When reviewing this section, think about how you, as an FP, would respond to incidences of the “Structural Corruption” Firestein describes.
Think about what character means to you. Think about virtue. Think about integrity. Think about your value as a person, independent of your portfolio.
Character is a good place to start, whether you are defining or re-defining yourself as a Wall Street financial professional. Character has many common definitions, yet I prefer to define the term as the aggregate of traits forming the individual nature of a person; moral or ethical quality; reputation; an accounting of the qualities or peculiarities of a person.
In psychology and psychoanalytic circles, though, character has other meanings.
Character is the evaluation of a person’s moral qualities. Character implies attributes which include integrity, courage, loyalty, and fortitude.
Character is derived from the Greek sense of the following idea. Character was originally used as a mark impressed on a coin and Aristotle expressed that character implied moral virtue or excellence. Later, Abraham Lincoln said: “Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”
Ultimately, in terms of character structure, psychologists contend that character is a system of relatively fixed motivational traits that are demonstrated when an individual interacts with other people.
How do you define character? How do you define your character?
My experience with patients has been that the best answers lie not in terms of the FP that we see, but the one that he aspires to be.
After all, aspirations of personal integrity and professional virtue are the essence of the Wall Street Psychologist’s Gyroscope.