Decompensation of Trump

[H2O Man]

Today, I think it might be good to talk about "decompensation." In the field of mental health, it usually applies to when an individual with a major mental illness begins to experience symptoms of their disease. There are numerous factors that might be involved, often more than one. The two that come to mind are stress and failure to take medications are prescribed. The earlier these things are dealt with, the better for the individual.

Another group of people who have difficulty navigation stress are those with features of the four personality disorders known as "Cluster B." These include antisocial personality disorder, norderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder. People diagnosed with one of these disorders may have features of one or more of the others. And under severe stress, these features become more pronounced.

Now let's consider a small, yet significant group. I am speaking of sociopaths. Now, you might use one of the terms psychopath, or malignant narcissist. As noted in my first interview with Dr. Bandy Lee, these are the same thing. I note that Dr. Mary Trump refers to her uncle as a sociopath, so we'll stick with that.

Now, just like the others we have reviewed, sociopaths also can become symptomatic when under pressure. It is an individual thing, as every human deals with anxiety, pressure, and stress in their own way. But as noted by both Dr. Lee and Dr. Trump, sociopaths under great pressure not only show an increase in the features of Cluster B behaviors, but can experience brief psychotic episodes.

Next, imagine that the sociopath is the head of the family or group. There is no one who can say, "Hey, you don't seem to be doing well. ...." His family can't. Think about how Trump objectified his favorite child when she was young. No, a father who pressures his daughter to get nose and boob jobs does not view her as a distinct human being. Trump should have been incarcerated for child abuse.

Those in the group aroun him cannot exercise any wholesome control over him. They can't even influence him at this point. No attorney in a case like this -- if there's ever been one -- would want their client to go on Hannity at this time. Trump can't help himself. Same thing with rallies. I note that those around him say Trump doesn't have the same spark to ignate a 2024 campaign. But he has to get on stage. He has no control over satisfying this urge.

Those surrounding Trump have to pretend that he is the guy who loves a good legal fight. That he is calm, cool, rational, and at his best in these circumstances. But we are witnessing something very different. Q-anon theme song? This connects with the increased frequency of his saying there will be blood in the streets if he is indicted. Q-anon is the delivery system for violence this time. Not a sign of a very stable genius. The Clinton e-mails? Declassification telepathy?

It's one thing for the drunk with confederate flags and Trump yard signs to think all this makes perfect sense, and is proof of Trump's genius and strength. But think about his lawyers, the ones that refused to tell the Special Master about Trump's declassifying documents. They said they wanted to save that reasoning for the defense if Donald is indicted. Okay, how about now that the Special Master telling me to provide any and all evidence that the FBI "planted" evidence while executing the warrant.

In the past, a number of those surrounding Trump have fled. Some of the lawyers he has had have faced legal consequences. Many of those around him have been thrown under the bus. Do not be surprised if one or more of the lawyers associated with the mar-a-lago case quit in the next 7 to 10 days.

[Me.]

1. I THought It Interesting When He Recently Made A Comment About When He'd Be Elected to The Senate

Misspeak?

[H2O Man]

3. Wow!

I missed that! Gracious!

Without having watched it, I will just say that everything that comes out of his mouth exists somewhere in his mind. Where exactly it comes from is difficult to say. There are a few options, none particularly rooted in reality.

He will continue to splatter his shit about on every media possible, as the J6 Committee hearing approaches. Can't wait!

[malthaussen]

18. Come now, my good Sir, we both know exactly where it comes from. :) n/t

[MyOwnPeace]

2. A STRONG argument for the 25th Amendment.......

and the failure of his selected staff and Cabinet to invoke it on this "Clear and Present Danger!" They KNEW the problem and failed to do anything about it. We are lucky that worse things didn't happen......

[H2O Man]

4. Perfectly stated.

An absolutely huge point. Thank you.

None of them dared to do more than whisper about it. They betrayed the country.

[Evolve Dammit]

8. en masse, they betrayed and continue to betray our country. Vile, all of them. n/t

[Metaphorical]

10. Honestly, this was a failure of the amendment

The issue dealt with in Amendment 25 section 4 primarily had to do with physical and extreme mental incapacitation, such as a stroke, and even then the amendment failed to take into account human behavior. We've had 45 presidents, and until TFG, there were few that could be considered malignant narcissists - Andrew Johnson, perhaps, maybe Andrew Jackson. We've had more that were drunkards (Grant, definitely, George W Bush arguably, Kennedy was showing signs of alcoholism). Reagan had Alzheimers. FDR was seriously debilitated from Polio to the extent that Eleanor Roosevelt was essentially acting in his stead. Same thing happened with Woodrow and Edith Wilson.

The problem with most of those situations is that it is almost impossible to tell at the time exactly when was sufficiently incapacitated to no longer be able to carry out the duties of the office, and those in the cabinet are least likely to step up to the plate and make that decision. It is remarkable that this discussion was even being made in Trump's case by his inner circle, given the fact that it would be political suicide to do so when Trump found out.

Properly speaking (and well aware of how completely fubarred the system is right now), this should have been a decision made by the Supreme Court, on the advice of a panel of court-appointed medical personnel, at the behest of the Surgeon General. This is consistent with military law, in that the ranking medical officer can declare a commander medically unfit for duty, until such time as the officer can demonstrate to that same panel that they are competent to resume command.

Would it have worked with Trump? Probably not. It would have likely caught Reagan.

Dealing with dark triad conditions is obviously much trickier, because these aren't technically diseases or injuries, and a certain degree of sociopathy is almost expected in a politician.

[erronis]

15. A great overview of some of our fallible presidents. Perhaps a yearly test of capabilities?

It's amazing that our presidential candidates, let alone the successful office-holders, aren't subjected to thorough background checks.

But why can't we administer just a simple cognition test in addition to a in-depth intelligence review every year? Publicly and published?

When someone runs for an office such as this (or perhaps Senator, Representative) then all of their foibles should be public knowledge.

"Who administers these tests?" - rhetorically, metaphorical.

[Metaphorical]

21. We knew TFG could identify a giraffe

Last edited Mon Oct 3, 2022, 12:13 AM - Edit history (1)

I think an FBI background check would be reasonable, with the results being broken down into an A to F rating per category. The details would remain secure, but if one candidate had an A- and another a D+ in specific areas, this report card could be made public.

I've been through several background checks for jobss with far less security implications (including one with the FBI, ironically enough. It seems that qualifying for a security clearance should be a prime requisite.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

47. I think all candidates

Should be screened for narcissism and sociopathy if it is in thier make up disqualify them from running.

Also forbid people with a felony record, ,sex crimes or white collar crime records from running.

This would do a lot to insure a standard of integrity and fit ness for office..

[H2O Man]

30. Very interesting.

Important point, for certain. The original concept was definitely about a president being physically disabled. It came about as a result of Dallas. In one of history's more curious warnings, both LBJ and Richard Nixon would have psychological breakdowns while serving, that caused great concern for their inner-circles. Yet these took place in the years following Amendment 25 being passed.

Thus, the question of if it might have worked with Trump remains open ..... though when it comes to attempts to lift and throw that heavy stone sink, I would have more respect for Randle McMurphy. At least he tried.

[Maraya1969]

29. They saved everything for their books. Talk about the root of all evil. eom

[erronis]

49. Yup. I wonder every time a reporter hears about something sketchy/illegal, does he/she

Make notes and evaluate how much this will increase book sales?

Vs. taking the notes to someone for further investigation/prosecution.

Question is: if for example you are a WAPO or NYT reporter do you give the notes up the chain?
Do you take them to your local FBI office (which may be part of the scheming)?
Do you stick them into reddit/etc. and watch the crap come flying your way?

Still, sitting on criminal activities for a few years until you can publish yet another book seems very unethical.

[Saoirse9]

5. Trump chief of staff used book on president's mental health as guide

Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff secretly bought a book in which 27 mental health professionals warned that the president was psychologically unfit for the job, then used it as a guide in his attempts to cope with Trump’s irrational behavior.

News of John Kelly’s surreptitious purchase comes in a new book from Peter Baker of the New York Times and Susan Glasser of the New Yorker. The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.

The book Kelly bought, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, was a bestseller in 2017. In January 2018 its editor, then Yale psychiatrist Bandy Lee, described its aims in a Guardian column.

Don't know if you saw that. John Kelly was using Bandy Lee's book as a guide for how to deal with trump.

I agree that he's decompensating, has been dealt several severe blows legally, and is facing personal and financial ruin. Politically he's weak and if he doesn't have QAnon believers as support, then he has no one. I've been saying for years that he will just explode one day from the pressure he's put on himself, but he just slides further and further down with no end in sight really. He remains unpredictable.

[H2O Man]

23. Yes.

I find it interesting that Kelly bought the book. I had expected more from him. But then again, he comes from a whole different world than me, so I can't expect that he would see things the way I do.

Good to see you back in this neighborhood!

[Martin Eden]

6. Trump's mental pathologies have long been evident, so the recent madness is unsurprising

Truly disturbing, and dangerous, is the mass psychosis among the voting base of the Republican Party. Despite what is evident to most rational adults, they are still in thrall to this madman.

Even if Republican officials were inclined to openly repudiate the Orange Sociopath, doing so would mean losing their next primary to an ambitious MAGA candidate eager to carry Trumpism to the next level.

American politics has truly entered the Twilight Zone when Democrats view the hard right daughter of Dick Cheney as a principled profile in courage.

[MyOwnPeace]

13. Yes indeed.........

and it is that same 'daughter' that is demonstrating the courage to do what all of the 'Chickenhawks' on staff and in the Cabinet didn't have the courage to - just 'DO THE RIGHT THING!'

[H2O Man]

24. Seriously.

I'm good with her opposition to Trump. I can respect that. But on 99.999% of things, I strongly disagree with her. When people discuss profiles in courage, I think than Dr. Bandy Lee is who Democrats should be talking about.

[Martin Eden]

28. Thanks. I didn't know about Dr. Bandy Lee

Although I did know about "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump."

Dr. Lee's credentials are beyond impeccable. It's a shame and a tragedy that more Americans and the Republican Party establishment did not heed the warnings about the mental pathologies of the creature who was elevated to the most powerful elected office on the planet.

[erronis]

7. I don't know if the US has enough "white collar" prisons to hold all the malfeasants.

Most of these malfeasants are likely well-educated and come from upper-crustian families. The judges will also generally have some of the same characteristics. The juries will be picked through to toss anyone who has a predisposition to dislike these types of people.

So it is not unlikely that many will wear ankle-monitors while they are out on the golf links or enjoying cocktails at the country club with others wearing cuffs.

But still. There may need to be made 300-3000 beds in a facility to handle all of the trash that isn't part of the upper-crust. Will they require daily showers, perhaps massages? Will they have lots of special dietary needs?

Will the US justice system bend over backwards (and then some) to coddle these people that tried to destroy the US justice system?

[Evolve Dammit]

9. great questions.

[multigraincracker]

11. Gitmo might fill the bill.

I can't think of a better place for the whole crowd.

[H2O Man]

25. Great questions!

The justice system has manu imperfections. No doubt. We're about to find out if the rule of law will be applied.

[Warpy]

12. I just see him as a malignant narcissist

which is the intersection of extreme narcissistic personality disorder and sociopathy. There is nothing anyone can do for these people, they don't seek treatment because there is never anything wrong with them, no matter how seriously their lives have gone to hell, it's always someone else's fault. They are compelled to lash out, to hit back at perceived injustices and anyone close to them will get hurt. The malignant narcissist will carry a grudge for a lifetime.

What keeps them alive is attention. Ever see a picture of TFG waiting to go on stage or into an interview? He's not psyching himself up, he's not reviewing notes. He sits there, slumped in his chair, looking for all the world like half the air was leg out of his human suit.

It is actually like that for them because without attention and the reflection of themselves in other people, they don't really exist, there is no core, no moral center, no real personality structure to fall back on when nobody's paying attention to them. It's why at solemn occasions, he's waving his arms, jumping around, and generally being an ass. "Don't look at the other guy/corpse/whatever, look at ME!"

I disagree that the stress of the legal web he's now stuck in is decompensating him. It's not. It's putting him back into the center of attention. What started him losing weight and quietly flailing is the loss of constant attention once he left the White House. He's in his element now, bad attention is almost as good as good attention. He will grab microphones and wail about byeing a martyr, but he will not decompensate, not until it is all over and there are no more microphones to grab.

[H2O Man]

26. "Malignant narvissist" works

just fine. It was Erich Fromm who coined the term, to describe the same people that Hare called psychopaths. I consider Fromm to be one of the best in terms of understanding human behavior, both group and individual.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

48. Narcissism

And sociopaths need to be disqualified from holding any position of power and thier accumulation of wealth kept under control.

[Warpy]

50. Positions of power are full of them at all levels

everywhere you look: government, corporations, religion. They crave attention and power and boy, do they know how to charm their way into getting them.

The people they hurt the worst are the ones who get too close, mostly family. Family are the ones who need to enter treatment in order to cope with the crazy making behavior of these people, although my own advice is to run like hell away from them.

[Shoonra]

14. Times have changed

It used to be, about 40 years ago, that the psychiatric boogeyman was schizophrenia. Now times have changed and the boogeyman is malignant narcissist. And twenty or so years ago it was bipolar, but nobody seems to think that Trump is bipolar.

[erronis]

16. The trouble with psychiatry is - the trouble with psychiatry is -

I really like your comment. Times and definitions change. Witness the DSM (ugh).

I'm not in the field or even a real scientist (unless data scientist counts.)

But the fields that have dealt with trying to decode the "why we act the way we do" aren't really very mature - even after 3,000+ years.

Wetware (brains, nervous systems) can't really be probed like integrated circuits or astronomical observations or chemical interactions. Some day, perhaps.

It might be possible to put tfg's brain in a scanner and note areas that are more bigly or some that are more 'shroomly. This still doesn't talk about his manias.

[H2O Man]

27. Respectfully disagree.

It was in the 1960s that Dr. Hare came up with the checklist for psychopathy. That was about the same time that Erich Fromm described the same people as having malignant narcissism. And that the understanding of the influence of environment and DNA results in the same people being viewed as sociopaths. These were all part of the legal system, too.

Paranoid schizophrenia does sometimes have an association with violence. And bipolar might, though that would most likely relate to a personality disorder ...... both people with schizophrenic or bipolarare as likely as anyone to have a personality disorder.

I realize that I'm not including things like the New York Post's headlines over those decades. They do not relate in any way to the things discussed in the OP. They are only serious, in confusing and scaring the public, but not in any other way.

[lindysalsagal]

17. The GQP owns all of it. They knee he was a monster

And that they couldn't win without him.

They knew.

[H2O Man]

31. Definitely.

The GOP had been tilling the soil that allowed for Trump's growth for many years. They own the responsibility for him.

[malthaussen]

19. I eagerly await the decomposition. n/t

[Kali]

22. !

[H2O Man]

32. I am looking

forward to this week's J6 Committee presentation. We know that Trump will be watching. And we know his legal team recently filed to prevent the DOJ's grand jury from getting the information subpoenaed from 40 people. The combination of these investigations increased the pressure on the old boy.

[NowISeetheLight]

39. I can't wait

I’d sure like to see what arguments they’re going to use to try and block the 40 witnesses. Probably “they’re never-Trumpers” or something. I’m sure the orange idol will be claiming that.

[H2O Man]

42. I think that

his legal team for this, while superior to those handling the document case, is merely looking to delay. But by their nature, federal grand juries are understood to have significant power, as they straddle both the executive and judicial branches. The Trump team will not be able to delay this for long. Yet it is perhaps a stronger case for them to roll the dice with the USSC than attempting to have the court determine national security issues, which are constitutionally up to the executive (other than declaring war).

[spanone]

20. K&R

Shit Hitting Fan.

Comeuppance.

Karma.

[H2O Man]

33. Thank you!

[malaise]

34. Great read

Thanks

[H2O Man]

37. Thank you!

[NowISeetheLight]

36. Decompensation

Before I had to retire two plus years ago I had multiple VA hospitalizations for PTSD. I managed to hold it together for a few years. High stress job in healthcare finance, good money, 100+ direct reports. It finally caught up with me and my doctor told me it wasn’t best to keep working. Thanks to savings, VA disability, and SSDI I’m not living on the street like some. The “safety net” saved me.

When I was falling apart I didn’t really recognize it was happening. I knew things were problematic, but I thought I’d be OK. Decompensation does that to you. I completely recognize NOW that I was decompensating. At the time I didn’t. Trump is different though. I don’t see him ever realizing he’s losing it. He’s so narcissistic and self-absorbed. When I saw that Hannity interview on the news when he said he could declassify documents “by thinking about it’. I mean come on. How can anyone defend this man.

[H2O Man]

40. Right.

My best friend from early childhood had similar issues. Because he trusted me, I could point out to him that he came out of the military very different that the young man who joined had been. It was as if a light turned on in his mind. Years later, he said that was a turning point for him, how he understood himself, and was able to communicate with his VA medical providers.

It reminded me of the four questions: Who are you? Are you who you think you are? Who others think you are? Or who you really are? The answer, of course, is yes, I am all of these. But Trump's brain is incapable of processing this. He is convinced that he is exactly who he thinks he is, and that everyone else is supposed to go by his definition.

[Kid Berwyn]

38. Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind.

Detroit breakfast, 1980.

[H2O Man]

41. I was talking with

some friends over the weekend. One said something about remembering when Trump first flirted with the idea of running for president. She traced it back to the early 2000s. I said that it had actually been earlier. In 1988, he infamously wrote to VP George Bush, saying he was "willing" to run as Bush's vice president. Funny how his relationship with the Bush family played out.

[Kid Berwyn]

43. Low Energy will never forgive him.

We will always call him Jebthro.



Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young called Ronnie Raygun, “Pruneface,” in recognition of the pro-NAZI Dick Tracey villain.

[H2O Man]

44. My late brother,

who was dealing with brain injuries from boxing, said he almost felt sorry for Jeb during the debates. Trump "alpha-dogged" him in front of the national television audience. I said as much as I disliked Jeb's brother W, I thought he would have at least nailed Trump for being the ass-clown he is. Or perhaps cross the stage and knock his false teeth down his throat. My brother said, "Yeah, but Jeb has a refrigerator head. He can't fight back."

It is a measure of Trump's foolishness that he thought that he was the type of guy the Bush family looked to bring into their inner-circle at any point in time, especially 1988. Dan Quayle was more attractive.

[Kid Berwyn]

45. I am so sorry!

Please accept my deepest sympathy and condolences, H2O Man.

Thank you for sharing, my Friend.

[H2O Man]

46. Thanks!

My brother had a good life. We had some adventures. More than any other DUer (than me), you would have loved hanging out with him, and discussing all types of things!