I was pleased to discover that my friend since the first days of the Duty to Warn movement a year and a half ago was interviewed by one of my favorite opinion writers, Chauncey DeVega in Salon yesterday. Both Alternet and RawStory republished the article and featured it on the top of their main page.
John Gartner is currently in the news because he is one of the editors of a just-published book, Nuclear Madness and the Mind of Donald Trump (which I wrote about here a few days ago). John Gartner is also working on raising funds for a documentary #UNFIT: The Dangerous Mind of Donald Trump. I explain the history of the Duty to Warn movement here.
There are too many relevant parts of this far-ranging interview to excerpt here, so I’ll share my favorite quote:
I do find myself feeling like, "Dear God, why can
these people not see it? And what can we
do to open their eyes?" It is like a 1950s or 1960s
horror movie where nobody would believe that
there was actually a monster that's about to
destroy the town and there are these Cassandra-
like figures trying to warn people. But the
townspeople remain in denial and they are doomed.
John Gartner
I recommend that anyone not familiar with the reasons so many mental health professionals have been warning about Trump’s dangerous psychopathology read this article.
This morning I discovered that the website Newsbusters: Combating Liberal Media Bias thought it was worth attacking Salon in its headline, and John Gartner in its article:
An excerpt:
Gartner, of course, hasn’t personally evaluated Trump. Still, he’s sure Trump “truly doesn't care if he destroys us all. In fact, there's a part of Trump that would almost take glee in it.” Gartner added for good measure, “He's impulsive, he's erratic, he's seeing the world in a grossly distorted way.”
How does Gartner know? “Trump tortures anyone who doesn't give him what he wants.” Oh.
The president, according to the shrink, is in a state of deterioration. A characteristic of malignant narcissists like Trump is that “when they gain power, they become more inflamed in their grandiosity and in their paranoia.” In Trump’s case, what many would see as a show of confidence expected of a leader, Gartner sees as a delusion of “papal infallibility.”
Gartner’s concern -- and that of his interviewer Chauncey DeVega -- also extended to the American populace, referring to Trump supporters as part of a “cult.” As Gartner said, “The cognitive dissonance is such that the cult members will rationalize anything. For example, something like 50 percent of Republicans say that if Trump wanted to cancel the 2020 election, that would be fine with them.” In the poll that he is referencing, out of a pool of 650 people, half of those who identified as republican said they would support postponing the election.
The interview represented just one more small-minded attack on Trump. Instead of taking on his policy decisions in a civilized argument, the media has continually decided to slander his mental health instead. Since Brian Stelter’s opinion was not enough, they finally found medical experts like Dr. Gartner with enough lack of professionalism to be willing to support their claim.
The comments generally are what you would expect on a right-wing website. Some examples:
bucketnutz • 2 hours ago
With all of the Trump Derangement Syndrome examples of the MSM Members losing their minds over Trump's presidency, i'm sure there are Psychiatrists out there who would diagnose these media members as Insane too. I really think the mental illness being displayed as reporting is a great example of insanity.
fastfood • 10 hours ago
"He's impulsive, he's erratic, he's seeing the world in a grossly distorted way." "...in a state of deterioration." "...when they gain power, they become more inflamed in their grandiosity and in their paranoia." Describes Trump predecessor to a "T".
WhiteBluecollarRedneck • 14 hours ago
The profession with the highest number of nut jobs is psychiatry.
SilencedCal • 16 hours ago
Time out Celtics. Who's the malignant narcissist? Could it be the man who went on national tv and diagnosed a person he has never personally examined, thus violating the ethical standards of his profession and opening himself up to the possibility of losing his license(No, actually I haven't checked to see if he even has a license)? Why would a person do such a thing? Gartner must think himself the finest psychiatrist in the world to be able to properly diagnose someone he has never examined(grandiosity, check). By knowingly violating the ethical standards of his profession, he must believe himself to be above the law(delusion of papal infallibility, check). Or did he risk losing his license because his message must be heard in order to save the world(paranoia, check)?!
So, there you have it. Gartner is a malignant narcissist. Hot damn, I'm a psychiatrist now!
I added one of my own:
John Gartner is a clinical psychologist, not a psychiatrist, so he is not bound by rules from the American Psychiatric Association. This was an error in the Salon article. Instead of debating whether a mental health professional should or can diagnose a public figure from a distance, how about digging down into why Trump exhibits so many traits, behaviors, and characteristics which lead hundreds of experienced clinicians (like me) to conclude he has psychopatholgy that makes him unstable, erratic, unpredictable, easily insulted, prone to reacitve bullying, vengeful, wanting to punish anyone who isn't a sycophant, lacking in empathy, unwilling to listen and learn from experts who disagree with him, and willing to believe the likes of Alex Jones who espouse paranoid conspiracy theories.
The primary reason that his diagnosis matters is that this tells us whether Trump is capable of changing The particular mix of peronality disorders clinicians see ample evidence that he has are not considered treatable because in part, those people don't suffer, they make other people suffer, and thus they never seek help.
Hal Brown, MSW, Clincal Social Worker, retired Mason Mental Health Center director (Mich.), early member of Duty to Warn. Google Trump Hal Brown for my own articles.
As Gartner and others like me try to promote this addition to the growing library of books about why Trump is the most dangerous president in American history: see The Donald Trump book club is exactly what you would think it would be by Chris Cillizza, CNN.
Note that a little over a year ago Chauncey DeVega interviewed another mental health professional warning about the dangerousness of Donald Trump, Bandy Lee, MD, who edited the best-seller “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.” She does not offer a diagnosis of Trump.
Trump is an existential threat to our democracy and freedom around the world because of both his autocratic beliefs and his psychopathology. I suppose all publicity about the combination, even from Newsbusters, is good publicity.