The fact that I write something to post here almost every day may show that I really need to get a life too! I’ve posted 894 times counting today since writing my first post on March 23, 2016.
My first story (aka diary, aka column, aka essay, aka article) was about how it was too bad the Republicans couldn’t nominate Arnold Schwarzenegger because he’d have made mincemeat out of Trump. That was on Mar. 23, 2016.
Within a month, because I was a psychotherapist for 40 years, I developed a speciality writing numerous articles about and explaining in some depth the psychopathology of Donald Trump. I became an active and early member of Dr. John Gartner’s Duty to Warn group which I described in a number of my Daily Kos articles, for example:
My columns about Trump’s mental health (really his lack of good mental health) are collected here in my Trumpology group.
I am had been in regular communication (and still am) with several of the first psychotherapists who came out publicly about how they saw in Trump a mentally unstable candidate whose combination of psychopathology and autocratic leanings alarmed us. I also had many psychotherapist friends, most of who are retired, with whom I engaged (and still do) in discussions about Trump.
We thought he was a joke as a candidate and were mostly upset about how many people enthusiastically supported him.
Then he won.
Obviously I can’t speak for my therapist friends. This is a personal narrative. It is a story about my and about my feelings and not about my opinions. I have certainly written a great deal in the later category.
So what do I feel now?
I watch MSNBC, I read more and more articles about the opinions of mental health experts like Bandy X. Lee, John D. Gartner, Lance Dodes, and others. I read what George Conway, who has an excellent grasp of abnormal psychology, has to say. I am hearing presidential scholar Jon Meacham and Phillip Rucker, the White House Bureau Chief for The Washington Post, discuss Trump’s mental instability right now on TV.
More and more reports are coming out that if Republican Senators could vote secretly they would remove Trump from office and breathe a huge sign of relief that their own nightmare with having an erratic, unpredictable, and mentally unstable leader was over and Mike Pence was president.
Whether psychiatric jargon is invoked or lay terms describing a president who is mentally unfit to hold the office are used there is a consensus which seems to be growing exponentially that what me and my brethren in the mental health community were saying for what seems like an eternity of anguish, anger and frustration that few seemed to be hearing what we were warning about was correct all along.
Like most everyone I never believed Trump would actually be elected when he announced his candidacy in June 2015. After all this is how the most popular tabloid in New York City covered this: Donald Trump enters 2016 presidential race with bizarre speech insulting Mexican immigrants, lambasting Obama.
Between June of 2015 when he rode down his escalator and March of 2016 it was nine months of escalating insanity (no pun intended) from lunatic bizarre tweets to rampaging rage at rallies. It still seemed impossible that Trump could become president. He was truly a clown show, and a bad one at that. Like most every Democrat and most reasonable Republicans we didn’t become alarmed until it was too late.
My own Internet History
I’d been very active using the Internet to communicate since I created my first website for free on Geocities in the early 2000’s (it was called Police Stressline and has been archived here). I wrote a weekly online column for the Brockton (Mass) Enterprise called The Eclectic Digest (example), a website (Cranberry Stressline, also archived, the no, one website about price stress) about the cranberry industry which as Ocean Spray co-op member we we part of, and which got national attention, and eventually was instrumental in causing the CEO of Ocean Spray to be fired. I wrote a column for Capital Hill Blue.
In October, 2012 I started my own blog which began as a personal version of Facebook with photos and stories about our lives as cranberry growers. It didn’t become political until it looked like Trump might become president.
So even though I never made a penny online I discovered that in many ways the Internet could be a powerful tool for communication and change.
And Then Trump Came Along
Then while the contributors to “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” which I never knew was in the works ended up as the go-to people for interviews. The mainstream media and websites like Salon (where Chauncey DeVega has taken the lead in covering Trump’s psychopathology) turned to those contributors for articles and interviews. Do I wish I someone asked me to write a chapter for The Dangerous Case? Of course I do. But honestly as a Michigan State University graduate and former small town mental health center director who never published anything about psychology I was really a non-entity in the mental health community.
I don’t remember how I discovered Daily Kos. It wasn’t on my regular morning reading list of websites. Perhaps I came across one of their articles republished on AlterNet. (I was amazed and pleased when one of my Kos stories, Renowned Economist Turns Psychologist on Donald Trump: ‘He’s a Delusional, Psychopathic Threat’ about Trump’s mental health was also published there.)
However I discovered Kos, I realized that anybody could post what was then, and for some reason is sometimes still called “a diary” there. I learned how quickly a post could “fall off” the page at the end of the sidebar where it competed with numerous other "Recent Stories" unless it made the "Recommended List."
I decided to jump in initially with some general stories until I realized that what I really wanted to do was help regular readers (called Kossacks or Kossaks, I never knew the proper spelling) learn about Trump's psychopathology.
Some of my stories prompted a few readers commented to excoriate me for diagnosing Trump, but the majority showed a sincere desire to have a dialogue with someone who had a mental health background.
I finally had a mission. As a believer in the famous Sun Tzu dictum I could help liberals know their enemy:
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
I put several polls on over the past year asking how may readers believed that Trump’s psychopathology was a major reason that he was unfit for office, how many understood what malignant narcissism was, and similar questions. Over time the numbers responding that they had a good grasp of the subject increased to nearly 100%
From day to day I don’t know what, if anything, I will post here. I find writing to be personal therapy, and it is especially gratifying when I can prompt a dialogue or debate on a subject. I plan to keep writing on whatever piques my interest. I still think there will be more to write about Trump’s psychopathology because like others in my profession I see signs that, to use jargon, he is decompensating and may be on the verge of having an acute psychotic episode.
I truly appreciate everyone who reads what I write, who recommends my stories so they stay on the page all day, and especially those who take the time to make cogent comments.