Institutional Financial Therapy: Reframing Executive Behavior, Capital Decisions, and Systemic Risk
摘要
This chapter introduces Institutional Financial Therapy (IFT) as a diagnostic and governance framework designed to surface the emotional, symbolic, and identity-based forces that shape executive behavior and capital allocation at scale. While conventional financial therapy focuses on individual money behaviors, IFT expands its scope to boardrooms, billionaires, and capital markets spaces where personal emotional volatility becomes institutionally consequential. Drawing from behavioral finance, emotional psychology, masculinity studies, and systems theory, the chapter argues that identity-driven fragility among corporate executives and billionaires often manifests as symbolic overreach: hostile takeovers, empire-building, mass layoffs, or erratic strategic pivots. IFT does not call for therapeutic buy-in. It builds structural feedback systems, such as Script-Identity Forensics and Symbolic Signal Tracing, which identify volatility without requiring introspection. Through the Couch-and-Sword Model, the framework embeds emotional reflexivity into corporate governance, converting unacknowledged affect into measurable risk variables. Merging narrative analysis with affective computing, IFT proposes a post-rational governance model where emotional distortion is not pathologized but systemically intercepted. The chapter also outlines the design of Institutional Counter-Mirroring Reviews and the Executive Symbolic Risk Index (ESRI) as mechanisms for exposing identity fragility without violating consent. In this light, IFT is not a therapeutic intervention but a systems upgrade: one that positions emotional literacy, narrative drift, and symbolic volatility as core governance concerns. It reframes fiduciary duty as the obligation to govern affect and calls for a recalibration of executive accountability in an age where financial decisions are as emotionally coded as they are economically calculated.