By Hal Brown, MSW, International blogger
and junior varsity expert on Trump psychology.
I have mixed feelings about the plethora of articles and interviews by or about Trump’s psychopathology because while they add to the body of knowledge about him they won’t persuade any of his hardcore supporters not to vote for him.
I was prompted to write this because there have been three articles published over the past two days in Salon about Trump’s psychopathology. One is by mental health professionals and two are interviews with them.
The Salon articles are:
Today:
An interview: Dr. Justin Frank: "It is terrifying to have a president who is psychotic -"Author of "Trump on the Couch" discusses Mary Trump's book — and why our president hates anyone who is loved
Yesterday:
Would-be dictator Donald Trump would be unstoppable in a second term. That must not happen — As mental health professionals, we cannot remain silent. Trump's authoritarian presidency is a national emergency, by Alan D. Blotcky, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, David M. Reiss, MD, a psychiatrist, and John M. Talmadge, MD, a psychiatrist.
This isn’t a revelation for Salon readers:
Trump shows no empathy for others. He has an unquenchable desire for praise and adulation, but he is incapable of understanding human pain and suffering and plight. All but a very few of his personal alliances are fleeting and transactional. Trump treats others as dupes to be influenced and then dismissed at will when they are no longer of service to him.
The third article is an interview with Bandy Lee, MD, the forensic psychiatrist who edited “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump”.
Yale psychiatrist backs Mary Trump’s assessment: The president "is mentally incapable of leading" "Any honest and competent mental health professional has come to the same conclusion," says Dr. Bandy X. Lee.
This is all she had to say in answer to this question which is the title of the article:
Question: Mary Trump's new book highlights many of the same concerns about Trump's mental health that you've warned about for years. What did you think of her conclusions? Did anything surprise you? Is there anything you disagree with?
Answer: Yes, I was delighted to see this. But then she is a professional who is highly proficient at what she does, as evidenced in the scholarship and clinical soundness she applies to her reasoning. Any honest and competent mental health professional has come to the same conclusion, which is why there was an astonishing consensus from the start. .
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There is one revelation in Bandy Lee's tweets which is worth taking note of. On July 25th she tweeted "Also, the New Yorker is a magazine I wrote to more than two dozen times, the Atlantic about the same number of times, and many others (I only kept track of my colleagues on the New York Times: 100+ op-ed submissions). My final verdict: they are after sensation, little else."
This tweet was objecting to George Conway being quoted in a New Yorker article. Aside from the fact that members of the MAGA cult don’t read The New Yorker, it is likely that more of them know who George Conway is than know who Bandy Lee is.
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Certainly The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times are more prestigious by far than Salon but getting published there while more intelligent Republicans may read them they won't be seen by members of Trump's MAGA base.
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Bandy Lee, John Gartner, Justin Frank, and psychiatrist Lance Dodes have all been interviewed by Lawrence O'Donnell. Recently Dodes has been O'Donnell's "go to psychiatrist on matters related to the psychological analysis of Trump's behavior. Obviously the Trump cult isn't watching MSNBC.
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These articles and interviews don’t offer anything particularly new for those who have been keeping up on the subject of Trump’s psychopathology and why, combined with his racism, xenophobia, and totalitarianism, it makes him dangerous. They do address the some of the revelations in Mary Trump’s book from a psychological perspective which I see as valid, but beyond that I think they are mostly rehashing explanations of Trump’s psychopathology which thanks to their previous articles progressive and ant-Trump Republicans are already aware of. Thanks to them we have a group of progressives who have taken the equivalent of a graduate school course called “The Abnormal Psychology of Donald Trump”.
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For new insights we have Mary Trump.
See News search for recent articles
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She is the one mental health professional who has, at least informally, examined him in real life. In fact she has studied him for decades and once she became a clinical psychologist her observations became particularly astute. There’s no need to elaborate on Mary Trump’s analysis since if you are reading this article you are already familiar with what she had to say.
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There’s a new documentary which John Gartner put together with two Hollywood producer,
“#UNFIT: Malignant Narcissism Comes to Washington” due to be released before the election. It features interviews with eminent mental health professionals and examples of Trump making statements which proves the points the therapists make. Even if theaters were open and the movie opened to great reviews ask yourself whether
“Michael Moore in Trumpland” which came out before the 2016 election changed any votes. I respect John Gartner and hope the film has an impact on voters, but I am trying not to let my admiration for him influence what I believe is an accurate if pessimistic prediction that won’t influence a Trump supporter unless it is promoted on Fox News. I hope it is because Fox News viewers need to get the message of the film.
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As I noted above, at first these articles about Trump’s psychopathology did a service in that they informed progressives about Trump's psychopathology. Of course they were not read by Trump supporters. Now the term "malignant narcissism" which was first used in reference to Trump by John Gartner has become well known by those who have been reading about why he is psychologically dangerous. Just take a look at this web search for Trump and malignant narcissism. Not to brag but if you search Trump and Dark Triad you will even find some of my Daily Kos articles on the first page.
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Does this deluge of psychological information do any good to persuade 2016 Trump voters to vote for Joe Biden? I have to say “how could it when they will never see the information?” They don’t read Salon, they don’t read Daily Kos, and they don’t watch MSNBC.
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Compare and contrast these efforts with those of The Lincoln Project. They run their ads on Fox News, even on Tucker Carlson’s show. They also are targeting Trump supporting Republicans currently running in their home states by running targeted ads on local TV stations.
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As I have written numerous times since I started writing about Trump’s psychopathology, nothing is going to change the MAGA-minds about his psychological fitness to be president until or unless he becomes so manifestly psychotic that there is no way all but his equally delusional members of the Trump cult can deny he need to be hospitalized because he is unmoored from reality. This could take the form of verbally or behaviorally responding to hallucinations, speaking in gibberish, or escalating his paranoia so he demonstrates visible fear that unseen forces are out to get him. By this I don’t mean ranting about the Democrats or fake news, but doing so in a way that proves he is in the throes of a paranoid psychotic episode.
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A personal note:
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The last dairy I wrote which related to Trump’s psychopathology was on June 26th was THANKS UNCLE DONALD Your psychologist niece’s book is poised to outsell “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump”. That story serves as a prelude to this one because it really is about political persuasion. Thanks in part to Donald Trump suing to block release of the book he made an unknown psychologist more famous than all the mental health professionals writing about him combined.
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Unless and until there’s something new to write about the subject of Trump’s dangerous psychopathology that other mental health professionals aren't writing about, I can’t imagine writing another story on the subject.
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I will, of course, keep subjecting readers to my often snarky musings on other subjects trying to write original opinions that other far better writers than me are writing about.