The Website of Dr. Mark Goulston

April 13, 2008
Powerful Men, Dirty Secrets

By April Jimenez
ajimenez@longislandpress.com

Sex scandals are always big news, and the stories behind them make for great headlines. But there is something extra shocking when the revelation involves a powerful figure, especially someone who has made his name by championing morality. Take Jim Bakker, the overzealous televangelist who committed adultery with church secretary Jessica Hahn, then used charitable donations to pay her hush money. Or U.S. Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), who was caught by police receiving oral sex from a prostitute and attempted to flee the scene, yet later openly chided then-President Bill Clinton for Clinton’s scandalous affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and referred to it as the fall of values in America. Then there’s former Idaho senator Larry Craig, who worked fervently against gays rights, but was arrested for soliciting a man in an airport bathroom. And now there’s this week’s front-page news of New York State Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who allegedly spent $80,000 on high-priced call girls and, after the story broke, resigned.

Perhaps we are more inclined to brush under the rug Clinton’s “indiscretion” because the president never claimed to be anything other than the guy who didn’t inhale. But whether adulterers like Clinton, Kobe Bryant,
A-Rod and Spitzer are simply drunk with power and money, one wonders: What made them do it: Was it hormonal imbalance, bad judgment, arrogance or just lack of control?

Some say that what makes men like these unable to separate reality from fiction and force them to part from what they believe is in their genes. Others, that the lapse of judgment these men have experienced can be explained by neuroscience.

“From a neurochemical point of view, power begets an adrenaline rush-and an adrenaline rush can be addicting on two accounts,” says Los Angeles-based clinical psychiatrist and FBI/police hostage negotiator Dr. Mark Goulston.

“When adrenaline is pumping through your veins and brains, you feel purposeful, powerful and almost invincible. That is highly addictive,” says Goulston, the author of Get Out of Your Own Way at Work…and Help Others Do the Same, a book about conquering self-defeating and self-sabotaging behaviors at work. Goulston points out that in the cases of powerful men, this adrenaline-induced invincibility can make regularly level-headed men do things that are out of character, or even downright dangerous.

Others wonder if a male midlife crisis, or “man-o-pause,” the male version of hormones gone haywire, is to blame. Spitzer, who is 48, could try to hold his libido culpable for his prostitute preference-after all, women are known to blame everything from bad headaches to attempted murder on a screwy pituitary. While the endocrine effect makes for an interesting argument, it’s not very likely, says one expert.

“It’s not a hormonal thing; it’s more that there is a problem connected to [Spitzer's] addictive personality. Yes, there are hormones involved, but it’s more the personality issues,” says Jim Conway, Ph.D., and president of Midlife Dimensions, a Michigan counseling program that works to help midlife marriages stay together. Conway adds that Spitzer’s vehement crusade against prostitution is likely the governor taking a stand against his own “compulsions,” and that this is the case with many powerful men, who “commit the sins they preach against.”

“Rigid people sometimes try to control their dark side by taking strong stands against their dark side,” says Conway. Spitzer’s darker behavior, apparently, was one way he coped with pressure.

“He used it as a way to escape, to go to a sexual Disneyland, without any consequences.”

Regardless of what it was that made Spitzer cross the line, New-York based international human rights organization Equality Now wants the world to remember that he took part in the illegal sexual exploitation of women.

“As devastated as we are by the news-that Governor Spitzer, who has been a champion on sex trafficking and sex tourism, was allegedly a customer of the Empire Club-it just shows how pervasive and acceptable the exploitation is,” says Taina Bien-Amine, executive director of Equality Now.

“There is no difference between a governor, a president, a politician, an athlete, or a movie star purchasing a woman, and your local lonely person who does it on the street corner in the Bronx. “It should be in our cultural psyche that it is condemnable. No matter who you are.”
 

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