Of course with "quiet, quiet, quiet" and "you're fake news" I am referring to Trump’s most recent press gaggle where he introduced a new line to add to his insult “you’re fake news” when reporters who he didn’t like southed a question: “quiet, quiet, quiet.”
Opportunities for the public, as represented by the press, can ask the president questions used to be called press conferences. Now the generally used term is "press gaggles" and as you see from my illustration it has worked its way into my laptop dictionary as a usage example.
A flock of geese is called a gaggle but considering that where I live I have walked among literally hundreds of Canada geese who don't fly away until one is almost in their midst I find they make almost no noise at all. Hundreds of crows also descend on my neighborhood on one side of the Willamette River I can hear their cacophony when they are 200 yards across the river. A group of them is called a murder.
A better term for these events would be a press murder, and in fact they are torture to watch and murderous for the reporters.
For those critics of Duty to Warn psychotherapists like John Gartner and I who say that we can only assess, or diagnose, the state of Trump’s mental health with a face-to-face interview because we don’t have enough information I suggest that watching videos of a couple of hours of these interactions provide more information than you’d ever get in an interview.
As Trump rails against the impeachment inquiry in these press gaggles and at his rallies we see two somewhat different diagnostically significant sets of data. With the press trying to play gotcha we see how he reacts to being confronted which has to increase his defensiveness and stress level. At his rallies we see a picture of his mental state in front of a friendly audience where he can go on as long as he wants to unencumbered by the questions of generally frustrated and hostile reporters who want to pin him down.
What I am observing more frequently and at a greater intensity than before the impeachment inquiry went formal after the Ukraine extortion was revealed by the whistleblower are three related psychiatric symptoms.
1) Pressure of speech is a tendency to speak rapidly and frenziedly, as if motivated by an urgency not apparent to the listener. The speech produced is difficult to interrupt.
Such speech may be too fast, erratic, irrelevant, or too tangential for the listener to understand. It is an example of cluttered speech, and often associated with certain mental disorders particularly mania and schizophrenia. It can be unrelenting, loud and without pauses. (Wikipedia)
2) Derailment, also known as loosening of associations, refers to disorganized thinking that jumps between ideas that seem entirely unrelated.
3. Circumstantial speech, also referred to as circumstantiality, is the result of a so-called "non-linear thought pattern" and occurs when the focus of a conversation drifts, but often comes back to the point.[1] In circumstantiality, apparently unnecessary details and seemingly irrelevant remarks cause a delay in getting to the point. (Wikipedia)
What I think we are observing is a president who is under the most stress he has ever experienced where his usual psychological defense mechanisms are not working. This has heightened his anxiety, and thus we are seeing the speech patterns described above.
We also are seeing an increase in his blaming others for what he is guilty of. Commentators sometimes call this projection but this is more a colloquial use of the term. “Psychological projection is a defence mechanism in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others. For example, a person who is habitually rude may constantly accuse other people of being rude.… Freud considered that, in projection, thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings that cannot be accepted as one's own are dealt with by being placed in the outside world and attributed to someone else.” (Wikipedia)
I’m not about to educate everyone who is using the term projection not quite precisely to describe what Trump does, although I’d far prefer it was simply called playing the blame game. The is from 5 Reasons We Play the Blame Game by Susan Krauss Whitbourne Ph.D.
- Blame is an excellent defense mechanism. Whether you call it projection, denial, or displacement, blame helps you preserve your sense of self-esteem by avoiding awareness of your own flaws or failings.
- Blame is a tool we use when we’re in attack mode. Falling into the category of a destructive conflict resolution method, blame is a way to try to hurt our partners.
- We’re not very good at figuring out the causes of other people's behavior, or even our own. The attributions we make, whether to luck or ability, can be distorted by our tendency to make illogical judgments. And we're just as bad at making judgments involving the blameworthiness of actions in terms of intent vs. outcome.
- It’s easier to blame someone else than to accept responsibility.There’s less effort involved in recognizing your contributions to a bad situation than in accepting the fact that you're actually at fault, and changing so you don't do it again.
- People lie. As my colleague, Robert Feldman, discovered, “Everybody lies.” It’s pretty easy just to lie and blame someone else even though you know you’re at fault. You may figure that no one will know it was really you who spilled coffee all over the break room, so you just blame someone else who’s not there (and hope that person never finds out).
We may be about to observe another psychological phenomenon translated into an impeachment strategy. “Blaming others can lead to a kick the dog effect where individuals in a hierarchy blame their immediate subordinate, and this propagates down a hierarchy until the lowest rung (the dog).” (Wikipedia)
Most people are still dismissing the chance that the 25th Amendment could be implemented However, psychotherapists I know are seeing more and more indications he could decompensate so much that his behavior indicative of having a borderline psychotic thought disorder currently observed by those who interact with him in the White House (as described in the book “A Warning” by Anonymous), could become so obvious to the public that there would be both pressure and cover to remove him this way.
How much of a long shot do you think this is? Take the poll.
(Early poll analysis with 76 votes in it is interesting because only 49% voted zero. Half gave this a slim or better chance.)