August 16, 2016

Vetting Trump


When can we write about something else than Trump being unhinged?

Ethicist and lawyer Jack Marshall’s blog.
Last month: Terry Tao’s blog
My photo blog is here. +++ Links to all the several dozen articles I cross-posted to Daily Kos with comments are here.

Another excellent blog, this by a psychoanalyist:
Nazi/Schmazi.. As Long as Donald Trump Love His
Mother
Ethics AlarmsEthics Alarm blog of the month
Last month’s blog of the month: Terry Tao




Sunday, Aug. 20, 2016
Telling it like it is:

HUGE! In meeting with Hispanic advisers, Trump hints at 'legalization' of undocumented immigrants


While this is indeed news or a sort, it seems more a case of Trump shamelessly bullshitting a roomful of his few Hispanic backers than any so-called "reversal" of policy.  From Daily Kos
Chart of the week:
From Republicans set to loose control of Senate







Saturday, Aug. 20, 2016

Afternoon edition:
Read Daily Beast article here
There are two stories here. One of course is the misogynist crude language used by the man who is now one of Trump’s closest advisors. I suppose if asked about it he could say he was actually being the opposite of a sexist pig because he could have said the Republican leaders in Congress were pricks. I suppose calling a man the c-word is more on an insult than calling him a prick. I mean, it’s like calling them girly boys ten times over.

The second story is about why the C word is spelled “C**ts” in the Daily Beast headline but the word is spelled out five times in the story.

I posted this on Daily Kos and there have been 81 comments.

Morning edition


The real reason Manafort was fired
Bonus Blog and First blog on the Kos Recommended List
 Why do Trumpians keep letting
 themselves get skewered by Joy Reid?


Eric Trump wants you to believe he was fired because daddy Donald didn’t want to be distracted by the sane one on the crazy bus, Paul Manafort, as he fought off allegations he was a Russian agent.  (Link)
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This is a convenient and plausible lie. We know that Trump has proved he is loyal to reprehensible members of his inner asylum sanctum as long as they don’t prove to be too big an embarrassment. The prime example of this is Corey Lewandowski. If they are good at boot licking they get to stay.
The real reason Trump fired Manafort is that he wasn’t willing to be a toady. Men like Manafort don’t grovel. He was never Trump’s kind of man. Trump felt no kinship with him. 
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Manafort broke the cardinal rule, I mean the absolute number one rule, by urging Trump not to be Trump.
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You tell a reasonably normal person, even a run of the mill narcissist, and they don’t do the equivalent of firing you.  Is Trump normal in how he handles anger?  Look it up here.
Manafort probably talked as if he knew more about politics than Trump did, and broke another major rule: never say or even hint you may be smarter than Trump.
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Manafort’s shoes were large enough to have to be filled by three people: Roger Ailes, Steve Bannon (of Breightbart), and Kellyanne Conway (read about them on Rolling Stone). Ailes and Bannon are peas of a pod with Trump. Conway is a real professional who has apparently said she will let Trump be Trump.
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However, her hand can already be seen in trying to stop Trump from being Trump. It’s likely that she wrote the non-apology “I regret some things” lines in his recent teleprompter speech. You could see that these words might as well have been Trump quoting Chaucer. He didn’t believe them and obviously his audience was in on the joke.
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Conway is the odd “girl” out in this men’s locker room cabal led by Trump. She certainly don’t fit in with any of Trump’s female surrogates. The only thing that she has in common with Omarosa and Kristina Peirsen is that she is female presumably menstruates (and we know how Trump feels about that).  
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Trump has replaced the qualified Manafort with the qualified Conway who has already broken the promise she’d let Trump be the great Trump. 
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How long would that fact that she’s Trumpian eye candy — maybe an eight on Trump’s scale —keep her on the team? My prediction: give her a month before we read reports that she has been marginalized and ultimate resigns in a glorious October surprise.
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Friday, August 19, 2016

Afternoon edition
Donald Trump’s America
Part 1
Part 2: 


Swimmer Ryan Lochte and friends won but then lost the Olympics. Instead of our great athletes taking up media time and space, these three disrespectful and  immature are putting a face on the worst of American sports.
Go to Daily Kos to read and make comments

Here’s an interesting thought: Trump didn’t do Olympic Tweets, Hillary did, with numerous congratulatory Tweets… Politico looked into it and came up with a good reason:


Why has Trump hit the mute button on the Olympics, while Clinton has pumped up the volume? There’s a good reason for that, and a surprising one. The spectacle of America vanquishing its global rivals is—ironically, amazingly—utterly terrible for the “America First” candidate.  
A big part of his political message, the one you hear at his stump speeches, is that America has grown weak. America doesn’t win anymore, he says. “Crippled America” is the title of his most recent book. He alone can Make American Great Again. As someone who’s been around a few campaigns, believe me: The Olympics is about the worst thing that could have happened to the Trump train. Here’s a candidate whose message depends entirely on convincing Americans that they’re living in a failing nation overrun by criminal immigrants. And for the past two weeks, tens of millions of Americans have been glued to a multi-ethnic parade of athletes, winning easily. “Make America Great Again” has never felt more out-of-touch than it does against the backdrop of tenacious, over-achieving American athletes driven by their own journeys in pursuit of the American Dream.
Best comment: “This is the America that I know and I love,” Ibtihaj Muhammad told CNN after winning a bronze medal and hugging her teammates as part of the US sabre team. “The America that is inclusive, that is accepting and encompasses people from all walks of life.”


According to Politico, while Olympic TV coverage pumped news and opinion shows off TV, the savvy Hillary camp made sure that they aired their most effective ads during the Olympics. Trump didn’t. So much for their brilliant campaign strategy. 

You can bet that if the United States defied exceptions and suffered defeat after defeat in the Olympics, Trump would be lamenting that this was further proof that America was no longer great.

I really don’t like supporting using the Olympics for political purposes, but Hillary's team could use our athletes victories to make a case that America is great. She could do it by not so subtly referencing Trump’s slogan and congratulating the athletes at the same time.

Lexicographers are no doubt already trying to find all the definitions of Trumpism for the next dictionary editions. But how do you explain that he he took the word “great” and turned it into a political statement.

In a perfect world politics should be kept out of the Olympics, but there are historic examples when the headline Olympic news had everything to do with politics. For example, the most notable: Jessie Owens, Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali, and Tommie Smith and John Carlos giving the black power salute at the 1968 Olympics.

Meanwhile, Trump is trying to make political hay out of the Louisiana disaster even though officials are saying these visits should be postponed since they become a security nightmare and take needed resources away from where they are needed. He’s going for maximum photo ops by taking a tour of Baton Rouge, while if he really cared he’d have stayed at the airport and met with officials and residents there.

And this has got to really burn Trump. Just as his plane landed in Baton Rouge coverage of Paul Manafort’s resignation began. Talking about a bumpy landing! Manafort bumped Trump’s publicity stunt right off the news.


Trump’s plane lands in Baton Rouge but it’s a boring story because Paul Manafort resigned at the same time













Thursday, August 18, 2016
New word of the day (thanks to Trump’s candidacy -) revanchism |rəˈvän(t)SHˌizəm
nouna policy of seeking to retaliate, especially to recover lost territory.
"Here’s the thing about Donald Trump: In his 14 months as a political candidate, he has demonstrated an utter indifference to the truth and to reality itself. He appears to seek only his own validation from the most revanchist, xenophobic crowds in America. He is trolling, hard." 
From Wired Magazine’s endorsement of Hilary.
Comments on Daily Kos

Unless you’re a mental health professional and join the group I described in my last diary 2,200 mental health professionals alarmed by Trump you can’t read an enlightening discussion among therapists about publicly diagnosing Trump.  There is a private Facebook page just for therapists who sign the manifesto objecting to Trump because he is unfit to be president, mostly but not exclusively because of his temperament. They go to great lengths to avoid making a diagnosis for various reasons including the often expressed ones that to do so would be unethical to do so, and because they can’t make a diagnosis without a face-to-face assessment. However, when they do go public they use all kinds of words which actually describe his diagnosis, particularly narcissistic personality disorder, without actually making the diagnosis.
I have explained my opinion in detail both here in 11 diaries, and on the new private Facebook page. To respect their privacy I can’t post what others have said from that site. Suffice to say that the responses to my comments are running against me three or four to one. 
While I am in the minority among psychotherapists, I have yet to be persuaded that I am wrong. I keep reading articles by therapists that dance around making an actual diagnosis. For example, in The Insanity of Narcissism the author of “Traumatic Narcissism” psychoanalyst Danial Shaw writes about Trumps psychiatric symptoms without actually calling them indications of his having psychiatric  disorder in Insanity of Narcissism. Ironically, he uses the word “insanity” in his title which I would argue is more stigmatizing than actually writing about narcissistic personality disorder.
He writes:
This analyst admits he is champing at the bit to make a diagnosis but is resisting doing so. Then he goes on to beat around the diagnosis book (i.e. the DSM-5). So without identifying Trump he writes: "Perhaps I could speak a bit about narcissism in general, without naming names ― especially about the kind of narcissistic person that seeks and attracts followers to form some kind of big religious or political movement, with him or her as its supreme leader.” 
He eventually gives Trump the “non-diagnosis” diagnosis a of malignant, traumatizing narcissist who is are capable of untold destructiveness. Most therapists who go on TV or write articles have agreed to constrain themselves by following the so-called Goldwater rule that keeps them from helping the public to understand better why Trump is unfit to be president by explaining the details of his diagnosis.
Not all therapists totally agree with strict adherence to the Goldwater Rule. For example, this was written by a psychologist in 2010:
The Goldwater rule has many attractive aspects.  For example, it potentially constrains rogue psychiatrists who might be tempted to denounce the mental health of political figures on political bases alone.  It also protects politicians from unflattering and potentially erroneous assessments of their character.
On the other hand, I wonder who is to protect the public from unstable and problematic politicians?
The legal scholar Stanley Fish distinguished between psychiatrists and psychologists by emphasizing that psychiatry, as a branch of medicine, is primarily a healing profession. The obligation of psychiatrists is to the well being of their patients.
Psychology, by contrast, includes not only healers, but also scientific researchers. The product of psychology, in Fish's thinking, is knowledge about a person's mental processes and behavioral expressions, as well as how to predict and control such phenomena. The application of such knowledge potentially leads to the well-being of the public over the longer-term.  www.psychologytoday.com/...
I see the reasons offered by these therapists. I happen to think Trump is the exception that breaks the rule! Something to think about: consider the history of psychology and the contributions by those who were willing to break the rules, starting with Freud. Noless a personage than Eric Fromm wrote about fascistic dictators before there was such thing as a diagnostic manual like the DSM-5. 
Erich Fromm, famous in the 1960s for “The Art of Loving,” published his first bestseller, “Escape From Freedom,” in the ‘40s, when he witnessed the popularity and the horror of Fascism in Europe. He was a keen observer of the personalities of dictators, whom he saw as narcissistic to the point of psychosis. This kind of narcissist, and Fromm mentions some of the most conspicuous 20th Century dictators as well as Nero and Caligula, has made himself God and the world, to himself. He has made of himself an Idol, and expects and demands total submission and compliance.
 Sam Vaknin, a mental health expert and author, who has studied over 600 hours of Donald Trump footage gets away with making a diagnosis because he isn’t actually a therapist. He  “made the harsh conclusion that Donald Trump is not simply a classic narcissist — he is, in fact, a “malignant and, probably, psychopathic narcissist.”
This is from the introduction to the interview published about him in American Thinker:
Shmuel Ben David “Sam” Vaknin is an authority on the subject of narcissism, having written the widely read and very favorably reviewed book, Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited and Narcissistic and Psychopathic Leaders. He may be described as a polymath, with extraordinary expertise (and experience) in abnormal psychology, and with focuses including temporal physics and politics (See his Web siteYouTube site, and Wikipedia bio).

Read more: Donald Trump and Narcissistic Personality Disorder: An Interview with Sam Vaknin
Shmuel Ben David “Sam” Vaknin is an authority on the subject of narcissism, having written the widely read and very favorably reviewed book, Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited and Narcissistic and Psychopathic Leaders. He may be described as a polymath, with extraordinary expertise (and experience) in abnormal psychology, and with focuses including temporal physics and politics (See his Web siteYouTube site, and Wikipedia bio).
Some see Donald Trump's behavior in the media and become concerned. I recently had the opportunity to discuss him with Sam Vaknin.

Read more: www.americanthinker.com/...   
​This is from the article 
There are, Vaknin explains, nine criteria that a narcissist meets, and there is little doubt that Trump is “writ large” on every one.
A narcissist feels grandiose and self-important, and often exaggerates to the point of lying his or her accomplishments and skills. A narcissist is obsessed with fantasies of “unlimited success, fame, fearsome power or omnipotence.” The narcissist is convinced that he or she is special and, because of that, should be treated as a high-status person. A narcissist requires “excessive admiration” and feels entitled, demanding special and often unreasonable treatment. A narcissist is “interpersonally exploitative,” using others to achieve his or her own goals, and is also devoid of empathy. A narcissist is also envious of others and will seek to hurt or destroy people, and, lastly, a narcissist “behaves arrogantly and haughtily,” and “rages when frustrated, contradicted, or confronted by people he or she considers inferior to him or her and unworthy.”
I am sure there are those who are tired of me writing about this, just as I expect that the same reader who keep reposting a comment telling me how unethical and insensitive I am will post again.

I hope more people read this and respond to me usual poll again. I am hoping I will change some minds.  


Read: The Insanity Of Narcissism

by Daniel Shaw LCSW, who is a clinical social worker like me; but he's also a psychoanalyst. He is private practice in New York City and in Nyack, New York. He has gone published numerous psychoanalytic papers, and is the author of "Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation."

This analyst admits he is champing at the bit to make a diagnosis but is resisting doing so. Then he goes on to beat around the diagnosis book (i.e. the DSM-5). So without identifying Trump he writes: "Perhaps I could speak a bit about narcissism in general, without naming names ― especially about the kind of narcissistic person that seeks and attracts followers to form some kind of big religious or political movement, with him or her as its supreme leader.” He eventually gives Trump the non-diagnosis of malignant, traumatizing narcissism who is are capable of untold destructiveness. Most therapists have most agreed to constrain themselves by a so-called rule that keeps them from helping the public to understand better why Trump is unfit to be president. I see the reasons offered here and elsewhere by these therapists, I happen to think Trump is the except that breaks the rule! Something to think about: consider the history of psychology and the contributions by those who were willing to break the rules, starting with Freud.

His article begins:


Mental health practitioners generally agree that it is not appropriate to offer psychoanalytic diagnoses of public figures we’ve never actually interviewed or treated. However, many of us, myself included, are champing at the bit these days. It’s especially tempting for me, since I’ve been writing and thinking about narcissism for quite a while ― and one sees so much of what looks just like it these days, the minute one turns on the news.
Perhaps I could speak a bit about narcissism in general, without naming names ― especially about the kind of narcissistic person that seeks and attracts followers to form some kind of big religious or political movement, with him or her as its supreme leader.

Erich Fromm, famous in the 1960s for “The Art of Loving,” published his first bestseller, “Escape From Freedom,” in the ‘40s, when he witnessed the popularity and the horror of Fascism in Europe……. continued

If you have the interest and time here’s an excellent audio discussion on the Diane Rehm radio show about the ethics of “Tumpology” (diagnosis of Trump) in the mental health profession.
Click here

Debate Over Armchair Psychological Assessments Of Donald Trump

In 1964, damaging and completely erroneous psychological assessments were made about then-presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater. The American Psychiatric Association instituted a new guideline: psychiatrists should not offer opinions about people they’ve not personally examined. But in recent weeks, some psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals have broken this rule. They are speaking out about what they see as Donald Trump’s unfitness to be president. The pitfalls of diagnosing from afar and when personality disorders can be strengths. 
Guests
  • Amy Ellis Nutt science writer, The Washington Post
  • Dr. Paul Appelbaum professor of psychiatry, medicine, and law, Columbia University
  • William Doherty psychologist and director, Citizen Professional Center, University of Minnesota
  • Ron Elving senior Washington editor, NPR News












Weds, August 17, 2016

Donald Trump and Narcissistic Personality Disorder: An Interview with Sam Vaknin


MORE: An article from MARCH [Inquisitr] Sam Valkin, narcissism expert studies 600 hours of Trump 

Sam Vaknin, a mental health expert and author, has studied over 600 hours of Donald Trump footage and made the harsh conclusion that Donald Trump is not simply a classic narcissist — he is, in fact, a “malignant and, probably, psychopathic narcissist.”
In an extensive interview with American Thinker, Vaknin explains that he first connected narcissism to the political stage in a 2008 essaywhere he suggested that then-senator Barack Obama was, in fact, a narcissist, but he also wrote that Obama was intelligent and pro-social, and that while Trump repeatedly to be the former, he is “definitely not the latter,” and that he should be considered “much more of a menace than Obama ever was” to the United States. 
There are, Vaknin explains, nine criteria that a narcissist meets, and there is little doubt that Trump is “writ large” on every one. 
A narcissist feels grandiose and self-important, and often exaggerates to the point of lying his or her accomplishments and skills. A narcissist is obsessed with fantasies of “unlimited success, fame, fearsome power or omnipotence.” The narcissist is convinced that he or she is special and, because of that, should be treated as a high-status person. A narcissist requires “excessive admiration” and feels entitled, demanding special and often unreasonable treatment. A narcissist is “interpersonally exploitative,” using others to achieve his or her own goals, and is also devoid of empathy. A narcissist is also envious of others and will seek to hurt or destroy people, and, lastly, a narcissist “behaves arrogantly and haughtily,” and “rages when frustrated, contradicted, or confronted by people he or she considers inferior to him or her and unworthy.”
Comment here
From online manifesto signed by 2,200 mental health professionals at http://citizentherapists.com — Are you increasingly alarmed by Donald Trump? Do you recognize that he represents an ideology (let's call it Trumpism) that won’t go away even if he loses in November? Trumpism: is antithetical to everything we stand for as therapists. is inconsistent with democracy, with the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, and with emotionally healthy living. promotes hyper-masculinity, public hostility, the cult of the Strong Man, and the denigration of women. presents a threat beyond a single election; the next demagogue may be less outrageous--and thus even more dangerous. It’s time that we say these things publicly, as therapists, and not just behind closed doors. This isn't about liberal or conservative. It's about our American democracy.
Read comments here
2,200 shrinks diagnosing Trump: The Goldwater rule goes mainstream (in the New York Times): 

"The Psychiatric Question: Is It Fair to Analyze Donald Trump From Afar?"


Count me among the mental health professionals (as a retired clinical social worker and mental health center director who was licensed to diagnose and treat patients) who disagrees with the Goldwater Rule under special circumstances. While the mental health professionals who put together the manifesto do not diagnose Trump, they use their expertise to “analyze” his temperament, character, disposition, as well as his beliefs.

Now, while Republican physicians are speculating about Hillary Clinton’s physical fitness to be president while Trump himself has started  not only saying she is (mentally) unhinged, but that  she looks like she had a stroke, and has trouble walking up a flight of stairs unaided, and needs to sleep between brief speeches. 

Obviously the physicians that speculated on this have scant evidence to go on. Physical diagnosis requires an examination and often tests. Psychiatric diagnosis is usual accomplished with a face-to-face interview or two, and infrequently psychological tests like the Rorschach and MMPI.

However, because Trump has been unscripted in so many of his rallies and demonstrated a wide variety of symptoms of disorders that make him temperamentally unfit to be president. Even if we don’t count his lack of empathy (a characteristic of narcissistic personality disorder), there’s his pathological lying (pseudologia fantastic) and fantastic confabulation and his impulsiveness. Add to this that his narcissism makes him highly unlikely to heed advice that challenges his beliefs.

While not showing enough symptoms to make a likely diagnosis of paranoid personality disorder he does seem to believe a lot of conspiracy theories. Also not a true anti-social personality (aka sociopath) he seems to relish being a bully and his NPD lack of empathy is also a characteristic of this with anti-social personality.

If Trump was somehow persuaded to undergo a psychiatric examination knowing the results would be public he’d be guarded and I’d wager figure out that he’d better not let his unhinged stream of conscious and word salad speech take over. I wouldn’t be surprised if he took some Xanax prior to his interview. In fact, if I was his campaign advisor I’d suggest he do so.

Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times article:
The 2016 Republican nominee’s incendiary, stream-of-consciousness pronouncements have strained that agreement to the breaking point, exposing divisions in the field over whether such restraint is appropriate today. 
Psychiatrists and psychologists have publicly flouted the Goldwater Rule, tagging Mr. Trump with an assortment of personality problems, including grandiosity, a lack of empathy, and “malignant narcissism.” The clinical insults are flying so thick that earlier this month, the psychiatric association posted a reminder that breaking the Goldwater Rule “is irresponsible, potentially stigmatizing, and definitely unethical.” 
Putting a psychiatric label on a candidate they oppose can be a “seemingly irresistible tool for some in the field,” said Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a professor of psychiatry, medicine and law at Columbia University who disapproves of the practice. “This year, perhaps more than most, they’re persuaded they’re saving the nation from a terrible fate.”
 A group of professional mental health therapists have a website, http://citizentherapists.com ,  with a manifesto which over 2,000 therapists have signed:


A Public Manifesto

Citizen Therapists Against Trumpism

As psychotherapists practicing in the United States, we are alarmed by the rise of the ideology of Trumpism, which we see as a threat to the well-being of the people we care for and to American democracy itself. We cannot remain silent as we witness the rise of an American form of fascism. We can leverage this time of crisis to deepen our commitment to American democracy.
What is Trumpism?
Trumpism is an ideology, not an individual, and it may well endure and grow after the Presidential election even if Donald Trump is defeated. (Variants can be seen all over Europe.) Trumpism is a set of ideas about public life and a set of public practices characterized by:
  • Scapegoating and banishing groups of people who are seen as threats, including immigrants and religious minorities.
  • Degrading, ridiculing, and demeaning rivals and critics.
  • Fostering a cult of the Strong Man who:
    • Appeals to fear and anger
    • Promises to solve our problems if we just trust in him
    • Reinvents history and has little concern for truth
    • Never apologizes or admits mistakes of consequence
    • Sees no need for rational persuasion
    • Subordinates women while claiming to idealize them
    • Disdains public institutions like the courts when they are not subservient
    • Champions national power over international law and respect for other nations
    • Incites and excuses public violence by supporters
At the political level, Trumpism is an emerging form of American fascism, a point being made by social critics across the political spectrum, including Robert ReichRobert Kagan, and Andrew Sullivan. As journalist Adam Gopnik points out, whether or not the term “fascism” fully fits, it’s clear that the American republic faces a clear and present danger when the candidate of a major political party embraces an anti-democratic ideology. At the cultural level, the Urban Dictionary has defined Trumpism as “the belief system that encourages pretentious, narcissistic behavior as a way to achieve money, fame, and power.”
What are the Effects of Trumpism?
  1. Fear and alienation among scapegoated groups, beginning with Latino immigrants and Muslims, and then other groups who become identified as threats
  2. Exaggerated masculinity as a cultural ideal, with particular influence on young people and economically insecure men
  3. Coarsening of public life by personal attacks on those who disagree
  4. Erosion of the American democratic tradition which has emphasized the agency of we-the-people instead of the Strong Man tradition of power
Where Did Trumpism Come From?
This question is bigger than Donald Trump. The next public figure to capture the wave of Trumpism may be less clownish and have a better set of movement-building skills, and thus be even more dangerous. Following is a partial list of forces that underlie Trumpism:
  • Economic insecurity, particularly among working-class Americans
  • The threat of terrorism since 9/11
  • Fear of immigrants (related to economic insecurity and threats of terrorism)
  • Distrust for government and politicians at a time of polarized gridlock
  • Growing distrust for other institutions such as religion, the press, and the courts
  • Rapid cultural change that has left many people confused and alienated
Why Therapists Must Speak Out
We must speak out for the well-being of people we treat and care for in our work. Trumpism will undermine the emotional health of those seen as the “other” in America—both historically denigrated groups and those whose turn will come. And it will compromise the integrity of those who are seduced by the illusion that real Americans can only become winners if others become losers. The public rhetoric of Trumpism normalizes what therapists work against in our work: the tendency to blame others in our lives for our personal fears and insecurities and then battle these others instead of taking the healthier but more difficult path of self-awareness and self-responsibility. It also normalizes a kind of hyper-masculinity that is antithetical to the examined life and healthy relationships that psychotherapy helps people achieve. Simply stated, Trumpism is inconsistent with emotionally healthy living—and we have to say so publicly.
We must speak out for the well-being of our democracy, which is both a way of living and acting together and a set of political institutions. Therapists have taken for granted how our work relies on a democratic tradition that gives people a sense of personal agency to create new narratives and take personal and collective responsibility for themselves, their families, and their communities. Reliance on a Strong Man who will solve our problems and deal with internal and external enemies is a direct threat to the democratic basis of psychotherapy. Therapy only flourishes on democratic soil.
Why speak collectively? Our responses thus far have been primarily personal—and too often confined to arm-chair diagnoses of Donald Trump. But a collective crisis faces our nation, a harkening back to the economic depression and demoralization of the 1930s (which fed European fascism) and the upheaval over Jim Crow and Black civil rights in the 1950s. Fortunately, the resolution of these crises led to a deepening of American democracy, not the abandonment of it. Martin Luther King, influenced by his mentor Bayard Rustin and by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, didn’t just critique unjust systems from the outside. He called for strategic, collective work to take back an American democracy that belongs to all the people. As therapists, we have been entrusted by society with collective responsibility in the arena of mental, behavioral, and relational health. When there is a public threat to our domain of responsibility we must speak out together, not just to protest but to deepen our commitment to a just society and a democratic way of life. This means being citizen therapists who are concerned with community well-being as much as personal well-being, since the two are inextricably joined.
Where We Stand as Citizen Therapists
We understand the draw of Trumpism and we acknowledge that some of our fellow citizens, and some of our clients, may vote for Donald Trump not because they embrace all aspects of Trumpism but because they are frustrated with their circumstances and fed up with the current political system. We are against Trumpism and its architects, not against those who are inclined to give it a chance to change the direction of the country.
But we reject the false equivalence of saying that because there is dishonesty and demagoguery on all political sides, why not support someone from the outside? Trumpism is qualitatively different. To repeat: Trumpism undermines the core of American democracy by promoting the idea of a single leader who will bring greatness to the nation by battling Those People. Democracy requires personal and collective agency so that we can work together across differences to solve problems and develop a shared way of life. Psychotherapists must be firmly on the side of democracy and work in solidarity with groups directly threatened by current and future versions of Trumpism. This work will not end with the election in November 2016. The wake-up call has been received. Our first response is this manifesto. More to follow.
Therefore, as citizen therapists we stand united against the dangerous ideology of Trumpism, and we encourage others to join us in a deepened commitment to a democratic way of life that engages the talents, yearnings, and capacities of all the people.

Here’s another excerpt from the New York Times article:



Dr. Steven Buser, a psychiatrist who with his colleague, Dr. Leonard Cruz, coedited a new book, “A Clear and Present Danger: Narcissism in the Era of Donald Trump,” stressed, “We are careful not to make a clinical diagnosis here, to say that Donald Trump has narcissistic personality disorder.” The contributing writers include psychiatrists and psychologists, but Dr. Buser said, “We are focused on the image he projects, on TV, in tweets, in quotes.” 
Dr. Appelbaum  ( a professor of psychiatry, medicine and law at Columbia University who disapproves of diagnosing politicians) calls this distinction a convenient splitting of hairs. “It takes a skilled therapist months, sometimes longer, seeing a person regularly and asking probing questions to make a determination of whether a disorder is present,” Dr. Appelbaum said.
Actually Appelbaum’s notion that it takes months to make a diagnosis is a bit of professional snobbery. Most clinicians make a tentative, usually correct, diagnosis in one or two sessions unless the patients exhibits complex symptoms — suggestive of a constellation of disorders, or a hard to diagnose disorder like dissociative (multiple personality) disorder or a neurological disorder like temporal lobe epilepsy which can cause hallucinations (suspicion of this requires a referral to a neurologist).


My previous and controversial articles about Trump’s likely diagnoses, all published on Daily Kos, which combined I call Trump derangement syndrome:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/05/29/1532283/-A-psychologist-analyzes-Trump-the-narcissist

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/06/13/1538058/-Another-diagnosis-for-Trump-Is-he-really-paranoid

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/06/16/1539554/-Chapter-3-of-a-shrinks-eye-view-of-Trump-his-germophobia-and-beyond

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/06/17/1539678/-Ethics-Shrinks-and-Trump-Should-they-speak-out

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/07/04/1544981/-Narcissist-Trump-can-t-apologize-and-nobody-will-say-why-don-t-you-just-say-I-m-sorry

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/07/18/1549312/-Dr-Strangelove-Gen-Ripper-Donald-Trump-Parnoid-and-batshit-crazy

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/08/03/1556196/-The-media-finally-recognizes-what-shrinks-knew-a-long-time-ago-Trump-is-pathological

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/08/09/1558299/-Trump-s-most-excellent-personality-disorder

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/08/13/1559763/-The-Ethics-of-Diagnosing-Trump-Part-Two






Tuesday, April 16, 2016
Just a thought: Trump wants extreme vetting for VISA applicants. How about requiring extreme vetting for presidential candidates? Start with requiring they release their income tax returns. A Rorschach Test and MMPI should also be required. 
Not fit enough to fight World War II?
Trump is saying that Hillary isn’t physically fit enough to fight ISIS. 
In what was billed as a major foreign-policy address in Ohio, Donald Trump suggested—as he has in the past—that Hillary Clinton is somehow secretly ill. This time though, he said Clinton lacks the “mental and physical stamina” to take on ISIS, a declaration that comes just a week after conspiracy theories bubbled to the surface once again saying that the Democratic presidential nominee has some terminal ailment. Daily Beast 












Monday, August 15, 2016
A rare gift to the electorate from Donald Trump


Simply put, Donald Trump has demonstrated his dark side more that any other candidate in this election and possibly in history. The only candidates in my memory that come close are George Wallace and Pat Buchanan. Add to this that we have seen so many examples of his bullying and mean  and/or threatening reactions to slights that even without making a psychiatric diagnosis we can make judgments about his temperament. 

Trump believes in himself with such conviction that he sees no need to heed advice from those who want him to win that he has to “act” presidential. Give Trump credit for refusing to act a role that would be dishonest. 

As an evil Popeye, he proudly lives by the credo “I yam what I yam.” And that is good for us!

New to this blog… read previous “editions” here.

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