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When the CEO of Company A wants to know more about how to compete
against Company B, she can read stock reports, do market research
or use her own intuition.
Or, she could hire a psychological profiler, someone who could
gather data on the men and women running Company B, determine how
they handled situations in the past, how their business relationships
are going now and provide basics about their personalities. Using
the available data, the profiler would then help Company A develop
a plan of action to compete with and conquer Company B.
Richard Pomerance, Ph.D., is a clinician with a private practice
specializing in the treatment of personality and affective disorders
in Boston and Waban, Massachusetts. For the past 20 years, he has
been offering psychological profiling for both business and individual
clients, those who may want to understand more about their partners,
in-laws, past loves, and the like.
Pomerance uses his business, political and psychological training
in creating profiles for clients. In one case, he helped a woman
come to terms with the fact that her deceased boyfriend had kept
many things hidden from her. In another, he helped a group of executives
decide if they should join a competitor's staff by delving into
the personality of that company's chief executive.
Pomerance spoke with New England Psychologist's Catherine
Robertson Souter about his unique niche in the field.
Q: What is profiling and how does psychology enter into it?
A: The goal is the prediction of behavior in critically important
situations based on an understanding of personality and other factors.
This leads to guidance as to how the client should best operate
in order to stay safe or reach his or her goal, (for example, a
viable personal or professional relationship). Mine is an eclectic,
"open system." I do not use proprietary instruments or subscribe
to arcane methods of typing personality. I use both dynamic psychological
and trait approaches along with data gathering.
Personality profiling provides answers when it is critically important
that a client understand how someone else is put together and how
they are likely to behave with respect to a target question. The
client cannot simply ask them or administer tests and there is usually
insufficient information or time.
The profiling relationship is usually quite different from the
psychotherapeutic one. Most often clients have, at best, a secondary
interest in understanding themselves.
Q: Is this the same type of profiling done by the government
or
by police?
A: It is certainly not the same. In fact, these distinctions
are critical.
Police and FBI profiling is done with great attention to particular
criteria: the crime, the crime scene and the "signature" of the
killer. Journalistic profiling is done for literary or financial
ends. It simply looks at what the subject does and says, usually
from a fairly naïve perspective. Unlike criminal profiling, the
identity of the journalistic profile is known and therefore, one
may interview him or people who know him.
What I'm doing is closest to psychobiography, only with much less
initial knowledge of the subject and to a more specific purpose
as defined by the customer. It is remote profiling, with no standardization
and no ability to get relevant information from the subject, who
may in fact want to remain invisible. I usually don't have the luxury
of the public record, a huge handicap. I cannot interview or administer
tests to the subject, who usually doesn't know I exist and wouldn't
talk to me if he did. I analyze both upwards, from details, direct
observation, objective data, facts, traits and a knowledge of the
meaning of action patterns and downwards, from an understanding
of personality psychology and the associated base of probabilities.
I have a criterion question I may be asking, but I have no standard
reference situation to work from, as do the FBI and the jury consultants
who pick a jury to their liking for their side of the case.
Terrorist profiling is fairly similar except that you have huge
databases and maps of associations between individuals so sophisticated
it makes a civilian like me drool. And of course, the purpose is
assessment of dangerousness and understanding of where the individual
is in the terrorist network. Whenever you can limit the target question,
you have an advantage because you can develop tools to use universally.
Q: How did you get involved in profiling?
A: I've been fascinated with the subject since I was nine years
old. I had some native ability, but like many others, I was initially
clueless about people, with blind spots big enough to drive a truck
through. Perversely enough, the encounters with people I should
not have dealt with were the best training past my degree. The second
best training was real-world business experience.
Some years ago, I began consulting to businesses. I did radio commentary
on NPR and CBS on breaking news situations, which required some
understanding of the personalities involved. After that, newspapers
started calling about business and crime situations. I helped the
reporters stay productive…and keep the egg off their faces.
Later, I worked in the financial area in New York. It became clear
that psychologists had an easy time of it with patients compared
to business people who had to make judgments as to where to put
their money or who to trust, with no data but scuttlebutt or a simple
and grossly inadequate credit check.
I began to ask myself what are the factors that enable us to really
understand other people and predict what they will do? It became
clear that personality psychology and the various flavors of psychoanalytic
understanding were only a start. Ditto for "intuition." There was
much more of both a psychological and a practical nature.
Q: What types of cases do you handle?
A: On the personal affairs side, typical clients are women and
men who feel that they must understand what's going on with a significant
other and can't simply ask them. They must go beyond simple background
checks. They try to gather data, but neither they nor their confidantes
know what to look for and how to interpret it once gathered.
Impossible family members are another area: Tony Soprano might
come in to better understand his mother.
Individuals also may need to know who they were dealing with after
a significant other dies - the psychological autopsy. They often
sense there was something incomplete and can't move on until they
understand what was really going on.
Partnerships and alliances are another area, as is competitive
intelligence. Corporate political situations are also critically
important: intra-corporate politics, executive job interviews, and
relations with the press, stockholders and boards. Judgments need
to be made on a continuing basis and missteps can be catastrophic.
I've worked with non-profits, in high tech, medical, and airline
industries. There are many areas in which getting the profile right
is fundamental to the proper handling of the particular situation
and often the entire enterprise. Terrorism is the best-known current
public example, but far from the only one.
Human nature being what it is, we have to deal with the paradox
that many personal and business situations succeed or fail on the
basis of how well the players know each other in some depth. Yet
people often ignore this aspect, restricting themselves to obvious
facts and details. Then they are shocked when the deal blows up.
With a better understanding of the human factors at play, such a
catastrophic result could often be averted.
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