Lyrics to “Ooh ehh ooh aah” witch doctor song.
Here’s a story you may have missed. I found it because I have a Google News search for Dr. John Gartner, the founder of Duty to Warn. One of the topics often discussed among my friends, on MSNNC and other objective TV venues, and in articles is how Trump maintains his evangelical base and what these people see in him.
In this story published yesterday in The Christian Post Chris Thurman (website) has a message for evangelical Christians supporting Donald Trump.
Thurman is a psychologist and a Christian counselor. He is the author of three books in his “Lies We Believe” series.
Thurman mixes psychology into his spiritual references in this essay. Most of the article is about Trump’s moral and spiritual pathology. However there are many references to his mental pathology.
These are the portions that jumped out at me as a therapist. I’ll start with how he ends his essay. This is a reference to the John Gartner quote from “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.”
President Trump’s mental and moral condition are only going to worsen over time. Please, don’t think for one minute that he is ever going to turn a corner and become a more psychologically and morally healthy president. Not only is he unlikely to improve, Trump’s various forms of mental and moral pathology almost always deepen and become more intractable. The primary reason why this is true is that Trump doesn’t believe there is anything wrong with him. Consequently, he doesn’t believe he has anything to change. It’s why Trump never apologizes and frequently doubles down after having done something wrong. If you are hoping for a new and improved version of Donald Trump in the future, you are fooling yourself. As a country, we simply cannot afford to give Trump another four years to further take a sledgehammer to our democracy.
I want to end with a quote from one of the mental health professionals who contributed to The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, psychologist John Gartner. This is one of many of the statements in the book that evangelicals would be wise to listen to and act on:
Trump is a profoundly evil man exhibiting malignant narcissism. His worsening hypomania is making him increasingly more irrational, grandiose, paranoid, aggressive, irritable, and impulsive. Trump is bad, mad, and getting worse. He evinces the most destructive and dangerous collection of psychiatric symptoms possible for a leader. The worst-case scenario is now our reality.
You foolish evangelicals, Trump has bewitched you. Stop calling him good when he is evil, light when he is darkness. Have nothing to do with him.
Below I’ve bolded the words commonly used in psychology.
- Finally, I will conclude by challenging those evangelicals who support Trump to humble themselves, admit they made a grave mistake by backing a man so clearly psychologically and morally unfit to be president...
- Doesn’t that fact alone suggest he is a pathological liar rather than a pathological mis-speaker? And, given that “The Lord detests lying lips” (Proverbs 12:22), shouldn’t evangelicals like Graham realize that God has a serious problem with a pathological liar leading our country?
- You (the evangelicals discussed) got “bewitched” by an exploitative, pathologically lying snake oil salesman...
- Given how narcissistic and sociopathic Trump is, he fundamentally doesn’t believe that the rules of moral behavior or social norms apply to him…. he has only grown more mentally and morally disturbed and defiant since assuming the powers of the presidency.
- Another core aspect of Trump’s moral pathology is his lack of compassion and empathy for other people’s emotional pain and suffering.
- Trump is perhaps the most immoral president we have ever had. He is a serial adulterer and sexual predator, often doesn’t pay his debts, cheats on his taxes, pathologically lies, exploits people for his own ends...
- ... is frequently aggressive and hostile toward his perceived enemies, and feels bitter and resentful toward those who sin against him.
- I also believe Trump is so malignantly narcissistic that he claimed to be a Christian simply to get evangelicals to vote for him in 2016. Evangelicals foolishly drank the Trump Kool-Aid and got conned into voting for him. Trump was cunning and conniving...
The article ended with “A Final Warning” -- the quote from John Gartner which I began this story with.
I have lamented the fact that by far the majority of articles about Trump’s psychopathology are published on liberal websites like Salon (and of course on Daily Kos) and in magazines read by a mostly intellectually inclined audience like The Atlantic. We, and I include myself as a duty to warn therapist, in a small way, are preaching mostly to the choir, to our choir.
In this story Chris Thurman is literally preaching to the choir, to their choir.