September 18, 2022

Once upon a time shrinks like me warned about Trump's malignant narcissism

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I made the above illustrations for 

TRUMP PSYCHOLOGY: Add a section to the DSM-5. It doesn't come close to having a category for Trump. (Feb. 22, 2020)



A few days ago it was revealed that:

John Kelly Read Assessments About Trump's Mental Health published in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump (article)

My comment to this HUFFPOST article was: 

This is a bittersweet vindication for all of those psychotherapists like myself, who like Bandy X. Lee the editor of the book to John D. Gartner, PhD who started the Duty to Warn group not long after Trump was elected with the mission of convincing Pence to invoke the 25th. Many hundreds of mental health professions went public in one way or another warning that Trump's psychopathology made him "a dangerous case." Just google Trump mentally ill...

If you do a Google Trump mentally ill Google search (here) this is what you come up with:



A psychiatric term first used in an article by Dr. John Gartner to describe Trump was malignant narcissist. He had an article published in USA Today on May 4, 2017.



I think it is important to note that USA Today is a non-partisan national publication since by and large subsequent articles by mental health professionals about Trump's dangerous psychopathology were published by progressive media, Salon in particular where Chauncey DeVega interviewed Bandy Lee, MD, John Gartner, and psychiatrist Lance Dodes. John Gartner, as far as I know, was the only mental health professional warning about the danger of Trump and his malignant narcissism on Fox News. He was on the less known, but just as slimy as Tucker Carlson, Jesse Watters' show. I wrote about that here in May of 2017.


No list of mental health professionals who have had a major impact on letting the general public know that Donald Trump's psychopathology made him dangerous is complete without including his clinical psychologist niece, Mary Trump. Her credibility is enhanced exponentially over those therapists who never met him because she knew him up close and personal. For example this is from September 3rd: 

Mary Trump offers blistering assessment of Trump's volatile actions when backed into a corner

In addition to Salon, Lawrence O'Donnell gave substantial air time to having mental health experts on his MSNBC  show. Clicking on each of these eminent mental health professionals names will link to a Google search of Trump and their name. Of course I am hardly eminent but you can also Google Trump and my name.

There are lots of search terms to add to Trump but if you want to find articles with references to his malignant narcissism try this:


Enlarge above image.

I was prompted to look back at the articles I wrote for the website Capitol Hill Blue when I was a regular columnist there prior to moving to Daily Kos. 

I wanted to illustrate my columns with snarky photoshops and the founder of the website, editor and publisher Doug Thompson wanted them to be straight text.

I really enjoyed making these illustrations and it turned out I was just about the only one to use them on my Daily Kos postings.

The one I made for this story isn't the most clever illustration but it took a long time to make:

Click above to enlarge


Putting together images for what I posted on Daily Kos was fun while it lasted and now I can still do it on this blog, but with a small smaller potential readership than I had on Daily Kos where periodically I'd have up to 2,000 people read something I posted there.

Now having been banned for life from Daily Kos in retrospect I wonder if this was a wise move. I wish I was able to post a regular opinion column on Capitol Hill Blue again. Now only Doug Thompson has an opinion column there. Doug, are you reading this?

I was pleased to see that these articles, like the more than 1,400 essays which  I posted on Daily Kos where I was merely a community member, are still online.

You can read them here:




 Addendum:

If Trump really  believes the paranoid beliefs espoused by QAnon like many of the members of this cult-like group he may have morphed from being a malignant narcissist and a megalomanic into full-blown delusional psychosis. Read article.






I am pleased to share with loyal and new readers that since I stopped posting on Daily Kos more people are reading the blog, not only in the United States but from other countries too. Thank you to everyone who shared a link with their friends whether by email or in social media.




Images:


Click to enlarge












September 17, 2022

Trump of Dark Triad now boxed in by legal jeopardy

 A serious look at Trump's legal situation with a dollop of snark...

by Hal Brown, 

 banned from Daily Kos now post exclusively on this blog. 

Reading this article in Salon...

They have him surrounded: Trump now faces legal troubles in three states, plus D.C.

No one can promise Trump won't get away. But he's sweating — and he wakes up every day faced with huge legal bills


 

... it occurred to me that I wrote about Trump being in the center of another shape, a hexagon. My story was about the triangle of The Dark Triad. I made two illustrations, also using DonkeyHotey caricatures, to illustrate a Daily Kos story I wrote about this. Some 1,300 people read this story and there were 118 comments. I have to admit that since being banned on Kos I miss knowing this many people read and like what I write.



The caricatures of Trump of him I put in the Dark Triad shows his smug narcissism (top)  and his screaming psychopathology and Machiavellianism (bottom). The caricature I put in the black box illustration for this story suggests that he is starting to feel desperation.

 Of course we don't know if he really experiences a healthy response for someone in the position he's in. He's not psychology healthy so it is debatable whether he can experience what we'd consider to be a normal reaction to stress. I have my doubts he feels what we'd call normal feelings in any circumstance that goes against his deeply held belief that he is invulnerable. 

In addition to skating through incidents like the Access Hollywood bus recording (more about that later) which would have derailed the prospects of any candidate he has had more lives than a proverbial cat and he even survived Covid. No wonder he thinks he's super-human.

Now things are different, even if he continues to deny it.

Not only is Trump boxed in on four sides with legal jeopardy in three states and D.C. but there are two other things going on which a normal person would worry about. One is the January 6th Committee and the other is the Department of Justice investigation. That makes six sides, a hexagon of troubles pressing in on him. Nobody knows which trouble will crush him. There's another DonkeyHotey caricature for this.

The subtitle to Truscott's article says Trump is sweating as he wakes up every day faced with high legal bills. In fact because of his narcissism and megalomania he may feel that the prospect of his going to prison is about as likely as the entitled assaulter of women getting a lap dance from Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. If he tried "getting away with it" with AOC he wouldn't be walking upright for a week.

Just an aside: 

Trump actually does sweat. For example:


Sweating in 83 degree heat, despite the snarky Twitter speculation described in the article above, is probably normal for someone wearing a suit, and who knows, maybe a man girdle (I speculated about this here). 



Waking up sweating isn't normal. It generally means you are psychically ill or anxious. I think it is actually possible that there are moments Trump feels fleeting pangs of anxiety over what outside observers consider to be a plight because of legal actions in four jurisdictions plus the Department of Justice and what may be revealed in the Jan. 6th Committee hearings. 

I think that if anything makes Trump actually experience anxiety it isn't the possibility of prison, it's losing money. Truscott makes this important point here:

Truscott concludes as follows:

If the DOJ follows the methods it has used in previous investigations, it's likely to start small, which means that a lot of little Trumpies had better start jockeying to hire the best lawyers they can find now, rather than later.

As for Trump himself, well, your guess is as good as mine. But right now, he's looking a lot like Custer at Little Bighorn – surrounded on all sides with no way out. He's been there before when he faced two impeachments, but many of the people who defended him then, including his former White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, have already testified before grand juries investigating Trump and cannot be counted on to have his back this time.

I don't know about you, but if I were waking up every morning and writing checks to lawyers — even super PAC checks — I wouldn't be a happy camper. At this point, I'm thinking that maybe what they call a global plea deal made by Trump, to wrap up  all his federal and state criminal investigations in return for not running for president, might be his best bet. Right now it looks like if he doesn't make such a deal, he might lose his golf, his money and his freedom. 


Trump may or may not run for president. If he runs he could win the primary. As frightening as it is to even consider, he could win a second term. None of these are sure things.

And then there's this:

"One thing, however, is certain. Trump is facing huge legal bills and he will have more and more trouble convincing donors to money up money to help fund a loser fighting a losing cause." Them Hartmann



There may yet be another shoe yet to drop. It may be a big one. It may be a heavy boot. Thom Hartmann address it in this article: 

When Trump is finally revealed as an agent of foreign governments will America wake up?

A final bit of snark 

(with apologies to real snark hunters):

Trump may think he's a real cowboy. In truth he's as real a cowboy as the Marlboro Man was. If he tries to park his imaginary stallion here this is what will happen:

This is a sign at The Wild Hare Saloon outside of Canby, Oregon . There actually may be a few cowboys who eat there especially when the rodeo is in Canby.

Real cowboys in other countries that have cowboys would get it though in Brazil it might have to be translated.

Vaqueiro apenas estacionamento, todos os outros serão castrados

It means that phony cowboys (like Trump) will be emasculated, quite literally




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