An Eminent Psychiatrist Demurs on Trump’s Mental State

[rjmacs]

Nobody here or anywhere else, outside of his doctor's office, should be playing physician to 45.

Period.

Just because he's terrifying doesn't mean we get to make up medical diagnoses and suppose that they might be true.

[Janit]

For all sorts of reasons, the search for a psychiatric diagnosis is not a good way to unseat the Orange Mandarin.

1) Medical diagnoses are designed to benefit the ill person, which is why it is an ethical problem for practitioners to diagnose non-patients for political purposes.

2) Diagnosis of mental illness is vulnerable to all sorts of abuse when applied to politics. Remember that it was a common Soviet practice to institutionalize political dissidents based on the premise that dissidence was a symptom of psychiatric disease.

3) Trump may or may not have crossed the line between Narcissistic Personality to Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but it doesn't really matter. His behavior is destructive to others and to the country, regardless of whether it is destructive to himself.

4) The concept of Narcissistic Personality is useful politically because it gives us a framework to understand otherwise baffling behavior, and therefore a framework for resisting that behavior and unseating the man. The term "Narcissistic Personality" is not so much a battle cry as a basis for a strategy. It is also a useful concept for reminding us that Trump is the one who is behaving badly, and that resistance is NOT bad behavior.

5) Trump will ultimately be unseated based on the bad behavior that his Narcissistic Personality has led him into. The name-calling alone will not do it.

6) In the long run, Trump's behavior will probably be seen to be so self-destructive that a full diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder will be justified. Nevertheless the behavior itself is the best place for political focus.

[DeusxMac]

rjmacs wrote:
Nobody here or anywhere else, outside of his doctor's office, should be playing physician to 45.

Period.

Just because he's terrifying doesn't mean we get to make up medical diagnoses and suppose that they might be true.

miley-signs006:

Do you seriously believe there are no psychiatric profiles of most of the world's senior governmental officers within the many security organizations of all the major world powers (including the U.S.A.)?

Whom do you think compiles those profiles if not trained professional practitioners?

How many of the professionals compiling those profiles do you believe have had private, one-on-one, in-depth evaluation meetings with the individuals they are compiling profiles of?

Challange or refute the non-professional's conclusions about Trump's mental state if you can, but don't declare that we may not use all the information available to us to come to those conclusions.

[$tevie]

So, exactly how does Congress and/or the Cabinet determine that a President is cognitively unfit for office, in order to use Section IV of the 25th Amendment? I can't picture someone unwilling to step down because of their mental illness acquiescing to a psychiatric evaluation.

The original letter posited that "the grave emotional instability indicated by Mr. Trump’s speech and actions makes him incapable of serving safely as president." It's like a friend who is an auto mechanic pointing out that your engine sounds weird and you should probably go have it checked out.

[rjmacs]

DeusxMac wrote:
[quote=rjmacs]
Nobody here or anywhere else, outside of his doctor's office, should be playing physician to 45.

Period.

Just because he's terrifying doesn't mean we get to make up medical diagnoses and suppose that they might be true.

miley-signs006:

Do you seriously believe there are no psychiatric profiles of most of the world's senior governmental officers within the many security organizations of all the major world powers (including the U.S.A.)?

Whom do you think compiles those profiles if not trained professional practitioners?

How many of the professionals compiling those profiles do you believe have had private, one-on-one, in-depth evaluation meetings with the individuals they are compiling profiles of?

Challange or refute the non-professional's conclusions about Trump's mental state if you can, but don't declare that we may not use all the information available to us to come to those conclusions.
You are conflating private, closely held intelligence reports against pop psychology armchair musings.

I call b.s. The kind of intel you're describing is used to help determine our best moves based on what we know. It's not usually legally admissible, and psych evals are always considered in the context of much broader assessments.

So, if you want to blather on about what you think is wrong with 45, or how he'd be diagnosed by various shrinks, go for it. It doesn't move the ball down the field, and it hurts your credibility, so I'd recommend stuffing it.

[$tevie]

What credibility? This is an anonymous internet chat group, not an academic symposium. If we aren't going to have fun here, what is the damn point of it? There's like two dozen of us here, who gives a tiny rat's ass if we talk about this?

[Dennis S]

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

[kj]

$tevie wrote:
What credibility? This is an anonymous internet chat group, not an academic symposium. If we aren't going to have fun here, what is the damn point of it? There's like two dozen of us here, who gives a tiny rat's ass if we talk about this?

I agree with RJ and the psych in the op. Is it all in fun? Not to a lot of people. I'm not sure which bothers me more, the revelation of how people feel about those with mental illness or the overconfidence people seem to have in the mental health sciences. Sometimes a bunghole is just a bunghole, and it's not that complicated. It literally embarrasses me that this is even a thing. kj.

[davester]

What Janit said.

[rjmacs]

$tevie wrote:
So, exactly how does Congress and/or the Cabinet determine that a President is cognitively unfit for office, in order to use Section IV of the 25th Amendment? I can't picture someone unwilling to step down because of their mental illness acquiescing to a psychiatric evaluation.

You want the real answer to that question? You don't. As long as the President has the cognitive wherewithal to send a letter to Congress asserting his competence, and is able to appear publicly and utter words in English, you can be pretty well assured that he won't be removed using the provisions of Section IV of the 25th Amendment {leaving aside that the Congress is entirely controlled by the President's party, which is a whole other thing]. Let's hope we never have to try, because it's unlikely to succeed, and could give 45 a pretext for more draconian actions.

$tevie wrote:
What credibility? This is an anonymous internet chat group, not an academic symposium. If we aren't going to have fun here, what is the damn point of it? There's like two dozen of us here, who gives a tiny rat's ass if we talk about this?

I don't give a rat's ass what we talk about here, but I do think a broad public inquiry/discussion about 45's potential mental health diagnoses distracts from actions and efforts that could be more constructive. But what do I know? I thought Hillary was going to win.