About the title: I use the term borderline psychosis in the colloquial sense meaning close to or similar to psychosis, not in the technical meaning as described here.
Trump measures his self worth by crowd size. Crowd size is his Freudian cigar.
When I heard his claim doctors left operating rooms to see him I knew he was lost in his bizarro world of self-aggrandizing borderline psychosis:
THE PRESIDENT: And nobody wrote that. Nobody wrote that because you didn’t write the truth. The New York Times doesn’t like to write the truth. But — but they love — they totally love our country and they do love our President.
So when I went to Dayton, and when I went to El Paso, and I went into those hospitals, the love for me — and me, maybe, as a representative of the country — but for me — and my love for them was unparalleled. These are incredible people. But if you read the papers, it was like nobody would meet with me.
Q What did they tell you that they want in terms of gun laws?
(Of course Trump ignored or didn’t hear the question about what the hospital staff told him about what they thought about gun laws, and he went on with his most outrageous claim….)
THE PRESIDENT: Not only did they meet with me, they were pouring out of the room. The doctors were coming out of the operating rooms. There were hundreds and hundreds of people all over the floor. You couldn’t even walk on it. So, you know, there’s a lot to happen.
When I heard this I wondered if the hospitals would let this lie stand. They didn’t.
Trump obviously and quite delusionally thought he’d be embraced as a beloved, even worshipped monarch, and the healer-in-chief when he visited the hospitals in Dayton and ElPaso.
When he wasn’t, and when the cool reception he received was reported, along with the story of the baby brought back as a prop and the photo of him visiting a sick child who wasn't injured in the shooting provided further proof that even sending Melania in her “I really don’t care” jacket would have been a better P.R. tactic. In fact, the message on the modified jacket (by yours truly) is emblematic of the Trump’s personality and the entire Trump administration.
The hospital visits were replays of the inauguration size humiliation.
So there’s the president an ego the size of Greenland and the personality just as cold and barren triggering images of surgeons dropping their scalpels and hurriedly clamping off any blood vessels, peeling off their surgical gloves and dosing them onto the floor as they rushed from their operating rooms to meet the new Messiah.
Of course there’s no way Trump would even know if doctors left operating rooms since they wouldn't be in the part of the hospital he was visiting. Trump is so desperate to cast himself as the leader beloved by the masses that in his fantasy mind he thought the most dramatic proof of his wonderfulness would be the image of doctors leaving patients on the operating table for the once in a lifetime to be in the presence of the (choose one or more) beloved leader, King of Israel, Chosen One, Second Coming of Christ.
Recommended viewing. If you missed this segment on Lawrence O’Donnell it is nine minutes well wroth your time. If you can’t view it there try You Tube here.
Friday, Aug 23, 2019 · 7:42:01 PM +00:00 · HalBrown
As far as my research can tell, and I have searched extensively, there is only one mental health professional that has said that Trump does not meet the criteria for being diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder or exhibits behavior so strongly suggestive that he has a serious disorder rendering him unfit that he must be examined by a panel of experts.
This is psychiatrist Allan Francis — who by the way I contacted by email with what I thought were pertinent questions and he wrote back saying that he had nothing to add to what he had already published, for example:
I helped write the manual for diagnosing mental illness. Donald Trump doesn’t meet the criteria By ALLEN FRANCES SEPTEMBER 6, 2017
In a letter to the New York Times,
Frances notes that while Trump may be a narcissist, there is a difference between having narcissistic tendencies and having a mental illness. “He may be a world-class narcissist, “ Frances writes. “But this doesn’t make him mentally ill, because he does not suffer from the distress and impairment required to diagnose mental disorder.”
Since assuming the presidency, thousands of people – including politicians, psychologists and other prominent figures – have voiced their opinions of Trump’s mental health. Three weeks ago, psychologist John Gartner Ph.D., started a petition on Change.orgstating “Trump manifests a serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of President of the United States,” and asking other mental health professionals to sign the petition. So far, the petition has been signed more than 20,000 times.
These calls to diagnose Trump, Frances said, only further stigmatize mental illness, and hurt those truly living with mental health conditions. “Bad behavior is rarely a sign of mental illness, and the mentally ill behave badly only rarely,” Frances writes. “It is a stigmatizing insult to the mentally ill (who are mostly well behaved and well meaning) to be lumped with Mr. Trump (who is neither).”
Clinically and technically if we were to merely describe Donald Trump as having narcissistic personality disorder, and the vast number of clinicians — in fact all that I can find — say he has this plus characteristics of sociopathy and other pathologies that make him dangerously unfit — then Francis is correct in one regard. While you can tick off every other trait, symptom, or characteristic he “he does not suffer from the distress and impairment required to diagnose mental disorder.”
I do not think this should have been included in the diagnostic criteria for the simple reason that people with NPD make other people suffer and they themselves do not suffer. This was the question I wanted to discuss with Dr. Francis.
The other was how he concluded that diagnosing someone with a dangerous mental disorder stigmatized the majority of people with mental disorders who are not only harmless but productive members of society. (If anyone is stigmatizing people with mental illness now it is Trump blaming them for gun violence.)
Of course there are many psychiatrists who adhere to the Goldwater rule and will not diagnose Trump publicly, but like Bandy Lee, still say that he manifests so many signs of being dangerous he should be evaluated by an objective group of mental health professionals.
If anyone can find another credentialed mental health professional who has said Trump is mental healthy it would add to the debate to let us know.
There’s also a self-proclaimed psychologist who has been on Fox News saying Trump is mentally healthy. I wrote about her here.