Twenty years ago, I was working with a very clever, but ruthless and self-absorbed financial analyst. He was a young man in his late 30s who had just been offered an $11 million deal with a major Wall Street firm. My patient was a specialist in an ascending industry sector that was sizzling. He had many contacts in the field and he had grown up in a “financial family;” a distant cousin was a frequent commentator on a weekly business radio program and his siblings (a sister and two brothers) all worked in the financial sector.
He had been able to bluff his way into the firm with healthy endorsements and sponsorship from “Big Daddy,” and dazzle everyone with his abundant charm and charisma. He walked out with an $11 million deal, laughing all the way to the bank.
My patient was rightfully proclaimed a family hero. He was euphoric. He had won; he was exultant. Then eight months later he crashed. He couldn’t comprehend what was happening to him. A close friend of his, a physician and former patient of mine, referred him to me.
When he entered my office he said flat out: “The money is just not doing it for me; most of the time I feel lonely and depressed. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” He was filled with pain, anger, confusion, anguish, and self-loathing. He was literally at the end of his rope; he was a beaten man. His emotional life was vacuous, his sense of self chaotic and amorphous, his capacity for emotional intimacy severely limited, and yet he felt superior and grandiose. He had money. He had trumped his siblings. Regardless, at least he and I both knew that he desperately needed psychological help. And he had the courage to reach deep within himself and expose his vulnerabilities, his pain and his fear.
Despite his enormous early success, deep within he was riddled with recurring psychological issues: intermittent impotence, a confused sense of his sexuality, several disabled children, a severely neurotic and pathologically controlling mother, a narcissistic and gluttonous wife; and a father who was obsessive, emotionally marginal at best, frugal, inadequate, and empty. But my patient knew how to make money: lots of it.
To make matters worse, the family ethic and operational style was totally centered on money, and money alone. All else was superfluous, despite superficial allusions to the contrary. Everyone knew each other’s business and portfolio, down to the dollar, and the sibling rivalry was as oppressive as it was omnipresent. Everything was measured in financial terms. Humanity and emotion had little true value, let alone virtue, for this group. My patient began to heal as he began to realize and then explore his inner core. He began to figure out where he had come from and finally where he wanted to go. He began to understand that it was his life.
Money can be a tool, but like any tool, it can also be a weapon, one which can be wielded to self-inflict great harm to the psyche. Because money has the potential to undermine our value systems and sense of self, it can exacerbate our internal torment. In effect, money can buy you unhappiness.
There are many techniques that I will unfold in this blog that enabled me to help this man, as well as so many others. Throughout, you will see that I draw upon a deep reserve of case histories. Many of the frontline, retail financial professionals—who were starting their jobs and going through firm training programs—would come into my office and complain about what they perceived of as brain washing techniques, and intense pressure to push company products.
They portrayed a culture that was obsessed with money and status, and feudal hierarchies laden with politics, incessant expectations, and demand for production and asset growth. They described the not so subtle code that “money was king.” This ethic pervaded office culture. Managers earned production credit on top of staff performance. And yet there were managers who were empathetic to young professionals and wanted to develop them. These managers were innovative, bright, insightful and committed to working with new FPs. Young FPs were idealistic and while they wanted to “strike it rich;” they also wanted to hone their skills and establish genuine relationships with their clients. Overtime, however, I observed that some FPs would integrate the office value system as their own even it it conflicted with the value system “they brought to work.” These young FPs then started to feel that they were being corrupted spiritually. Their emotional pain, confusion, and anguish were obvious. They aspired to lucrative careers, social status, power, autonomy, and “star quality” lifestyles. They needed a way to balance office culture with their “culture of origin,” literally.
Unknowingly, they had entered a brutal, competitive world consumed with money, power, and control. Money seduces and lures, can corrupt and control a person’s thinking and behavior. And yet, some of the young financial professionals I treated held onto their idealism: they wanted to build their client’s portfolios and conduct themselves in an honorable manner. These virtues could be capitalized on in treatment.
These many encounters and experiences stimulated my thinking about financial professionals: their universe and daily challenges, the assault on their value systems (at whatever level they were developed), their own inadequacies, their emotional vulnerabilities and fears, their fascination with money and power, and the surreal nature of their world which nevertheless calls upon them to perform heroically for their clients.
Ultimately, this blog is the culmination and distillation of thousands of hours of treatment, and an ongoing understanding of the fascinating complexities of wall street psychology.