“So it was really important that I do it, for myself … I mean I really considered it strongly last time”
A few weeks ago, I commented that Donald Trump had narcissistic personality disorder. My assertion was dismissed as “smug,” not “a good road” for political discourse, and “a pretty good way to cheapen and stigmatize people with mental illness.”One partisan claimed that Barack Obama could be diagnosed the same way. My goal was to improve our understanding and then prediction of the Republican nominee’s behavior. Diagnosing the mental health of the opposition’s candidate is not a viable political strategy because it’s rarely warranted (or effectivae, at least not since Nixon). Because his behavior makes no sense, a psychological analysis is warranted. And at this point, it’s too late to stop people from questioning Trump’s mental health for discussion to stop.
(CNN) New York Times columnist David Brooks says the Republican candidate for president appears to have “multiple personality disorders.” Michael Bloomberg prefers to imply that he is not “sane.” And on Sunday the billionaire Mark Cuban called Donald Trump “bats**t crazy.”
Though hardly a term of art when it comes to mental health, Cuban’s comment reflects widespread concern about the stability of the Republican nominee for president.
Eugene Robinson and Robert Kagan have also commented extensively. In fact, Trump’s behavior has been so weird in the last 72 hours that “Top Republicans and political allies to Donald Trump have been talking about an “intervention.”
What’s missing from these discussions is a useful framework and vocabulary. Mental health problems are many, varied, and complex, and colloquial descriptions oversimplify them and shortchange people who suffer from them. Words like “crazy” and “sane” are descriptively useless, not to mention offensive to the mentally ill. There is still enough stigma about mental health issues that we struggle to discuss them in public. Intellectually, we may accept the mental illness as a health issue, but we still discuss it as if were something at the very least slightly shameful. As a society, we need to do better. We can’t do so when we’re afraid to talk about mental health.
That’s not to say that we need psychological diagnoses to understand the vast majority of people, including politicians. Biographers, like Robert Caro, do a good job of conveying the psychological complexity of politicians without referring to the DSM. Psychological diagnoses aren’t requisite for understanding complex personalities, but if a politician is likely to have a psychological disorder, there is no reason to use it to describe him. In the case of Donald Trump’s case, the amount of evidence and commentary about his mental health warrants a discussion. Crude, colloquial terminology has limited explanatory power and does an injustice to people who are mentally ill. If Trump suffered from alcoholism, we wouldn’t hesitate to discuss it. It’s not any different to discuss the fact that he exhibits the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder explains his behavior better than anything else.
Most people are familiar with mood disorders, depression and bipolar disorder. Few people, however, are acquainted with personality disorders:
a type of mental disorder in which you have a rigid and unhealthy pattern of thinking, functioning and behaving. A person with a personality disorder has trouble perceiving and relating to situations and to people. This causes significant problems and limitations in relationships, social encounters, work and school.
Some people may have heard of Borderline Personality Disorder, which has been a trendy diagnosis. Most people have heard of psychopathy, though not by its clinical term anti-social personality disorder. Psychologists and a congresswoman have suggested that Donald Trump has narcissistic personality disorder.
Trump has the symptoms of a personality disorder. He has “trouble perceiving and relating to situations and people.” He’s the guy who tells a mom that he loves babies. He tells her not to leave, then changes his mind. He knows it’s right to say nice things about babies, and in my opinion, he was actually being honest about liking the baby. But then he changed his mind about the baby staying. Trump doesn’t admit to mistakes, so he made a joke about the mother not taking him seriously the first time he spoke. It wasn’t his fault that he told her to stay–it was hers–but he was forgiving her without admitting he was wrong. It was also bizarre that he told the veteran who gave him his Purple Heart that “I always wanted one of these.” An appropriate comment would have been reflected the veteran’s sacrifice, but Trump really has “trouble relating to situations and people.”
Trump definitely has “a rigid… pattern of thinking functioning and behaving.” Every encounter he has with people either ends with them telling him how great he is or attacking them. That’s why he attacked the Khan’s whose son was killed in Iraq. It made little sense politically to attack them. It made absolutely no sense to double or triple-down on them. Trump is only unpredictable as a politician. As a person, he is extremely predictable. He can’t let things go. An insult, an unfavorable situation. He will attack until he feels like he’s won.
Personality disorders are often difficult to treat because they are deeply integrated into a person’s view of reality. Unlike a depressed person, who can understand that her feelings are separable for reality, a person with a personality disorder has his sense of self deeply woven into a skewed view of reality. As a person with a narcissistic personality disorder, Trump and others with NPD have an “inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others.” Trump’s behavior, his callousness and his outright abuse of fellow primary candidates, shows a lack of empathy.
At this point, I don’t think I need to provide more examples of Trump’s behavior. By now, I think more people can supply them, but a list of symptoms from the DSM-5 should suffice:
- Having an exaggerated sense of self-importance
- Expecting to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it
- Exaggerating your achievements and talents
- Being preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate
- Believing that you are superior and can only be understood by or associate with equally special people
- Requiring constant admiration
- Having a sense of entitlement
- Expecting special favors and unquestioning compliance with your expectations
- Taking advantage of others to get what you want
- Having an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others
- Being envious of others and believing others envy you
- Behaving in an arrogant or haughty manner
Anyone who follows the news can name them. Trump’s co-author referred to him as a sociopath, which is also a personality disorder. As uncaring as Trump can be, he seems to have maintained good relationships with his children. He’s had three wives, but that isn’t that abnormal. He’s callous, but there’s evidence that he’s not uncaring.
Understanding Trump’s personality disorder allows us to predict his behavior. It reinforces the fact that Trump won’t change because he can’t. He will remain easily offended and fractious. He won’t be able resist responding. He will continue to attack people. He will also continue to get himself into socially awkward situations. He will also continue to lie to a degree we’ve never seen in modern politics. Even if Trump manages to tone it down for a while, he will eventually feel uncomfortable sticking to a script. The media will continue to question him, and Clinton’s surrogates will continue to attack him. Because he has a hard time “recognizing the needs and feelings of others,” there will be more Khan kerfuffles and crying baby issues. Trump has a very hard time seeing things from any perspective but his own. He’s not uncaring, and he seems to be good to people, particularly when they’re on his side, but he’s a deeply flawed man, whose extreme wealth has afforded him the ability to live with a personality disorder that might result in misery if he were just another middle-class guy.
So call it like is.
I agree with everything you’ve written here. My third wife and I will celebrate our fifteenth anniversary in December of 2017, so I have no issue at all with his three wives.
I find his claims about the imaginary Iran video that he claims to have seen exemplary of the disorders we are discussing here. I’m reminded of his earlier claims about seeing “thousands” of Muslims celebrating in the streets of New Jersey as the WTC came down. I have known people who “confabulate” like this — they sincerely believe they are telling the truth (because part of their disorder is their need for the world to actually BE as they perceive it), and what they say is pure nonsense with NO CONNECTION to actual things that actually happen.
The American public, or at least the mainstream media’s portrayal of the American public, apparently doesn’t care about any of this. While it’s true that his day-to-day polling has gone down a bit, he’s still very much in this race. I don’t understand how ANYBODY who pays even a little bit of attention to Mr. Trump can still support him — I’m ashamed for America that he has more than single-digit support in the polls.
My question, therefore, is what happens to all this if we elect him?
If the voters are foolish enough to put this man in the Oval Office, what do we do when his personality disorder causes him to order a nuclear strike rather than ask a mother to remove her baby?
When he starts to receive security briefings, what do we when he repeats their contents — or when he repeats invented gibberish and claims he got it from a secret briefing?
We elected Ronald Reagan even though he showed clear symptoms of early-stage Alzheimer’s disease during his 1984 campaign. I don’t think we’ll ever know whether or how the nation was protected from his advancing Alzheimer’s during his second term, but we somehow survived (there are many who suggest that George H. Bush was in fact our de facto President during most of Mr. Reagan’s second term).
What DO we do if Mr. Trump is elected President?
to Trump. At first, they didn’t think they could get elected and thought he was a joke. Then, they thought it was all part of an act. The media began to question itself, wondering how to cover a serial liar who disregarded the rules of politics. Now people are increasingly seeing that there’s truly something wrong with him, but they lack the vocabulary or understanding of psychology to discuss his mental health. It’s taken this long for reasonable people to start saying this guy is unfit.
One of the reasons is we don’t talk about mental health very well. Culturally, we make fun of celebrities who struggle with addiction (Robert Downey, Jr. and Amy Winehouse) or have psychological problems (Lindsay Lohan). These are people who deserve our sympathy, but they are ridiculed.
At this point, Clinton could start killing puppies on stage and she would probably be elected. I’m more worried about Trump quitting the race than getting elected.
The next question, Tom, is how did we get to the point at which a major political party has nominated someone debilitatingly, unhealthy mentally speaking?
Yeah, he’s a basket case all right.
But isn’t there enough Trump material to work with that we have to start playing the psychiatrist now?
And if so, did you read my reasoning? And if you read my reasoning, did you understand it? If yes to all these questions, why did you ignore it.
For an intelligent person, you don’t seem to spend a lot of time thinking before you comment.
Sorry. Even for Trump, any alleged personality disorder is between him and his doctor.
This is not the 1970s, where candidates can be trashed based on their real or imagined mental health history.
Sorry, wrong answer.
The President makes life-and-death decisions that affect the entire world. If a President is suffering from a personality disorder that, for example, makes it impossible for him to distinguish fact from fiction, right from wrong, or reality from fantasy, that President is incapable of holding the job.
You’re right, this is not the 1970s. We have a much greater ability to diagnose these disorders.
Hit “submit” too quickly …
voices, Andre would be less concerned with talking about it.
But you don’t have evidence of Trump hearing voices. You’re just attacking him for imagined mental health problems.
There are better ways to express your dislike of Trump that than tar and feathering him as a mental case.
Some on this list did have mental treatment in the past, and we don’t see why this disqualifies anyone for anything.
If you haven’t, then I think you’re being an A-hole. I address your criticisms in what I wrote. One of the things I said was that we have a problem discussing mental illness. You’re just proving my point. I don’t care about your uninformed opinion. I can’t learn from it. And if you’re not responding to what I wrote, then you are uninformed about my thinking.
I doubt there is a person on BMG who has not been touched by mental health issues in some way. I’ve had more than my fair share of involvement. I’ve been in therapist and psychiatrists offices. On more than one occasion, I’ve had to visit loved ones in psych wards. I know the pain associated with mental illness. This experience doesn’t mean I’m right, but it’s the reason I’m sensitive to people who suffer. I’m not expressing my dislike of Trump. Honestly, having gone through his diagnosis, I actually feel a little sorry for him.
Your understanding of mental health is poor. Psychological disorders vary from mild to severe and curable to treatable. Personality disorders are notoriously difficult to treat and get worse as an individual ages. Donald Trump has a personality disorder that interferes with his understanding social situations and that compels him to act in self-aggrandizing ways in virtually all situations. He’s functional only because he’s rich. His personal qualities, which derive from his disorder, mean he would be a terrible president.
A different psychological disorder wouldn’t necessarily disqualify anyone from anything. People with mental health problems accomplish important things all the time.
George W. Bush was a terrible President who caused untold suffering world-wide because of his callous incompetence, indifference, and ignorance.
Donald Trump is DANGEROUS. Even George W. Bush was (mostly) rational. Mr. Trump strikes me as the kind of man who, given the essentially unlimited power of the office, would find himself killing people on a whim. I think he’s the kind of man who would initiate a nuclear exchange “just because”.
His actions and words STRONGLY suggest that he is dangerously unfit to hold the office he seeks, in a way that I haven’t seen in my lifetime. I am, frankly, not sure America has EVER had a President as dangerously unbalanced as Mr. Trump.
Ever.
Hey Mark, it’s right there in your title: “Understanding Trump means understanding mental health”.
This is reducing the guy to his mental health condition, which we don’t know, but you think you can diagnose.
…And gee, thanks for calling me A-hole. We’re practically pals, now that you allow yourself to toss such friendly terms my way!
my head against the wall. I asked you several times if you actually read what I wrote. You never answered me. I apologize for the name calling, but if you’re going to engage me, engage me on what I wrote. I don’t mean I’m right, but if we’re practically pals (thanks for that characterization), you owe me the respect of arguing what I said.
Interpreting someone’s mental health is no different than interpreting something else. It requires evidence and reasoning.
I still say there is plenty to go on to make a case for “unfit” without playing pretend doctor like Sen. Frist and “diagnosing” someone we have only seen on TV.
This reduces mental illness, literally, to a personal attack which is very much something that people who suffer from mental illness and are not running for President do not need.
I understood the original post to be a suggestion about how to import some predictability about this very unpredictable opponent, and thus be able to construct a strategy, without necessarily going Eagleton on the guy. To that extent only, this is a good idea.
Maybe Donald Trump is a an ass because he is an ass, and not because he is mentally ill. Therefore, campaign against him because he is an ass, without playing armchair doctor Frist, which I regard as a truly detestable, repugnant and ugly campaign tactic.
Let me ask you to simply speculate. Let’s stipulate, for this discussion, that Mr. Trump has been elected. It’s early February of 2017, and Mr. Trump is the President. Let’s also stipulate that his behavior is unchanged from what we have seen all year.
I don’t think we’re talking about the man being an “ass”. This is a man who loudly and repeatedly asserted that he “saw” videos of Muslims dancing for joy in Jersey City immediately after 9/11 — videos that don’t exist, because the event he describes never happened (except in his own mind). This week, he claimed repeatedly that he had seen videos of cash being unloaded from a plane and delivered to the Iranians. He claimed that the Iranians were responsible for this video.
Suppose there is an analogous situation — something akin to the Cuban Missile Crisis — a few months after he takes office.
You seem to be saying that it is absolutely off-limits — “a truly detestable, repugnant, and ugly campaign tactic — to discuss his increasingly bizarre and irrational behavior.
What do you think will happen, and what do you think we should do, if this behavior is repeated while he is President?
Suppose, hypothetically speaking, that he DOES have some sort of disorder. Are you REALLY saying, like others here, that we literally can’t talk about it?
That sounds like dangerous denial to me.
about with Bill Frist. I addressed your previous thought in my opening paragraph. Needless to say, we disagree. And your criticism is ad hominem and again supports my assertion that we can’t handle a discussion about mental health.
WTF! I haven’t written a personal attack! Both you and Andre! Where am I attacking him? I’m explaining him. I’m not offering a tactic. As far as playing armchair doctor goes, the value of my interpretation should be based on how well it works and how well its supported, not that it makes you think of Bill Frist.
Frist was the “doctor” who “diagnosed” Terry Schiavo by watching TV in order to justify government intrusion into her medical care. I found the entire affair to be odious in the extreme.
It does not appear to me to be necessary to make the case that TRump suffers from mental illness in order to make the case that he is unfit for office.
Ms. Schiavo was most definitely under competent medicare care. Ms. Schiavo was not a government official. Mr. Frist’s behavior was, in my view, odious and and grossly inappropriate because of these two (among many other) factors.
Mr. Trump is not, to my knowledge, under medical care. His medical report, when it was released last December, was widely dismissed as a fake — among other things, the language of the report is NOT consistent with current medical practices.
The government certainly has very real and valid interest in monitoring the health of the President. You still have not answered my questions upthread about why voters do not have a correspondingly real and valid interest in a candidate’s health before he or she is elected.
While perhaps it is “unnecessary” to make the case that he is unfit for office because of the myriad of other reasons he presents, I still argue that SOME competent professional (and, in my view, that excludes Mr. Bornstein, the author of the widely-publicized “health report” of Mr. Trump last December) should examine Mr. Trump if he were elected.
I would, frankly, prefer to avoid the clear constitutional crisis that will surely unfold if Mr. Trump were diagnosed by such a professional after being elected. I actually have a similar concern about the security clearance of Mr. Trump — what do we DO if Mr. Trump is shown to be a national security risk?
As distasteful as all this is today, isn’t it better to face these realities today rather than after he is elected?
…of how well the forced incapacity provisions of the 25th amendment actually work in practice. It has never been tried.
but my comment went to the bottom.
I did not intend to accuse you of attacking Trump.
I read (present tense) the original post as a suggestion as to how the HRC campaign might try to get a little predictability for this very un-predictable, even erratic opponent, in order not to spend September and October off-balance, reacting to this and that. To that extent, I agree.
I would not, however, be in support of a campaign theme that DJT has undiagnosed and untreated mental illness. For me, that just crosses a line into straightforward villainous campaigning. I am going to assume that he says things that are untrue because he is intentionally trying to deceive people– that is, a liar. Similarly, I am going to assume that the off-the-cuff policy making, are intentional and targeted toward a specific subset of voters.
These things make him unfit for POTUS because he would be a bad POTUS. I do not see how trying to explain and pathologize these traits adds anything whatsoever to the campaign.
First, it looks foolish and desperate. Remember: Hillary’s glasses prove she has a severe neurological disorder? Its comes off as pure “24-hour News channel commentator” bullshit.
Second, it just strikes me as low. TRump is a liar and bully because he is a liar and a bully, and trying to smear mental illness with Donald Trump is unfair to everyone other than Donald Trump.
Yes that is the “stigma” argument. And yes, I have seen the argument above, that those making the “stigma” argument might themselves be the ones who stigmatize mental illness, etc. I simply do not agree with this argument, because, in form, it is indistinguishable from right-wing efforts to defend the ugliest aspects of their own campaign. To wit: just a few weeks ago, the Trump campaign used an anti-Hillary graphic, straight from a neo-Nazi website, complete with a a star of David. The defense: why, that’s just a sheriff star, and anyone who saw something anti-Semitic in using that star in a graphic about money grubbing is the real anti-Semite. Also, see any one of the great many “Obama is the real racist; Obama is the most divisive president ever” arguments that have been made since 2009.
S-tom is right that the mental illness argument is bubbling up here and there. I would be disappointed to find that these here-and-theres are connected to the HRC campaign in any way, because I would find that to be simply repugnant.
need to chum the waters of mental illness and Trump. People all over the spectrum are wondering what’s wrong with Trump’s state of mind. Trump does an extraordinary number of things that don’t make any sense for him or his campaign. He’s damaging his brand. His show was dropped. Cadillac pulled its sponsorship of a golf tournament at one of his courses. There’s no 11-dimensional chess here. Trump is pursuing an irrational course of action that begs for explanation.
David Cay Johnston just wrote a book on Trump. I just listened to an interview with him. He doesn’t diagnose Trump, but he uses the word narcissist. Talks about people either worship Trump or get punished. Did you know Trump asked George H.W. Bush to choose him as a running mate?
I can’t agree with you on the smear aspect. As far as I’m concerned, and probably any mental health diagnosticians (off the record), he has NPD. My assertion is well-supported by his public behavior and it matches the diagnostic symptoms. It’s true as far as I’m concerned. I’m skeptical that people can be smeared with the truth. People say worse things about Bob DeLeo knowing substantially less. In the future, I will write about Trump supporters, I will know less about them but I will make some generalizations about how they think. Will I be smearing them?
In terms of usefulness, I can respect your point of view on labeling Trump as NPD.
1968, not the 1970s.
And good job answering my questions. Even people who graduate from MIT can say stupid things, I guess.
Most people who fit the descriptions of NPD and related personality disorders will never be diagnosed as that. They don’t think there is anything wrong with themselves. Why would they ever go to a psychiatrist? It isn’t even clear if it should be considered an “illness”. There is no evidence that this is a brain chemistry issue like depression or bipolar disorder. There is no medical treatment whatsoever, and talk therapy isn’t very effective, in the rare event that someone actually agrees to do it. Still, it is a useful shorthand for describing his personality characteristic and behavior.
In any case, while I do think that he clearly fits the criterion for NPD (and my psychiatrist friends agree), it really doesn’t matter all that much, because it is the behavior itself that should be troubling regardless of what label you put on it. The important point here is that the way he has been acting is not some clever con. This is how he really is, and no one should expect him to change if he were to become President.
The Republican base is nuts, too. They don’t consider it to be a disqualifying condition.
Republicans are breaking with Trump. It’s pretty shocking. We still have 90 days or so to go. I expect we’ll see more somewhat reasonable people reject Trump.
The Republicans created this monster by courting the right-wing and the fringe for votes. Trump is the product of willful ignorance and racism. I’ve been watching some Fox News since the conventions. It’s shocking to see how divorced from reality the show is. Krugman talked about this issue this morning:
Most Trump supporters will NOT defect. They’ve got too much at stake in feeling like they are right, but every year their number grows smaller. Some of them may join our cause when they see a lack of alternatives. It’s more likely their children will.
In terms of the election, Trump still has a chance of winning. It’s small, but it’s still a chance. Not much we can do about that.
This is their guy. They love him.
always will be those people. I still have a lot of faith in the generation now in school.
The generation demonstrating was going to be different. Now we’re in our 60’s talking about how the generation now in school….
at the end of the 1960s.
If you mean that this generation will have and create their own problems, you’re right. Every generation does. The Greatest Generation, after all, also gave us the Vietnam War.
But I’ve been teaching now for 24 years and have witnessed a change in the kids. They are kinder and more tolerant.
I’d suggest that it is likely sufficient to observe Trump’s actual behavior and to make useful generalizations about it that provide explanatory and predictive power. For example, I think that Josh Marshall’s discussion of “dominance politics” explains a great deal.
A lot of the personality disorder stuff has always seemed rather vague to me. There was a move within my extended family for us all to read about the Borderline Personality because a certain person was said to suffer from it, and, I must say, what a vague, quasi-scientific catch-all of symptoms everything I read about that was. Diagnostic handles are likely most useful for a therapist if he or she is considering a treatment plan. I’m not sure what we gain from thinking about a treatment plan for Mr. Trump, whose problems such as they are being characterological are unlikely ever to be treated.
After all, it is not his illusions that we need to cure.
It is the illusions of the electorate.
Like you, for family reasons, I read a book about it once, the intro for which came right out and said that once you read about the symptoms you might think you see evidence in everyone.
I agree with you that ADD is over-diagnosed in school-age boys and under-diagnosed in school-age girls. Nevertheless, I have family members who suffered from it, and who immediately and obviously benefited from the medication regimen proscribed for them. These were children who could not get through a mainstream fourth-grade school day, and who with treatment finished a four-year college and are doing fine as young adults.
While ADD may be mis-diagnosed, it is nevertheless VERY real.
…and it certainly was real in my family. I also think we all from time to time exhibit “symptoms”. Everyone’s mind wanders from time to time and I think the book was trying to caution against making too much of it.
any different than interpreting any other phenomena?
In this case, America has no need to cure Donald Trump. We instead need to keep him out of the Oval Office.
Suppose a group of us go to a party in a car driven by Ralph (a recovering alcoholic), and Ralph gets rip-roaring drunk. We don’t have to cure his alcoholism. We do need to protect ourselves by ensuring that Ralph does not get behind the wheel of the car we are all riding home in.
Like it or not, whomever wins the November election is President of all of us. He or she assumes the mantle of the most powerful position in the world, with sufficient military power to destroy humanity several times over.
However “vague” or “quasi-scientific” the literature is (as a scientist and engineer, I share your criticism), it is nevertheless the best we can do. As an engineer, I must frequently work with terrible data about little-understood phenomena. That means we learn to do the best we can with the information we have.
The information we have shows compellingly that SOMETHING is seriously broken about Mr. Trump. For the purposes of this question (“Is this man a danger to America and the world as President?”), it doesn’t matter whether the diagnosis is “Borderline Personality Disorder”, “Narcissistic Personality Disorder”, “Cluster-B Personality Disorder”, or any other term-of-art from the psychological literature. We are not considering a treatment plan.
We are choosing a President, and we are protecting ourselves from a man who is obviously and dangerously disturbed.
reply. This is a genuine issue that I considered, though my assertion was genuinely debatable. Does a diagnosis actually help our understanding of Trump? I think it helps in a couple of ways: 1) it promotes a psychological understanding of people, rather than people throwing around terms like “crazy” and “unhinged.” 2) it neatly wraps up evidence about Trump into one concept.
I also wanted to create a disruption in how we talk about this topic.
Borderline personality disorder is/was overdiagnosed. Multiple Personality Disorder was another one. It was fashionable to diagnose kids with bipolar disorder. ADD is overdiagnosed. Personality itself has been questioned.
When I talk to people about this, I keep it simple: He displays characteristics of NPD. I can’t state for sure he has it (and neither can my mental health professional spouse). But it is useful to explain and predict his behavior.
And yes, let’s keep the “crazy” etc. out of it. As someone (like many of you) who have close relatives w/ varying types and levels of mental illness (and a bit of an anxiety thing myself), use of such terms is insulting.
You are basing your diagnosis on a series of news clips deliberately orchestrated to create the maximum shock effect. You have never met or spoken to the man but feel comfortable projecting your amateur medical model upon him.
Obama and Clinton (s) are narcissists as well; to some extent, it is a requirement for running for office. Trump says only he can fix it, and you freak out, yet Clinton and Obama say the same thing and you nod your heads and work harder because you share their (perceived) goals. When they betray those goals, you rush to identify others who prevented them rather than admit you were snookered (Gitmo, cough, cough…).
Trump is capitalizing on this. I have said that the Supreme punishment for him would be to get elected, and have to face his supporters in 18 months and explain why he HASN’T changed everything.
He has his problems, but they aren’t health related. Not every thing in the world you don’t like us subject to medical or economic solutions.
other people on BMG (Gitmo, cough, cough…) and ignoring the large number of people who are saying the same thing I’ve posted here.
Your freak show of a political party has nominated a mentally unsuited clown who should to be anywhere near the presidency, and you’ve have to drag Obama and Clinton into it. It’s sad but partisanship is a last intellectual refuge, but I guess that’s all you’ve got on this.
There’s always been some evidence that some far-from-the-average level of self-regard is required for one to be successful politically. In a non-technical sense, one could call that narcissism.
I doubt you were aiming to print a line of bumper stickers touting Mr Trump’s likely psychopathologies (“Narcissists for Trump”, “Only a Man with a Character Disorder Can Give Our Country Safety and Order”, “Trump, Better Than Mere Neurosis”, “Trump: Banish Illegal Migrants and Inner Conflict”)
If one were, though, the objection here (“You have never met or spoken to the man”) is typical of what one might encounter. Accusations of confirmation bias, of cherry picking, of falsely claiming to be an expert, and of the mistakes of experts would surely follow.
I wrote this post, but I also hoped people would read what I’ve written.
Aside from the lack of careful reading, there are a lot of ironies in the pushback:
1. At BMG, many of us speak about issues about which we are not credentialed experts. How many of us, for example, are knowledgeable and credentialed in health care policy? How many of have rather strong opinions on the subject? How many people call them out on the fact?
2. Credentials don’t make an expert. We have several attorneys on BMG. How many of them talked about the case law that governs police use of lethal force? None, I think. Who did? Me. I’m not an attorney. Yet no one called me an “armchair lawyer.”
3. Ad hominem and slippery slope opposition. CMD didn’t call me an “armchair psychiatrist,” but he implied as much. That’s inoffensive, but it’s ad hominem. He has also said that talking about the mental health of Donald Trump would bring us back to the days of Bill Frist, which I don’t recall. That’s how slippery the slope is there. Everybody is already doing it isn’t necessarily a justification–in fact, in other cases, it’s an excuse–but if everyone is talking about it the slope has already been built.
Analyzing Trump’s psyche has become a national pastime. In fact, the American Psychiatric Association issued a reminder to its members that it reminded its members that “It’s okay to talk about psychiatric issues — but not okay to diagnose people you haven’t treated.” This is evidently referred to as “The Goldwater Rule.”
4. Both CMD and Peter Porcupine accused me of attacking Trump. I didn’t, I provided an explanation of him. (I’m very capable of attacking him). I don’t think I made any disparaging statements of him.
5. Interpreting my explanation as an attack suggests that CMD and PP still regard mental health as stigma, which is something I addressed in my post.
In short, the rules of evidence here are pretty clear. Most of us abide by them. We provide citations and quotes. I could make a list of evidence for Trump having NPD, but I think everyone could. The fact that so many people are wondering about his mental health provides a prima facie case.
P.S. You should write bumperstickers for a living. Those are priceless.
If one grants that Mr. Trump has a personality disorder, perhaps from Cluster B, the dramatic ones that include narcissistic character disorder, then everything Mr. Trump asserts becomes vulnerable to ad hominem arguments. (“He’s just saying that because of his character disorder.”) I suppose this is a standard way in which the mentally ill get stigmatized: they become their diagnoses.
It’s somewhat of a stretch to say that compiling evidence of narcissistic personality disorder does not constitute an attack. One could argue that it is even more dangerous and disqualifying, than, say, Senator Eagleton’s bouts with depression. It’s an attack in that it surely raises the question of his suitability for office.
*
Truly, as you write, analyzing The Donald has become a national passtime. If he loses in November, what will we do with ourselves? We”ll have eaten the chicken and there will only be bones on our plate to suck on, like Trump University — and maybe Trump Seminars. Possibly we’ll still be able to discuss questions about Melania Trump’s possible visa violations. But that’ll seem so meager after the current national reality TV show in which today we all have a part.
All true.
I’m not clear about your argument, though. We have irrefutable evidence that Mr. Trump has:
1. Loudly and assertively claimed to have seen videos that don’t exist
2. Argued that we should use nuclear weapons in a first strike, and argued that we should not.
3. Argued that we should pull out of NATO and that we should not
4. Told a mother he “loved” her crying baby and that she could remain in an event, then told her seconds later that he was “joking” and that she should leave
The behavior we have all seen from Mr. Trump is aberrant, irrational, and even delusional.
It sounds as though you and others are arguing that we cannot describe this behavior as symptomatic of a personality disorder. What would then have us do?
Do you ask us to ignore it? Do you ask us to treat these as multiple independent actions that just coincidentally happen to come together in the same person at the same time?
Of COURSE this is an “attack”, in the sense that in my opinion any rational person will conclude that Mr. Trump is dangerously delusional. I don’t much care how we describe it:
– Some variant of clinical language
– “Bat-shit crazy”
– Drunk and disorderly
– Incoherent and irrational
However we want to describe it, the man should not be near ANY weapon — never mind the US military and nuclear arsenal.
So please — if we are not to use the relatively benign clinical language of the thread-starter, then please provide some alternative for expressing the same clearly apparent behaviors.
That might work.
Ronald Reagan, at his worst, was not remotely similar to Mr. Trump. It’s true that he seemed genuinely befuddled at times during the 1984 debates, and it’s true that (as I recall) he fell asleep at some important overseas event.
Mr. Reagan never EVER behaved in a way that led me to think that he was delusional in the way that Mr. Trump FREQUENTLY behaves.
I can’t remember a presidential candidate in my lifetime who demonstrates the positively bizarre and delusional behavior that we frequently see from Mr. Trump.
During is entire presidency, he talked about things he had seen that in fact never happened. Or described scenes from movies as if they were from real life, or had happened to him.
Not to mention things like the arms for hostages deals.
Reagan’s delusions were a matter of public record. There was even a 60 Minutes segment on his constant failure to distinguish between real life and movies.
Since his administration there has been a concerted campaign to make us forget all that. But check the record.
Now that you mention it, I do remember those things. Perhaps I’m unduly influenced by his public persona of “Mr. Nice Guy”, especially in comparison to Mr. Trump.
But it mostly seems to me that much of it is post-hoc makeweight by the left. The guy used tidbits from movies here and there as an illustrative anecdote, and this became “HE CAN”T DISTINGUISH REALITY FROM FICTION OMG.” He had a policy– a terrible policy, from the perspective of No Nukes people– that imagined the possibility of a nuclear umbrella–and the “Star Wars” moniker came from those opponents. A lot more came from the shitty Morris biography that featured fictional characters.
In addition, I think that the notion that Reagan had dementia for his entire Presidency comes a bit from the hyper-partisan and polarized atmosphere that has been the political weather since the mid-90s. The GOP smeared the hell out of Clinton, but they had no figure of comparable stature against whom to retaliate, other than their revered former President.
The distinction between Reagan and TRump could not be more stark, simply as a matter of temperament. Reagan was amazingly charming because the usual butt of his jokes was himself. Can you imagine Trump ever making a joke at his own expense? Secondly, while I am sure that you would contend (and in some instances I might agree) that some/many of Reagan’s policies were cruel, he was never personally vindictive or cruel in the way that Trump is, every single day. The result was a sunny, optimistic “Morning in America” persona that could not be more different from the tone of the TRump campaign.
One thing that the two share is an understanding of the theatrics of politics.
He did more than use “tidbits from movies here and there”, he made statements that left the clear impression that he believed (or wanted others to believe) that he flew aircraft in WWII.
Wherever the “Star Wars” moniker came from, the immediate opposition to his “nuclear umbrella” came from staid places like the pages of “Scientific American”. The proposal — especially in the form in which he first presented it — utterly failed even the most superficial sanity checks, such as simple energy balance calculations.
In order to succeed, even in the most optimal scenarios (no countermeasures, ideal target recognition and tracking, all targets launched simultaneously, etc.), his proposed system would have to focus THOUSANDS OF TIMES the power of the entire North American power grid on the targets and do so within the short (less than 5 minute, as I recall) window before the Soviet missiles MIRVed (each missile separates into several warheads that are separately targeted and delivered). It required focused-energy weapons that did not exist, even in principle, at the time.
Beyond this, it suffered two catastrophic weaknesses:
1. The defense system was completely disabled by simply covering the missiles with a mirrored surface.
2. The VERY expensive defense system was easily overcome by the simultaneous launch of dozens of MUCH less expensive dummy missiles along with the real ones.
If even a handful (5-10) missiles penetrated the shield, life in America as we then knew it was over.
If there was even a hint of progress towards making the defense system operational, that would be a strong incentive for the Soviets to launch everything they have before the defense system could be made operational.
You didn’t need to be a leftist “No Nukes” activist to conclude that the entire exercise was both futile, insane and IMMENSELY dangerous to America.
I don’t know anyone who says he had dementia “for his entire Presidency”. I’ve said, because I think it’s true, that he showed clear signs of early-stage Alzheimer’s during the 1984 debates, and I think he was effectively incompetent during much of his second term.
My attitudes and opinion of Ronald Reagan were set during his campaign and administration, thank you very much, and had NOTHING to do with the endless attacks launched by the GOP during the Clinton era.
In fact, I suggest you have the causality of that period inverted. I think the GOP went after Bill Clinton as payback for what the GOP felt was the “railroading” of Richard Nixon. To the extent that Reagan played a role, I think the GOP wanted America to believe that the Iran-Contra scandal was another “political” witch-hunt by the Democrats.
I think the GOP therefore “retaliated” with their own political witch-hunt.
Without nuance, the thread is something like this:
Usch: This kind of attack is problematic as porcupine illustrates indirectly in her response.
Bail: I didn’t really attack him; I’m just making psychological observations.
Usch: You did so attack him.
mark-bail has complained a number of times about people not reading the original diary. So I buckled down & did that. I confess I skimmed it the first time.
Without nuance: Obama sucks, Romney rocks, or Obama rocks, Romney sucks. Dialog without nuance might produce bumper-stickers. It is very unlikely to produce anything else of substance.
Without nuance: Donald Trump is bat-shit crazy, or deranged, or delusional.
With nuance: Donald Trump appears to suffer from …
Presumably we can agree that the reason we have nuance is so that we can have discussions about difficult issues. I’m therefore not sure why we should rule out nuance for this very difficult issue.
Whichever way we go, this dangerously disturbed man must NOT be allowed to become President.
You’re quite missing the point as my comment was not about nuance at all. It was about how your previous comment lost the thread of the exchange. Perhaps, like me, you’re skimming too much and reading too little.
In any case, at no point was I arguing against attacking Trump or against trying to understand him by any available framework of ideas.
I’m specifically responding to this paragraph of yours:
I, perhaps mistakenly, read this as a suggestion that we should avoid this entire line. That was the origin of the response I wrote this morning.
Similarly, my comment about nuance is a response to your 1:19p comment, in which you seemed to reduce this thread to an dispute between you and mark-bail about whether or not he attacked Mr. Trump.
At this point, I must confess that I’m truly confused about what you’re writing here. In my view, the thread-starter has made a cogent and calmly-worded argument about the mental health of Mr. Trump. Several participants have objected to even discussing whether or not the behavior we all see is attributable to a serious disorder.
I got the distinct impression that you were joining those participants. Perhaps I am mistaken. I tried to say, in my 8:27a comment, that I agree with your observations and that I’m unclear about your argument. As the day progressed, I grew more unclear.
I agree that I am “quite missing the point” of your commentary. You mentioned “nuance”, not me. Perhaps you might try a summary, perhaps using different words, so that I can better understand you.
interpretation. Evidence against his candidacy? Yes. Evidence against him be a terrible person undeserving of our sympathy? No. I guess I see an attack as passing a somewhat moral judgement on someone or promoting assertions lacking in truth. There’s a measure of unfairness in an attack.
Oh I don’t know. Mr. Trump certainly has enough people to feel sympathy for him, and all sorts of family to salve all sorts of wounds. And this is an election for our highest office. A bad President can cause an awful lot of harm.
We should certainly be able to attack Mr. Trump. Isn’t that what negative ads do?
attacks. I just didn’t make one.
…refers to when Sen. Bill Frist, M. D. of Tennessee was the GOP Leader and announced that he had determined Terry Schiavo was well enough to keep alive despite having not personally visited her, let alone treat her, based solely on a video he had seen of her.
In Florida, miraculously enough, there was clear cut law stating who had authority to make end of life decisions. Spouse, then parent, then sibling, etc. It was clear and understandable.
Jeb! and his minions like Frist went on a diagnosis binge claiming that the poor woman was exhibiting signs of life as spotted by her devastated parents who didn’t like their son in law.
At the end of the day, an autopsy proved that the son was right and the parents were wrong. But that was not the issue.
Even if she HAD been marginally alive, there was a clear statute which they chose to ignore and attempted to countermand. Right there, that made Jeb! unfit in my mind to be President of a nation of laws governed by process. This was not an emergency, as months of litigation proved, but a philosophical debate. I violently argued with a pro-life friend about this (a security guard asked if everything was ok) but he has now accepted my point that law should be adhered to or changed, or we just devolve into situational ethics from the rule of law.
diagnosis to say George W. was unfit for office. He didn’t display any symptoms. Many of us said he was stupid, though we had no access to his IQ. I don’t think I focused on Trump’s unfitness for office, so much as a gave an psychological diagnosis. This is/was not difficult by the way. We can argue about the value the diagnosis add.
The entire Schiavo thing was odious. It was pure political pandering to the pro-life movement. Frist was certainly unethical. As a doctor, he had not examined Schiavo. He could not know the state of her brain because there was no way to know. The evidence he cited was not nearly sufficient for a diagnosis. It’s not unethical for me to diagnose Trump because I’m not a professional.
He’s just an asshole
It’s a meaningless word.
Assholes don’t have to be out of touch with reality. Trump is not in touch with reality. Listen to the David Cay Johnston interview I linked to elsewhere. He doesn’t diagnose him, but he says two things: 1) Trump knows nothing. He doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t even know things about business. 2) Trump is a narcissist.