Trials and triggers: Psychiatrists warn Trump's psychosis will grow "as he becomes more desperate"

[marmar]

Trials and triggers: Psychiatrists warn Trump's psychosis will grow "as he becomes more desperate"
"Trump's behavior is worse now but that's only because we're seeing a peeling away of his façade"

By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED JUNE 1, 2023 6:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) Donald Trump, the traitor ex-president who attempted a coup on Jan. 6, a confirmed sex predator, an indicted felon who has been arrested for his alleged crimes, a white supremacist, an enemy of democracy and the humane society, a man who behaves as though he is a sociopath if not a full-on psychopath, a criminal mastermind, and presumed Republican 2024 presidential nominee made the following pronouncement via his Truth Social disinformation platform in "honor" of Memorial Day on Monday:

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, BUT ESPECIALLY TO THOSE WHO GAVE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE FOR THE COUNTRY THEY LOVE, AND TO THOSE IN LINE OF A VERY DIFFERENT, BUT EQUALLY DANGEROUS FIRE, STOPPING THE THREATS OF THE TERRORISTS, MISFITS AND LUNATIC THUGS WHO ARE WORKING FEVERISHLY FROM WITHIN TO OVERTURN AND DESTROY OUR ONCE GREAT COUNTRY, WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN IN GREATER PERIL THAN IT IS RIGHT NOW. WE MUST STOP THE COMMUNISTS, MARXISTS AND FASCIST "PIGS" AT EVERY TURN AND, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

While too many among the American news media have convinced themselves – incorrectly – that repeatedly listing Trump's many crimes and other horrible behavior is "counter-productive" and "unnecessary" because "everyone knows it already," it remains critically important to continue to do so. Why? One of the main ways that fascism and authoritarianism and other anti-democracy movements take hold in a society is through normalization.

In total, the mainstream news media, political class, and the American people have, for various reasons, become largely numb to the aberrant, anti-human and generally pathological behavior of Donald Trump and the larger Republican fascist and MAGA movement. Moreover, in the case of the mainstream news media (see CNN's recent Trump "town hall" special), as an institution it has largely decided that Donald Trump and his 2024 presidential campaign and legions of MAGAites are too good for business to be condemned and then subsequently treated as the existential threat to American democracy they actually are.

....(snip)....

Trumpism, like other forms of fascism, is first and foremost an example of collective pathology and other maladaptive behavior on a societal scale. Mental health professionals have the training to explain and diagnose such behavior, as manifest by both individuals and on the collective level.

....(snip)....

Dr. Justin Frank, who is the author of the book "Trump on the Couch", said this:

The Washington Post article, "The deepening radicalization of Donald J. Trump" is mistitled. I would call it, "The deepening recognition of the real Donald J. Trump." Trump is best described in the article by his former advisor, John Kelly, who said, "There is no compass. What is right today is not necessarily tomorrow."

From a psychoanalytic perspective, Trump manages his chronic, massive anxiety by searching for certainty in the moment. Kelly is right: Trump is always situational. But his divisive, dangerous rhetoric is the same old story.

There is a through-line that fuels the inner Trump. Though his words seem to tumble out spontaneously, their essence is consistent: He is a racist and a xenophobe. Just one week after his 2017 inauguration, he released an executive order to protect America from "foreign terrorist entry into the United States," unleashing mass protests at airports nationwide. To keep the peace in that moment, he modified his language. But make no mistake, that ban was the real Trump speaking loud and clear. We heard it in his position on the Central Park Five in 1989 and decades earlier when he and his father systematically refused to rent apartments to Blacks.

Today's unhinged, amplified, unencumbered by minimal guardrails Donald J. Trump may seem more radical than ever. But he is the same as he's always been; even more so. It's said that once people reach the age of 70, their only change is to become more the way they are. So it is with Trump. Though the media refuses to call him a demagogue, that is what he is, plain and simple. Each day more people are taking notice, though apparently not yet enough to put him in jail for inciting the insurrection attempt on January 6, 2021.

....(snip)....

The picture is clear: As the 2024 presidential campaign begins in earnest, Donald Trump will become more dangerous, violent, threatening, unhinged, and his true horrible self, further unmasked and unleashed if such a thing is even possible. .........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2023/06/01/trials-and-triggers-psychiatrists-warn-psychosis-will-grow-as-he-becomes-more-desperate/

[doc03]

1. I don't think it takes a psychiatrist to figure out Trump

is nuts.

[mopinko]

2. this is what disturbs me the most of the whole rotten sitch.

even here, try to talk about the extent to which his brain is damaged and see if any 3 ppl will agree.
he’s so skilled in covering up his dysfunction that no one seems to be able to pin a label on his that will stick. too many ppl see mentally ill= get away w crimes.
but he is clearly just mad. a mad man, and we cant agree that he is, in fact, out of his mind.

i honestly think in the end he will claim diminished capacity. it’s a slam dunk. his med records at reed have the actual results of that dementia screening, which he abs flunked, to his secret run for a ‘suspected’ stroke, to his hospitalization for covid.
when they start looking at the offspring, they’ll get him declared incompetent. they’ll pretend they didnt realize how far gone he was. and they’ll hope to get off cuz they were just following daddy dear.

we forget that the ppl around him have been covering this shit up since the apprentice.

[moniss]

10. Right you are

and I along with many others have labeled him a sociopath from the beginning. We are in the stage right now where the sociopath warns/threatens you to do what he says and to love him. If and when they don't get their way is when the final stage comes where they enact as much destruction as possible for everyone and everything around them all while telling you it's all your fault because you didn't listen and you failed to stop him.

Those of us unfortunate enough to have personally been in relationships with people like this know very well all the signs/language/moves and the dangers.

[niyad]

3. NSS

[IronLionZion]

4. Yes, I hope he cracks up completely and is taken away in a straightjacket

[Farmer-Rick]

5. Sooooo, was he lying when

He said this:

"HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, BUT ESPECIALLY TO THOSE WHO GAVE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE FOR THE COUNTRY"

Or when he said this?

"In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It's filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed."
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-americans-who-died-at-war-are-losers-and-suckers/615997/

Trump thinks veterans are suckers and losers. He doesn't care if they died fighting so he didn't have to go to war. He faked a medical problem so he didn't have to fight and die. He's a coward and thinks his supporters are idiots.

[moniss]

6. In addition to needing the media to consistently

point out his crimes they also need to point out that his followers live for the eruptions and threats that spew from him. It feeds them and their bigotry, fascism and hate.

[Seinan Sensei]

7. "Shamelessness is his superpower"

[jaxexpat]

8. History will see this era as a time when.....

freedom of speech and of the press both revealed their flaws, the exceptions proving the rule.
Because hollering and rehollering the same stupid shit can't help but lose its fascination.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

9. I don't mind if Trump sinks further into the depths of psychosis, but ...

... I think it's sad that he can take so many with him.

[dlk]

11. When left untreated, serious mental illness is progressive

When it comes to Trump, I’m afraid the worst is yet to come.

[KS Toronado]

13. Yep, the worst is yet to come

Lookout when law enforcement attempts to arrest him, it's hard telling what he'll tell MAGAts to do.

[dlk]

15. In politics, like attracts like

Trump is a magnet for those as disturbed as he is. No doubt that’s why Fani Willis has requested GS law enforcement be in high alert in August, when her indictments will likely be issued.

[Fiendish Thingy]

12. I didn't see the word "psychosis" used once in that story

Other than in the headline.

The use of the word “Psychosis” appears to be just clickbait headline by Salon.

Psychosis:

People with psychosis typically experience delusions (false beliefs, for example, that people on television are sending them special messages or that others are trying to hurt them) and hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that others do not, such as hearing voices telling them to do something or criticizing them).

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/understanding-psychosis#:~:text=People%20with%20psychosis%20typically%20experience,do%20something%20or%20criticizing%20them).

If Trump were truly psychotic, he could be declared incompetent to stand trial. His kids could take the family business away from him.

As a retired psychotherapist, I share the opinion of many other mental health professionals that Trump’s 50 years of observable public behaviour seems to pretty clearly point to Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or perhaps Anti-Social Personality Disorder (can’t be both). He may have other mental illness undiagnosable from public behaviour, but psychosis isn’t likely one of them. Psychosis is difficult to mask, especially in public. Nixon was well known for his extreme paranoia, and yet he wasn’t psychotic either.

The media doesn’t need to resort to inaccurate diagnostic hyperbole to make the point that Trump is unstable, unwell, and dangerous to the country should he ever be president again.

[wryter2000]

17. And I didn't realize he hates

The humane society

[Justice matters.]

14. "Lordy, there are tapes..."

So he "justifies" his National-Security crimes by claiming he had the "power" to declassify TS docs only by thinking about it?? Really????? Then he was caught on tape saying he's got TS CLASSIFIED docs so were they "declassified-by-thought" or not... can't be both!

The fact that the hammer to put that TRAITOR in the slammer for life still hasn't showed up yet for real is mind boggling!

Lock him up in a prison cell or in a padded one, but DO something!!

[wryter2000]

16. Did I miss the part where they said he's psychotic?

Psychopathy isn’t a psychosis as far as I know.

[Fiendish Thingy]

18. Clickbait headline

Trump definitely has serious mental health problems, primarily personality disorder, but he isn’t psychotic.

[republianmushroom]

19. 28 months and counting

[Progressive dog]

20. Whatever is wrong with Trump hasn't changed

He has always done whatever he believes is necessary win, without regard to law or decency. IMO Trump is a psychopath.

[Haggis 4 Breakfast]

21. IMO, he's an opportunistic disease.