Hal M. Brown, MSW's psychological analysis of Donald Trump from Google AI, and more.

 

AI Overview of my psychological analysis of Donald Trump from Google.

The phrase “Trump mentally ill psychopathic malignant narcissist Hal Brown MSW” refers to the opinions and analysis of

Hal Brown, an MSW (Master of Social Work) and retired psychotherapist, who has written extensively on the subject of Donald Trump’s mental state.

Hal Brown, along with other mental health professionals, has publicly expressed the view that Donald Trump exhibits signs of serious mental health issues, specifically characterizing him as a “psychopathic sadistic malignant narcissist” who is “dangerously mentally ill” and “unfit for office”. His views are often shared in blog posts on platforms like Daily Kos and Substack.

Key points regarding these claims:

• Professional Opinion: Brown is a mental health professional (retired) who writes from his perspective as a clinician.
• Public Stance: He is associated with the “Duty to Warn” movement, a group of mental health professionals who have argued that mental health experts have a professional and ethical responsibility to alert the public to the dangers they perceive in Trump’s behavior.
• Ethical Considerations: Mainstream psychiatric and psychological associations generally adhere to the Goldwater Rule, an ethical guideline stating that it is irresponsible for mental health professionals to give a professional opinion about public figures they have not personally examined and for whom they have not obtained consent to discuss their mental health. Brown and others in the “Duty to Warn” group argue that this rule should not prevent professionals from speaking out when they perceive a danger to the public.
• Formal Diagnosis: As Brown has not personally examined Donald Trump, his assessments are not formal clinical diagnoses in a medical sense but rather professional opinions based on Trump’s public behavior and statements.

More:

Hal Brown, MSW (Master of Social Work), a retired psychotherapist, who has written numerous online articles and blog posts arguing that Donald Trump is a “mentally ill, psychopathic, sadistic, malignant narcissist”.

Hal Brown is known for his contributions to the discussion regarding Donald Trump’s mental health, particularly within the context of the “Duty to Warn” movement. This movement involved mental health professionals who believed they had an ethical obligation to inform the public about what they perceived as Donald Trump’s psychological instability and potential danger, despite the traditional “Goldwater Rule” (which advises against diagnosing public figures without a personal examination and consent).

Brown’s arguments are presented in his writings on platforms like Substack and Medium, where he analyzes Trump’s behavior and statements through the lens of mental health concepts, such as malignant narcissism and psychopathy. His assessment is an individual professional opinion and part of a broader, ongoing public debate among mental health professionals about the ethics and validity of diagnosing a public figure from afar.1

AI Overview of my psychological analysis of Donald Trump from Google.

The phrase “Trump mentally ill psychopathic malignant narcissist Hal Brown MSW” refers to the opinions and analysis of

Hal Brown, an MSW (Master of Social Work) and retired psychotherapist, who has written extensively on the subject of Donald Trump’s mental state.

Hal Brown, along with other mental health professionals, has publicly expressed the view that Donald Trump exhibits signs of serious mental health issues, specifically characterizing him as a “psychopathic sadistic malignant narcissist” who is “dangerously mentally ill” and “unfit for office”. His views are often shared in blog posts on platforms like Daily Kos and Substack.

Key points regarding these claims:

• Professional Opinion: Brown is a mental health professional (retired) who writes from his perspective as a clinician.
• Public Stance: He is associated with the “Duty to Warn” movement, a group of mental health professionals who have argued that mental health experts have a professional and ethical responsibility to alert the public to the dangers they perceive in Trump’s behavior.
• Ethical Considerations: Mainstream psychiatric and psychological associations generally adhere to the Goldwater Rule, an ethical guideline stating that it is irresponsible for mental health professionals to give a professional opinion about public figures they have not personally examined and for whom they have not obtained consent to discuss their mental health. Brown and others in the “Duty to Warn” group argue that this rule should not prevent professionals from speaking out when they perceive a danger to the public.
• Formal Diagnosis: As Brown has not personally examined Donald Trump, his assessments are not formal clinical diagnoses in a medical sense but rather professional opinions based on Trump’s public behavior and statements.

More:

Hal Brown, MSW (Master of Social Work), a retired psychotherapist, who has written numerous online articles and blog posts arguing that Donald Trump is a “mentally ill, psychopathic, sadistic, malignant narcissist”.

Hal Brown is known for his contributions to the discussion regarding Donald Trump’s mental health, particularly within the context of the “Duty to Warn” movement. This movement involved mental health professionals who believed they had an ethical obligation to inform the public about what they perceived as Donald Trump’s psychological instability and potential danger, despite the traditional “Goldwater Rule” (which advises against diagnosing public figures without a personal examination and consent).

Brown’s arguments are presented in his writings on platforms like Substack and Medium, where he analyzes Trump’s behavior and statements through the lens of mental health concepts, such as malignant narcissism and psychopathy. His assessment is an individual professional opinion and part of a broader, ongoing public debate among mental health professionals about the ethics and validity of diagnosing a public figure from afar.

The following in not from AI:

I began writing about what I considered to be Trump's dangerous psychopatholgy in 2016 in Daily Kos here. Note the comments on this post.

This is one of the noteworthy comments to my Kos article:

Silverheels

Aug 06, 2016 at 10:33:46 AM

I’m not a medical or psychiatric professional.  I simply lived 18 years under the same roof and at the mercy of two parents who showed me what sociopaths and malignant narcissists look like when they’re just being themselves, with no one watching who might be important enough or professionally trained enough in the field of behavioral disorders to actually apply those diagnoses with some authority.  

Starting in the 1980’s and beyond, we’ve had access to many pieces of literature and appearances by experts on venues such as Oprah, specifically intended to help the lay person (with the emphasis on women) recognize someone who was dangerous to their life.  

There wasn’t a lot of emphasis on terminology in most of those offerings, although the names of the personality disorders that can inflict such damage on others were certainly mentioned and characteristics for each were given.  It was only then, after decades of trying to figure out what had happened to me and my siblings and how it had impacted us as adults (starting with PTSD, major depression, and panic disorder) that I actually learned the terminology for behaviors I had witnessed all my life.  

The irony is that when someone with a personality disorder can be tricked or forced into sitting in front of a mental professional, they usually never behave in the way they do in private, when they’re “just being themselves” in the company of those they are victimizing.   When they need to, they usually have the ability to be “charming” or at least “very nice.”  

As individuals, in our private lives, we have to decide whether we want to allow a particular person into our life, or to remain in our life, based on what they’ve been willing to show us and tell us about who they are.  We want to know if we will be safe in a relationship with them, whatever that relationship might be.  

As a nation, we are now faced with the decision as to whether someone that most of us would never allow to be a part of our personal, private life in any capacity, is someone we want to vote for to do the hardest job in the world.  Whether or not you decide to attach a label to him, he is showing us exactly who and what he is.  Extraordinarily dangerous.  

I summarized what I wrote in Daily Kos and more in a column I wrote for Capitol Hill Bue.

While I was one of the first clnicians to join Dr. John D. Gartner's Duty to Warn Group in 2017. I never rose to the level of national prominence he, Dr. Mary Trump, Dr. Bandy Lee (who edited the best seller "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump") and several other clincians did. My only national media exposure was in Salon where their columnist Chaucey DeVega quoted me in several aritcles and had me on his podcast. Here's an example:

For those who came across this who want to read my most recent opinions about Trump and politics check out my free substack. I rarely miss a daily post. As of Nov. 4th this is what it looks like:

Trump Cabinet Picks: Manic Machiavellian megalomaniac runs amok, by Hal M. Brown, MSW

Let me lean back this morning and light up my metaphorical Freudian cigar and try to burn back a few layers of the multiple layers that encircle the inner core of Donald Trump which fuel his nuclear reactor of a mind.

So far we have three Trump Cabinet picks that have caused pundits to speculate why Trump would select three uniquely unqualified people to serve in positions vitally important to the security of the country. 

When you consider that Pete Hegesth for Secretary of Defense is the least bad of the three (Update: Although as new information comes out you have to reassess him - read here) you have to wonder who could be worse than he is. Who is the second worst? That would be the nominee for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard who repeated Russian propaganda about Ukraine housing U.S.-funded bioweapons labs. Then we get to the top of the bottom and it is a mind blower, Matt Gaetz for Attorney General. (Update: We have just found out that even though she was on the plane with him when he made the selection Susie Wiles was not aware that he was going to do this. Read story)

There is well deserved hand wringing among Republican members of Congress over these choices. They bought it, Trump broke it, but they have to own it. Think of a sign in a pottery store: "If the owner breaks it, sorry sucker, you have to buy it."

Among the punditry there is speculation as to why Trump would have picked these people. I've heard some MSNBC panelists suggest this may have been a tactic on Trump's part so he would have one or more of them not get confirmed by the Senate to make way for a more qualifed person who would turn out to be just as bad  but more effective at being bad.

I propose that Trump's motivation was not strategic. I think he is in a manic state and wants to lash out at all of his critics. John Bolton said it well:

"I thought [Gabbard] was the worst Cabinet-level appointment in history until I heard the Matt Gaetz appointment," Bolton said. "Really, my reaction was that this is like the legend of Caligula, the Roman emperor who wanted to nominate his horse as a Roman consul. You had to be a Roman senator at the time to be a consul, and it was intended to show how demeaned and degraded the Roman Senate had become. RawStory

Trump is not just riding high on his victory. My assessment is that he is in a manic state. He feels he can do anything.

He's always been a megalomaniac. By "always" I don't mean just as an adult. 

A strict Freudian interpretation of Trump's megalomania is that he never fully resolved a normal stage of psychological development. Freud and Freudians believe that at a young age children go though a phase when they feel omnipotent. They believe that a "child lives in a sort of megalomania for a long period; he knows only one yardstick, and that is his own over-inflated ego ... megalomania, it must be understood, is normal in the very young child". (Wikipedia)

In normal psychosocial development children pass through the various phases or stages but some have portions of their personality fixated, or stuck, at some stages for reasons having to do with family dynamics too complex to go into here.

For more information read 

Freud’s Psychosexual Theory And 5 Stages Of Human Development

Here's an illustration from that article:

Click above to enlarge

In the above chart you can see how partial fixations in each phase can lead to characteristics we see in Tump.

Add to all of the above is that Trump is a psychopath. This is how psychoanalyst Dr. Justin Frank puts it in the Chauncey DeVega Salon article: 

"Criminal labels and orange jumpsuits": Experts on how Trump weaponizes his own fears.

Lacking a conscience or morality to limit his sadism, and believing in his worth above all others, leads Trump to think he has the right to destroy anyone who does not submit to him. Without the innate capacity for empathy toward others and a sense of right and wrong, Trump is an extreme outlier in human psychology.

DeVega himself wrote:

It is true that Donald Trump is a pathological liar. But he has been remarkably honest and transparent in his desires and plans to become America's first dictator and unleash a reign of revenge and tyranny.

The only way to understand Trump and what he does is to understand that the why. The only way to understand the why is to realize that Trump has a personality that fits what is called the Dark Triad. 

Wikipedia describes the dark triad as:

All three dark triad traits are conceptually distinct although empirical evidence shows them to be overlapping. They are associated with a callous-manipulative interpersonal style.

.

• Narcissismis characterized by grandiosity, pride, egotism, and a lack of empathy.
• Machiavellianism is characterized by manipulationand exploitation of others, a cynical disregard for morality, and a focus on self-interestand deception.
• Psychopathy is characterized by continuing antisocial behavior, impulsivity, selfishness, callousness, and remorselessness.

Previous list of blogs here.

Primary Hal Brown's Blog website.

Morning Joe says Trump's "fretting" about prison, but is he even capable of fretting?

 

By Hal Brown, MSW, Retired psychotherapist

There was a discussion on Morning Joe where Joe Scarbourgh said that there were reports that Donald Trump was "privately frettiing" over the propsect of going to prison.

Click to view

There it is, Trump "fretting" actually made the chryon so those who had their sound muted could see it. If Trump had the show on one of several TVs in his bedroom he could see it. He might have decided to turn off the sound on Fox News and watch MSNBC.

Here's some of what Joe said:

"He's the most insecure guy on the face of the earth behind that facade. He has to know what his fiercest defenders on Fox News say. Ninety-one counts – if he goes 90-1, he's going to jail for the rest of his life, 90-1. He could win 90 and lose one, every one of those counts, basically, at Donald Trump's age, that equals a life sentence, so, yeah, the guy is worried.

.... 

"I mean, we'd be throwing people's names around – 91 counts, every one of them is a life sentence. The guy, obviously, is cracking. I think he's losing it, which is why the last thing he wants to do, the last thing his lawyers want him to do, is go out and debate. He may give admissions, and his political people don't want him to lose his mind onstage." 

Trump wants to consider himself to be a rock star. Havig a big article in Rolling Stone is a milestone in a performer's career. I rather doubt Trump is happy that he and is mugshot are here:

There it is, that pesky word again.

I've heard Joe mention that he was aware that Donald Trump sometimes watched the show. I wonder what he would have thought if he watched this segment. Joe, Mika, and the crew have called Trump lots of things but saying he's insecure and that he's fretting over the chance of going to prison may get to him more than being called a buffoon or a clown.

As one of the top 1000 mental health experts (but then who's counting) who has publically expressed their opnion about Trump's psychopathology I feel complelled to correct the Morning Joe panel. 

If Trump was fretting it would be a rare indication that he had lapsed, not into florid psychosis, but into the realm of mental health.

If Trump worked in academia he'd be the Dean of Denial and be in charge of assuring that students only were taught things that they were comfortable with.

Photo adapted from illustration in Reed College students stage multi-day protest over video that showed a professor making racist remarks

This isn't the first time pundits have ascribed normal psycholgical reactions to Donald Trump. For example this was from March:

Trump is 'very anxious' about being finger-printed and asking for bail in Manhattan: NYT's Haberman

Plain and simple we don't know what Trump is experiencing. Is he anxious? Is he fretting? We just don't know. 

Denial is the most primative or basic psychological defense mechanism. Freud first postulated it as a way some people dealt with facing extremely difficult facts of their personal reality:

Denial is a psychological defense mechanism postulated by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.

The subject may use:

• simple denial: deny the reality of the unpleasant fact altogether
• minimisation: admit the fact but deny its seriousness (a combination of denial and rationalization)
• projection: admit both the fact and seriousness but deny responsibility by blaming somebody or something else

Wikipedia

You can see Trump using all three types of denial. The more he uses simple denial the more psychogically impaired he is. Judging a the capacity for reality testing is a measure used in psychology to determine how dysfuntional a person is. It is called reality testing and defined as follows:

Reality testing is the psychotherapeutic function by which the objective or real world and one's relationship to it are reflected on and evaluated by the observer. This process of distinguishing the internal world of thoughts and feelings from the external world is a technique commonly used in psychoanalysis and behavior therapy, and was originally devised by Sigmund Freud. Wikipedia

Most of you are familiar the Kübler-Ross model of grief, which describes the five emotions that people experience when they cope with death. (Wikipedia). The first stage is denial. Pyshologically healthy people go on throough the next three stages, anger, bargaining, and depression before reaching the final stage of acceptance.

Denial is the first because it is the very most basic defense. 

I wonder if we'll see Trump go through these stages if he is sentenced to prison. I have my doubts because he is far from being a psychogically healthy person.

If Trump is anxious, if he's fretting, it would mean reality is percolating into his conscious awareness. If he's repressing this thoughts and feelings he is at risk of them manifesting themselves in somatic ways. 

I'm a clinical social worker and not a physician but I think I am on firm ground in speculating that as the chance of being incarcerated increases Trump is at higher risk of succumbing to some of the stress related physical illnesses.

Update:

Far be it from me to dispute Mary Trump who is the only mental health professional who actually knows (or knew) Donald Trump up close and personal, buit I think she is describing him as if he was normal.

I doubt Donald Trump reads what his psychologist neices writes about him. If he reads this piece here's what I think would bother him the most (in bold)

"I’m sorry Donald, but calling Charles Koch a 'very stupid, awkward, and highly overrated globalist,; is a clear sign to me… You must be getting nervous that Koch has already raised more than $70 million to oppose you in the Republican presidential primary. And there’s more coming," she said. "I can only imagine how off-the-charts your anxiety is especially since you know there is so much more trouble coming your way. Your childish name calling can only take you so far."

Mary Trump added: 

"Even more transparent than your anxiety is your jealousy. Charles Koch is at least 24x richer than you. You really shouldn't let your emotions take over like this Donald. Your pattern of name-calling and grievance is wearing thin and it just makes you look like the weak loser you are.

Koch isestimated to be worth about $60 billion making him the 20th richest person in the world. Forbes estimates Trump's worth as a paulty $2 ½ billion.

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Prolonged stress puts your body in a continuous state readiness for physical action. When your body has no time to re-establish equilibrium, it becomes overworked and your immune system weakens, making you susceptible to sickness. Many essential bodily processes are disrupted and your risk of health problems increases.

Some common physical effects of stress include (reference):

• memory impairment
• depression
• skin conditions, such as eczema
• difficulty sleeping
• obesity
• heart disease
• digestive problems
• autoimmune diseases