READ AND WATCH: Tweeters Ridicule Mike Pence’s Fawning Praise Of Donald Trump At Cabinet Meeting
Most of you have seen the video of Pence effusively praising his worship the president. HuffPost asks “Is Pence best described as a sycophant, a toady or a lickspittle?” As a clinician I wonder if the poster boy for malignant narcissism can get so barraged by in incessant gushing praise that even he starts to wonder how sincere it is. Even if he’s delusional enough in his narcissism to believe it, might he get bored with it? What do you think?
Vice President Pence's fawning praise of Trump is getting well deserved mockery on Twitter and various opinion shows.
Here’s a Twitter example from
Steve Silberman, a
uthor of NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, NYT bestseller and winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize.
This Mike Pence "prayer" of thanks to Trump is excruciatingly, stomach-churningly uncomfortable to watch. The ritual submission and exaltation is nearly pornographic. This is not America.
Chris Cillizza, from CNN Tweets “ ‘You are the single greatest human in this galaxy -- nay in any galaxy.’ -- Mike Pence on Trump, basically” and Charlie Pierce Tweets “Mike Pence gives ass-kissers a bad name.”
Watch the video in the story above and wait for the shots of the Cabinet members to the left and then the right of Trump. Look at their bored expressions. Usually they gaze at him with a feigned worshipful expression. Also, look at Trump, even he looks bored - as if he just want’s Pence to get over it.
As a Duty to Warn psychotherapist member who has read just about everything written about malignant narcissism, I still have questions about Trump. For example:
Is it possible that now, or at some point, it will hit Trump (consciously) that everyone is lying when they publicly effusively praise him as if he is the Second Coming?
The diagnosis says “no” but I don’t know if there ever has been a malignant narcissist quite like Trump.
We know his attention span is short unless he’s talking about himself.
Could he ever reach the point where he just says to himself, or even out-loud but of course in private to someone, “enough sucking up already, just do what I tell you to do?”
Friday, Dec 22, 2017 · 5:17:44 PM +00:00
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HalBrown
Here’s another article, We're Having the Wrong Debate on Trump's Mental Health
The critical question is not whether the president is mentally ill. It's whether he is dangerous.
The authors are well known to anyone following this subject. They eschew diagnosis altogether. They are not associated with Duty to Warn. As a DTW therapist I believe malignant narcissism is a “thing” so to speak, regardless of what is said by those who believe that any diagnosis has to be in the DSM to be real. Once again, from Wiki:
Malignant narcissism is a psychological syndrome comprising an extreme mix of narcissism, antisocial personality disorder, aggression, and sadism.[1] Often grandiose, and always ready to raise hostility levels, the malignant narcissist undermines organizations in which they are involved, and dehumanizes the people with whom they associate.[2]
Malignant narcissism is a hypothetical, experimental diagnostic category. Narcissistic personality disorder is found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR), while malignant narcissism is not. As a hypothetical syndrome, malignant narcissism could include aspects of narcissistic personality disorder as well as paranoia. The importance of malignant narcissism and of projection as a defense mechanism has been confirmed in paranoia, as well as "the patient's vulnerability to malignant narcissistic regression".[3]
What the authors all have in common is more important by far than their different explanations as to why Trump should not be president: he is dangerous, and this dangerousness is evidenced by his own statements and behavior.
You don’t need to be a psychotherapist to understand that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Psychotherapists are similar to historians studying living powerful leaders and trying to anticipate their behavior. Both look for recurring patterns and how an individual learns from the consequences of their decisions. In fact, there is even a specialty crossing both fields which is called psychohistory.
I do have some thoughts on the article just published in U.S. News and World Report entitled “We’re Having the Wrong Debate on Trump’s Mental Health: The critical question is not whether the president is mentally ill. It's whether he is dangerous.”
I do not think that authors make a compelling case for issuing a warning about his being dangerous. This is because without a diagnosis it I think it presents weak evidence that he may act out on his inflammatory oral rhetoric and in his often impulsive Tweets. In fact, aside from his bragging, we only have he said-she said evidence of actual violent behavior against women, his ex-wife and the women he assaulted.
Based on what they present just as plausibly can be explained as performance, as bluster, and at times as brilliant strategy on the political and the world stage.
One might say that all the world is a stage and that Trump is the best qualified to lead the United States in playing on that stage. This is what Trump supporters have been saying in one way or another.
If, on the other hand, we diagnose Trump as being a malignant narcissist, we have far more to justify our grave concern that he is dangerous because this is a psychological syndrome comprising an extreme mix not only of narcissism, but also of antisocial personality disorder, aggression, and sadism. We know how impulsive Trump is. We know he is a bully. We can look at the situations that could lead him to make a dangerous decision because his psychological defenses no longer serve to protect the fragile ego hidden beneath his grandiose self-identity.
If he is taunted by Kim Jung Un we know from past behavior he is likely to escalate with an insulting Tweet or bellicose statement. Only by understand his psychopathology can we assess how likely it is that he will react with a missile strike instead of a Tweet-storm.