"A LETTER FROM MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS ON TRUMP’S DANGEROUS PSYCHOPATHOLOGY" was published as an ad in The NY Times, by Hal M. Brown, MSW

 

The ad above was published on page three in today's NY Times. It reads:

As mental health professionals, we have an ethical duty to warn the public that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy. His symptoms of severe, untreatable personality disorder—malignant narcissism—makes him deceitful, destructive, deluded, and dangerous. He is grossly unfit for leadership.

Trump exhibits behavior that tracks with the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s (DSM V) diagnostic criteria for “narcissistic personality disorder,” “antisocial personality disorder,” and “paranoid personality disorder,” all made worse by his intense sadism, which is a symptom of malignant narcissism. This psychological type was first identified by German psychologist Erich Fromm to explain the psychology of history’s most “evil” dictators.

Detractors object that we mental health professionals cannot render such a diagnosis without first examining the patient, citing the “Goldwater Rule.” We believe that we have an overriding ethical duty to warn the public of the danger this individual poses. History has taught us that in such circumstances, saying nothing is never the more ethical choice.

Since the Goldwater Rule was adopted, the field has modernized the DSM diagnostic system, which relies exclusively on “observable behavioral criteria.” For many years, we’ve all observed thousands of hours of Trump’s behavior, reinforced by the observations of dozens of individuals who have interacted with him personally. Using the DSM V, it is easy to see that Trump meets the behavioral criteria for antisocial personality disorder. Even a non-clinician can see that Trump shows a lifetime pattern of “failure to conform to social norms and laws,” “repeated lying,” “reckless disregard for the safety of others,” “irritability,” “impulsivity,” “irresponsibility,” and “lack of remorse.”

Because of their sadism, malignant narcissists often derive joy from inflicting suffering on others because they disregard the emotions and wellbeing of other people—especially their perceived enemies. For example, according to first-hand accounts, Trump watched the violence he unleashed on January 6 for three hours on TV with “glee,” watching his favorite parts “over and over” on “rewind.”

To make matters worse, Trump appears to be showing signs of cognitive decline that urgently cry out for a full neurological work-up, including an MRI and neuropsychological testing. These symptoms include: a dramatic decrease in verbal fluency, tangential thinking, diminished vocabulary, overuse of superlatives and filler words, perseveration, confabulation, phonemic paraphasia, semantic paraphasia, confusing people (not just names), as well as exhibiting deteriorating judgment, impulse control, and motor functioning (including a wide-based gait). We suspect the results of such an evaluation would be disqualifying. If, as we suspect, Trump does have organically based cognitive decline, it will only get worse over time, grossly degrading his already impaired judgment, impulse control, memory, attention, reality testing, and capacity to process information, while dramatically exacerbating the symptoms of his toxic personality disorder.

People suffering with mental illness are no more likely to be dangerous than the general population. Malignant narcissism is the very rare exception. Without question, malignant narcissists have been history’s most grandiose, paranoid, and murderous leaders. Inevitably, they escalate until they are completely out of control, ultimately destroying themselves and the nations they lead.

As mental health professionals we feel a desperate duty to warn our fellow citizens of this imminent catastrophic public danger before it’s too late.

I signed it. So did over 200 other mental health professional including my friends Dr. John D. Gartner, who started the Duty to Warn movement and was the first to go public in 2017 warning about Trump's dangerous maligant narcissism in this USA Today article, and psychoanalyst Howard Covitz who, like Gartner, I've known personally since 2017.

I personally asked eight people who I know to sign it. While I am disappointed more didn't do so I was gratified to see that two of them did.

You can see the letter and all of the signatures on George Conway's PSYCHO PAC website here.

Conway, who is an attorney and not a mental health professional, didn't sign it but many other mental health professionals who I am familiar with did. This includes Lance Dodes, Justin Frank, Phillip Zombardo, Alan Blotchy, Howard Covitz, and Craig Malkin. You can do a web search of all of them and find articles they published and for several even a Wikipedia page. There are others who I know because they post on the Duty to Warn Facebook page.

Here's a video George Conway posted of four of the mental health professionals who signed the ad explaining their reasons.

Here's an article from The Independent about the ad:

More than 230 doctors say Trump is too unstable to serve in open letter connected to George Conway’s PAC

Letter states that the Republican candidate ‘appears to be showing signs of cognitive decline that urgently call for a full neurological workup’

Here's the article from The Guardian:

Both these news websites are from the UK. This one is from NewsX in India:

Trump Has ‘Malignant Narcissism’, According To More Than 200 Health Professionals

This article concludes as follows:

The Anti-Psychopath PAC’s advertisement was published the same week as another full-page ad in the New York Times, signed by over 200 survivors of sexual assault and gender violence. One signatory, a former girlfriend of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, alleged in an interview that Trump had groped her. This ad aimed to remind voters of Trump’s legal troubles, including a recent civil case in which he was found liable for sexual abuse against writer E. Jean Carroll.

I wasn't able to find any coverage in the American media although AOL republished the article which was in The Independent until just now when one of my go-to websites, RawStory, published this:

Saw far over 140 readers made comments on the RawStory article.

About Hal M. Brown

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Fox News - Don't call this dignified wonderful gentleman a fascist because it may provoke another assassination attempt, By Hal M. Brown, MSW

General Kelly warning about Trump praising Hitler and being a fascist was the top story on HuffPost:

If you missed the stories about what Trump's former chief of staff Gen. John Kelly said about Trump you haven't been paying attention to the news. 

I wondered how Fox News was covering the news (Google News link) about Gen. Kelly saying Trump was a fascist and his praising Hitler's generals. I checked and watched this segment from one of their shows.

This is the 8 minute segment from Fox News.

They called these headlines irresponsible:

They played clips of Democrats including Kamala Harris and Tim Walz calling Trump a fascist. 

The takeaway is from this in my title: Don't call this "dignified wonderful gentleman" a fascist because it may provoke another assassination attempt.

This panelist who said this was calling someone who just yesterday suggested to his rally crowd that Kamala Harris might drink or use drugs. Is it dignified to suggest your opponent is an alcoholic of drug addict? Read article and watch video here. "Does she drink, was she on drugs" he said referring to the Harris "60 Minutes" interview.

Of course they all denied Trump had a fascist bone in his body. The main point all of them made was that calling Trump a fascist would lead to another assassination attempt. One of the panelists said "don't literally put somebody in the crosshairs."

Their argument is that nobody should say anything about a political opponent wanting to destroy democracy because this may provoke some unhinged person to try to assassinate them. 

They noted that the Secret Service warned about another Butler happening as if this was relevant to the discussion about Democrats warning about Trump wanting to be a dictator. 

Of course there was no discussion about Trump's inflammatory rhetoric attacking Kamala Harris using language which, if you follow the Fox News argument, could lead to an attempt on her life (article in LA Times):

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON —  

Over the six weeks since Kamala Harris succeeded President Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee, Donald Trump has charged relentlessly that she’s a radical whose views are out of step with voters.

“She’s a Marxist. She’s a fascist,” the former president declared last week, weirdly combining labels that normally contradict each other.

Trump claimed, without a shred of evidence, that Vice President Harris, whom he has dubbed “Comrade Kamala,” “wants this country to go communist.” 

They brought up Whoopee Goldberg, who needless to note is an actress and comedian, saying Trump was a bug and Biden making a squashing gesture as if Trump doesn't revel in being a crude insult master.

One of them brought up Louis Farrakhann having called Jews termites, as if very many Fox News viewers would even know who this now 91 year old leader of the Black Nationalist organization The Nation of Islam is. I wonder how many people watching him looked him up in Wikipedia.

The Fox News argument understandably doesn't address the reasons Gen. Kelly and others like former Joint Chiefs chair Gen. Mark Milley  who worked in the Trump adminstration are warning that Trump aspires to be a fascist dictator and is a danger to the country.

Trump has told us who he is, who he wants to be, and how he wants to run the county. Apparently the Fox News Trump worshippers haven't been listening. When it comes to Trump they are the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil monkeys.

Addendum:

Marjorie Taylor Greene is taking her cue from Fox News:

What does else does the Trump campaign have to say about this? They want to coin a new psychiatric diagnosis for anyone who says Trump is a fascist:

Previous blogs here.

Psychiatrist who authored The Goldwater Rule says there are exceptions and Trump is one of them, by Hal M. Brown. MSW

Mental health professionals said Goldwater Rule be damned, it shouldn't apply to us when we warn about the danger of Donald Trump.

This was the main article on HUFFPOST today:

Vindication came today with this news not only for Dr. John D. Gartner, founder of Duty to Warn (See "Experts are desperate to warn the public": Hundreds sign Dr. John Gartner's Trump dementia petition"), all the contributors to the best selling "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump" and the hundreds of mental health professionals like myself who went public despite The Goldwater Rule. We wrote explaining why Trump was suffering from one or more psychiatric disorders that made him both unfit and dangerous to hold the office of president. 

Many mainstream media articles about our doing this referenced The Goldwater Rule and suggested we were violating it. Each time this was included in an article it probably  instilled doubt in some readers about the credibilty of our argument.

This was published in HUFFPOST today:

Doctor Who Wrote ‘Goldwater Rule’ Says He Would Recommend Dementia Tests For Trump

An author of the 1973 American Psychiatric Association standard says it was never meant to stop doctors from expressing their opinions based on public information.

 Here's how the article begins:

A psychiatrist who helped craft the 1973 “Goldwater rule” that has kept many mental health professionals from opining on Donald Trump for nearly a decade said that it was not intended as a hard-and-fast prohibition, and that if he were Trump’s doctor, he would order a full battery of tests to determine the cause of what he believes could be the former president’s dementia.

“He seems to be progressively cognitively impaired,” said Allen Dyer, a retired George Washington University psychiatry professor.

Dyer said Trump’s recent behavior warrants medical evaluation, like his apparent inability to remain focused on a single topic or string together complete sentences, for example, or his confusing of people, as he has repeatedly done with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. And more recently, his loss of interest in taking questions at his own campaign event, followed by a demand that his staff play some of his favorite songs while he stood onstage and swayed to the music.

“I find it concerning that he doesn’t complete his sentences, seems to lose track of the question he is trying to answer, or avoid, and that one thought doesn’t lead to another, but appears to veer tangentially off track,” Dyer said.

The article goes on to explain why the American Psychiatric Association formulated this rule. 

This is how Wikipedia decribes The Goldwarer Rule:

The Goldwater rule is Section 7 in the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Principles of Medical Ethics,^[1] which states that psychiatrists have a responsibility to participate in activities contributing to the improvement of the community and the betterment of public health, but when asked to comment on public figures, they shall refrain from diagnosing, which requires a personal examination and consent.^[2] It is named after former U.S. Senator and 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater.^[3][4]

Creation

The issue arose in 1964 when Fact magazine published "The Unconscious of a Conservative: A Special Issue on the Mind of Barry Goldwater,"^[3][5][6] a play on the title of Goldwater's bestseller The Conscience of a Conservative. The magazine polled psychiatrists about Goldwater and whether he was fit to be president.^[7][8] Goldwater sued magazine editor Ralph Ginzburg and managing editor Warren Boroson, and in Goldwater v. Ginzburg (July 1969) received compensation of $75,000 ($623,000 today).

Now, with two weeks until the election, it is too much to hope for that undecided voters who think Trump is as stable as the Rock of Gilbralter will reconsider this conclusion and realize that all the mental health experts are right about him.

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I don't care that Trump's stint at McDonald's was staged. What he couldn't fake was that he's unhealthily obese, By Hal M. Brown, MSW

Of course Trump is known for his love for McDonald's and hasn't been shy about allowing photos of him eating their food to be shared. His doing a made for TV stink at McDonald's is said be have been motivated by Kamala's touting her working class creds by talking about having worked there. 

A number of articles have noted that Trump's visit to McDonald's was not only a staged event but that those who went though the drive-through were pre-screened to be his supporters and, as would makes sense, were checked by the Secret Service. I don't find this alarming. What I am surprised at is that he allowed himself to be photographed is decidedly unflattering ways.

I am sure this is the image he wanted to present to voters:

If he was smart and not in denial about how fat he is he would never had allowed anyone to take photos like the ones below.

In this one he just looks like a squat old man not the tall imposing figure he fancies himself to be:

This shows how fat he is...

... but in this you can clearly see a roll of fat.

Here's the interview from in the restaurant where he claims falsely that Kamala Harris never worked at a McDonald's. She did, though like many people (myself included when I worked two summers in college as a groundskeeper at at large county park), she didn't include what was a summer job on her resume. 

Here are some frequently shared photoes of Trump which I am sure he wishes were never taken.

Some of the photos he has to hate are these and others of his playing golf with his ample girth on display:

Compare these with two other presidents Trump loves to hate engaging in sports:

And eat you heart out, Trump, if you can find it under layers of fat, compare yourself engaging in a sport which takes no more physical effort than billiards or pool with Kamala dancing:

Don't get me started on what Trump considers to be his Travolta level dancing moves. These have snarkily have compared to his making obscene gestures to music. In keeping with the PG rating of this blog I'm not putting a link to the article in the PRIDE website which addresses this. You'll have to use your imagination or do some creative web searching to see what I am referring to.

Getting (more) serious:

There has been criticism over Trump refusing to release a complete medical reported about his health like this in HUFFPOST:

Much attention has been paid to whether he has early dementia. This would be difficult to determine without extensive neurological testing. I think he shows these signs but there's no way to know with a reasonable degree of certainty. 

There are several health related things about Trump that we do know about this 78 year old man.  One is that he gets no significant exercise and that he has a terrible diet. We know from photographs and videos that he is overweight. You might want to add his not getting the sleep required for optimal health.

Here are more illustrations because (I had trouble deciding which one to use when I asked Perchance Photo AI for an image of a fat Trump eating McDonald's. You can see why it was difficult to chose the best one below:

Here's a shoutout to Perchance, the free photo generating AI program I often use to make illustrations for my blogs.

Read previous posts here.

Trump has a 13 year old boy's anatomical obsession, by Hal M. Brown, MSW

 

The quote "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" is usually attributed to Freud although there's no reference to where he might have said this.

The above image is AI, but in many photos, like this one from his Wikipedia bio, he's shown smoking or holding a cigar.

Of course this references cigars being a phallic symbol in dreams. With cigar smokers like himself I expect he thought it was perfectly normal to enjoy them. Unfortunately at the end of his life he battled mouth cancer. Yesterday Trump left no doubt about his being in awe of men with exceptionally large penises.

Trump Kicks Off A Pennsylvania Rally By Talking About Arnold Palmer's Genitalia

Michael  Steele and Elizabeth Warren were talking about it this morning and as I write this Ali Velshi just mentioned it on MSNBC.

A few days ago we were watching a TV crime mystery series where the protagonist was a part-time teacher in a private school. The show was "Who Is Erin Carter?" (and we recommend it).

She had a defiant male student in her class who was the son of one of the richest men in a small Spanish town. In an exam the boy finished in just a few minutes and handed in his paper laying it down on her desk with a smirk on his face. "Are you done already" she said, surprised, but then she looked down at the answer sheet and saw why he could finsih so quickly. It had drawings of big penises all over it instead of answers.

The father was a big donor to the school and she had to explain why she gave him an F when he came to talk to her. She just showed him the exam paper and he understood and ended up asking her to tutor his son.

Here he is with his father:

I thought about this when I read what was the top story on HuffPost last night and this morning. 

Excerpt:

LATROBE, Pa. (AP) — Donald Trump’s campaign suggested he would begin previewing his closing argument Saturday night with Election Day barely two weeks away. But the former president kicked off his rally with a detailed story about Arnold Palmer, at one point even praising the late, legendary golfer’s genitalia.

Trump was campaigning in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where Palmer was born in 1929 and learned to golf from his father, who suffered from polio and was head pro and greenskeeper at the local country club.

Politicians saluting Palmer in his hometown is nothing new. But Trump spent 12 full minutes doing so at the top of his speech and even suggested how much more fun the night would be if Palmer, who died in 2016, could join him on stage.

“Arnold Palmer was all man, and I say that in all due respect to women,” Trump said. “This is a guy that was all man.”

Then he went even further.

“When he took the showers with other pros, they came out of there. They said, ‘Oh my God. That’s unbelievable,’” Trump said with a laugh. “I had to say. We have women that are highly sophisticated here, but they used to look at Arnold as a man.”

Of course penises are a common preoccupation with adolsecent boys. As any middle school teacher or custodian  can tell you about the drawings they see in the bathroom stalls of the boy's bathrooms. I don't know who draws them but I've seen them in the men's bathrooms on the interstate and even in nice restaurants. They are also a common street graffiti drawing.

I want to keep this blog PG so for the women reading this if they want a look inside these Men's bathrooms here's a Google Image search.

There are more indications that Trump has dementia than merely this one. This example also demonstrates that there is something seriously amiss in the 78 year old man's brain. It shows both disinhibition and poor judgment. These are symptoms of dementia.

Did he think he was back in his school boy's locker making lewd remarks to an audience of his cronies? Consider that when he made his infamous "I can grab them by the pussy" remark he thought this would never be shared publicly. This was something he said in a rally. 

If your elderly relative with dementia compared a large bratwurst to his penis at a family dinner you would understand and sadly accept this. This is a presidential candidate talking about big penises in a televised rally.

In Arnold Palmer's hometown with all the things he could say in praise of him he ended up talking about the size of the golf legend's penis. There's something really, really wrong with this.

It is, plain and simply, diagnostic. It is the cognitive version of an underlying disease as coughing up blood would be.

Afterthought:

Trump doesn't smoke. I wonder whether if he did he'd smoke cigars.

Perchance AI image.

Read previous blogs here.