UPDATE: Minutes after posting this, I searched the good Doctor’s name and found my post very high in Google results. My purpose here is to practice thinking and writing about an old book - I don’t care to insult anyone personally. I’ve removed the Doctor’s name below to hopefully avoid unwanted attention.
Today’s forgotten management book is “The Money Personality” by Dr. Fullname Obscured (Simon and Schuster, ‘79). Dr. Obscured’s central (and heavily repeated) premise is that some people have so-called “Money Personalities”, and you can too!
Skip Dr. Obscured’s main idea. Also skip kindly past the humorous front cover - adorned with a seriously gleaming gold dollar symbol money clip. Next, ignore the rear cover’s glamour shot of a navy-sport-jacketed Dr. Obscured posing with (someone’s) private plane.
We can laugh, and we should, but we shouldn’t underestimate the power of marketing genius at work. This book will not make you rich - sorry. Much of it will bore you, especially if you’re fishing for clever management ideas. And in fairness, most of Dr. Obscured’s thoughts are sympathetic, bland, and far less malicious than my introduction suggests. If you dislike mundane sycophantic rambling, you probably will not enjoy “The Money Personality”.
Perhaps, like me, you’re willing to tolerate some rambling in patient pursuit of slow knowledge. Indeed there are things we can learn from Dr. Obscured. He was a practicing psychiatrist with deep access to the hearts and minds of the moneyed elite in late ’70s Manhattan. In a way, you might read it like a cultural artifact - a reminder of the sophisticated methods used by authors and publishers to exploit the desires of eager consumers.
“The Money Personality” was sold in the early days of a media marketing wave that brought us many pop-culture classics like “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” in ‘84, and “Bonfire of the Vanities” and “Wall Street” in ‘87. Dr. Obscured’s work provides an early and clear economic anthropological view into values of New York’s much celebrated and imitated urban elite.
Enjoy this selection from Obscured’s chapter “Walking the Tightrope for Fun and Profit”:
“The key to good tightrope walking is not a rigid posture but a flexible, supple gait. When the tightrope walker initiates his treacherous act, he knows he will temporarily lose his balance many times. His mind focuses on detecting and recovering from situations where he has lost control. If he stubbornly insists on maintaining flawless control, he will tumble to oblivion. The tightrope walker must assume the existence of periodic loss of control and must be poised for a quick recovery.”
Dynamic and flexible thinking will help you anticipate and react to inherent market risks.
So what?
So nothing. And that’s the point. The tightrope paragraph wasn’t written to teach anything. It’s a subtle way to make a casual reader feel like they’ve learned something. It wasn’t chosen at random, and it exemplifies the tone, style, and substance of the book. Like most of Dr. Obscured’s stories, the tightrope story carries his assertion that bold and exciting rich people think differently than other people. Rich people think differently, and you want to think (and act) like them because it’s better.
The danger here is explicit: if we fail to think and act like rich people, we’re destined to fall, to disappear into some sort of unknown and scary abyss.
It’s trite to observe that business books are marketed toward people that care about money and their careers. People dream of becoming rich, achieving financial security, and that’s all fine. I’m more interested in the way that heavy scientific methods are employed to promote pseudo-scientific assertions; how those assertions are reinforced in all forms of pop culture; and how it’s essential to remain mindful of these historically harmful ideas when consuming media of any kind.
The inside front cover reads:
“The Money Personality is a comprehensive guide to thinking rich that will show you how to develop the personality traits, practical instincts, and optimistic outlook on life that have made thousands of people the financial successes they are today. No book yet has told you as much about the mind of the rich and how it works.”
Excellent illustration of the techniques used by skilled copywriters and professional psychiatrists to concoct and sell a fantasy lifestyle - complete with a cute mental framework and vacuous boxes for easy checking.
Incidentally, did you see that film “Man on Wire” about Philippe Petit? Beautiful story with loads of great footage of the early ’70s Manhattan skyline shot from the top of the World Trade Center.
