Shameless Self-promotion
UPDATE: Considering that this story has been on for six hours and from the poll with fewer than 20 respondents and no comments at all I am assuming most Kos readers are tired of my stories about Trump’s psychopathology.
Four years ago I decided to aggregate the diaries I wrote about the psychopathology of then candidate Donald Trump on a Daily Kos group which I decided to call “TRUMPOLOGY: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY AND ANALYSIS OF DONALD TRUMP.” The first story posted there was the ninth story I posted on Daily Kos (below).
Trumpology
Politico also aggregates some of the articles related to the psychology of the president under the label or tag Trumpology:
Bragging rights: If you look up Trumpology on Google my Daily Kos stories actually makes the list, albeit as number eight, not too shabby for an obscure blogger like me.
Of all the major websites Salon probably publishes more articles about the psychopathology of Donald Trump than any other with Chauncey DeVega and Igor Dersch often interviewing mental health professionals. They don’t aggregate them under the tag of Trumpology, though.
I’m don’t know if I was the first or just one of the first, to presume that Trump merited an “ology” suffix added to his name.
The suffix “olgy” is added to words to denote a field of study. The list is very long and ranges from
abiology |
The study of inanimate, inorganic, or lifeless things. |
to
I can’t imagine I was the first psychotherapist to write about Trump’s psychological makeup. I think the distinction of the first to write about his personality for a major media publication goes to psychologist Dan McAdam’s for his June 2016 cover story “The Mind of Donald Trump” in The Atlantic (right).
I pre-dated McAdams with my first Daily Kos piece about Trump being mentally unfit on April 19, 2016: “Trump being mentally unfit: “Trump’s misspeak about 7-11 tells us a lot about him.”
The misspeak I referred to in the title and elaborated on in my story was when he was talking, lying as it turned out, about what he did after the World Trade Centers came down. He said “I was down there and I watched our police and our firemen, down on 7-11, down at the World Trade Center, right after it came down,” Trump said. “And I saw the greatest people I’ve ever seen in action.”
The more I observed the way Trump seemed to talk like he’s on amphetamines the more I became convinced that there’s something wrong with the way his brain functions. I’m not talking about all the traits he has of clinical narcissistic personality disorder. I am referring to cognitive functioning. That’s just what this country needs, a narcissist with a broken brain.
Does his obsession with illegal immigration come from having Mexican jumping beans in his brain? That’s how he talks. When faced with a microphone he has to fill empty moments with talking points.
Under the least bit of pressure he demonstrates that he has what therapists like me call a looseness of associations or derailment, i.e. shifting from one topic to another in ways that are obliquely related or completely unrelated. This is often a symptom of serious mental disorders.
Coming out of his voting place this morning, when reporters asked how it felt to be voting for himself, he couldn’t even answer that simple question with a reflective feeling-centered response. He said, apparently referring to himself, that “it’s a great honor for New York.” He had to throw in “my whole reason for doing this is to make America great again.”
That is something that gets therapists to wondering about both a person’s cognitive functioning and their ability to be introspective. If someone isn’t introspective I doubt they have much interest in understanding how other people feel.
McAdams doesn’t diagnose Trump as a malignant narcissist, a concept I wasn’t familiar with until I read Dr John D. Gartner’s (founder of Duty to Warn) USA Today story “Donald Trump’s malignant narcissism is toxic” published May, 4, 2017.
By way of a timeline, the best selling book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” edited by forensic psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee (who has an active Twitter account) featured essays mostly by mental health professionals was published in October of 2017.
From the early days when it was controversial for a mental health professional to say that Trump was a malignant narcissist, or even hint he had a psychiatrist disorder (I am sick of reading about the Goldwater rule), now if you search the web for Trump and malignant narcissist you will find numerous articles.
My first stories: From Mar. 23 to April, 2016
Nostalgia: My very first Kos story was “Too bad the Republicans can’t nominated The Trumpinator”, short and to the point. EXCERPTS:
Too bad the Republicans can’t nominate the Trumpinator. Just think, were it not for two words in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, Republican and former Mr. Universe, two term governor of our largest state, world renown movie star, and the man selected to replace Donald Trump as host of “Celebrity Apprentice" Arnold Schwarzenegger could be running for president. Take out the words “natural born” from our Constitution and it could have happened.
…………..
I can hear in my head Schwarzenegger saying things like “whose finger do you want on the nuclear button, mine or one of these guys” or for that matter, “who do you really want going mano a mano with Putin, tiny fingers Donald, sweaty Cruz, or Conan the Destroyer?"
Finally, can you imagine Trump trying to stand on the same stage with him and try to dismiss his candidacy by calling him little Arnold?
I wonder if the Terminator ever thinks about all this.
Before it hit me like a severe case of food poisoning that Trump was mentally ill I also wrote these:
www.dailykos.com/... Toilet Politics
www.dailykos.com/… President Kasich?
www.dailykos.com/… DC Madam: Who paid for Sex, Trump or Cruz?
www.dailykos.com/… Will Trump bring back crucifixion (about torture)
www.dailykos.com/… Abortion
www.dailykos.com/… Melania — will she attract women voters?
www.dailykos.com/… Democratic wonder women
… and in this one from April 20, 2016: Can a feral Trump be domesticated? I concluded:
Trump is not given enough credit for being an actor, but he really is. He has a schtick. The question is whether or not the schtick that worked on The Apprentice and in his rallies is so based on his personality that he is really so much the ego-maniac unencumbered by empathy that he’d be dangerous as president.
Trump isn’t a feral cat you adopt and try to teach to use the litter box because feral cat’s instinct is to do his business in the sand.
If Trump gets in the White House, his sandbox will be America.