9 months into the relationship with my exN, totally confused and reaching out for help, I paid for relationship counselling on my own, giving full descriptions of what was going on. To be fair, they said he was not going to committ, but they as ‘professionals’ did not at all diagnose his personality disorder. After things ended with him, I went back to the organisation and argued that I had paid them for direction and that they had not accurately diagnosed matters. They argued that because he wasnt there, they could not have known. I told them that although he wasnt there, I had given them mountains of descriptive information, that had the counsellor known, she was have signalled to me more (much more) strongly, to get out ASAP!