In a chapter in the Alpha Male Syndrome, published by Harvard Business School Press in October 2006, authors Kate Luderman and Eddie Erlandson wrote: “Human history is the story of alphas, those indispensable powerhouses who take charge, conquer new worlds and move heaven and earth to make things happen.”
We all know an alpha male or a dozen; don’t we? Glance through the newspapers or watch TV and it’s invariably an alpha male who’s grabbing the headlines. As politicians signing historic accords, as businessmen announcing new business ventures, or as sports heroes scoring winning goals — wherever we look, alpha males dominate the landscape.
However, all is not hunky dory in their world. “The healthy ones are natural leaders trusted by colleagues, respected by competitors, revered by employees and adored by Wall Street. But other alpha males are risks to their organisations, and sometimes to themselves,” say Luderman and Erlandson. Why? “Because their greatest strengths have turned into tragic flaws.”
Silvio Berlusconi, Dominique Strauss Kahn, Tiger Woods — can there be three men who better epitomise the alpha male in the worlds of politics, finance and sport? Add to that list Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner and you have a posse of classic alpha males — males who have unfortunately indulged in spectacularly self-defeating behaviour. Look at their careers and the almost suicidal risks they took: would anyone in one’s right mind have sex in the White House? Or send compromising pictures of himself to strangers? Or engage with a small army of mistresses?
Is the alpha male an endangered species compelled to self-destruct? According to the theory of runaway evolution as expounded by Frits Staal: “The peacock’s tail, the enlarged claw of the male fiddler crab and the machismo of members of the human species are all exaggerated features that may cause injury to individuals that display them but attract females.”
Are men like Berlusconi, Woods, Schwarzenegger, Clinton, Weiner and all their hapless ilk simply alpha males driven to risky (and often inexplicably dumb) behaviour by an alpha gene gone rogue? Will their compulsion to display extravagantly self-destructive behaviour to prove their machismo ultimately do them in?
Because let’s face it what we are witnessing today is a phenomenon of alpha males destroying their long-standing and carefully-created careers and lives due to their runaway, or uncontrollable, sexual impulses. Men like Berlusconi and Woods have followed their alpha impulses into the field of sexual dynamics, displaying an aggressive and compulsive need for sexual domination, at grave risk to their careers and to themselves.
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The dictionary describes the word machismo as being of Spanish and Portuguese origin which illustrates qualities of heightened masculinity, and is an attitude of enhanced virility — one of the dominant and driving traits of an alpha male. But Luderman and Erlandson argue: “Those positive leadership qualities constitute one-half of the alpha syndrome. The other half consists of a package of not-so-positive symptoms that leads to everything from minor business problems to full-fledged organisational catastrophes and personal disasters.”
Alfred Adler, the Austrian medical doctor and psychotherapist and founder of the school of individual psychology, who along with Freud and Jung is one of pillars of modern psychology, was among the first to expound in favour of feminism, making the case that power dynamics between men and women (and the relationship between masculinity and femininity) are intrinsic to understanding human nature.
In an era of post-feminism and new feminism and hyper gender political awareness, has the alpha male passed his sell-by date? Is he programmed to self-destruct by the very component that gives him his leadership and dominating qualities? I think there is a case for this.
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