in an inexplicably testy environment – I have been in this forum a few months, and haven’t seen much of that 😉 However, I would like to disagree with you and maybe this will lead to a better debate 🙂 (hoping).

1. Given the 10s of thousands of people that go in and out of marketing every year, its impossible to put them all in the same category – especially with respect to personality traits.
2. You ARE speaking to people(mostly – I have not been in an marketing) that HAVE changed. So I don’t think anybody here will tell you that the marketings are the only ones that need to change.
3. You do not seem to take into account the fact that most people are not recruited into marketings by the marketing, but by friends, family and other trusted entities – To ignore the power of persuasion of people close to you is IMHO oversimplifying the scenario. So, its simply not true that people get into marketing just because they have some dark skeletons in their cupboard or because they need to fundamentally change something. If anything, I think a lot of people that get into marketing do so because they readily trust the judgement of people close to them – and this is what the marketing companies exploit.
4. I will grant you that most people in marketings (that I have come across – pl. note disclaimer) seem to readily participate in disingenuous schemes like “fake it till you make it”. So in that sense I concede your point.
5. Finally, people come to marketing from every conceivable field – including people with very high self-esteem, people who are already extremely wealthy, people who are already successful in other fields, home builders hoping to do some good and earn some cash while at home, and also others who are just hoping to get rich using this scheme. While nobody here will argue with you that marketings are evil, it is impossible to characterize all the people who get in as any one thing – unless its the hope that they can make it big with marketing. In fact, its not even true that marketings destroy your self-esteem in every case – I find thats not true either.

good luck!