We’re a nation of codependants. His is a crazy we can depend on.
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True. The perpetually fearful love authoritarian might.
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I had some valued william burroughs recordings until my iMac crashed some months ago 
They all have it.
I would suggest you look at the Obama administration’s dealings with whistle blowers. I think there has been an absolute chill in the process of expressing extremely relevant opinions.
In 12 Monkeys, Brad Pitt talks to himself and rants about delusional ideas. This raises the question of whether Brad Pitt has bipolar and/or schizoaffective disorder. This isn’t an accusation against Brad Pitt, it’s a valid question about his mental health. As someone who knew a guy once with bipolar, It’s been challenging to watch as people frame Pitt’s actions in terms of him being “an actor”, who is “just playing a role for the audience”.
The following quip (of debated origin but I think it stands on its own, as the best quotes do) casts some interesting light on this subject for me:
Socialism hasn’t taken root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
My interpretation being that some of the poor in America vote republican – and therefor directly against their own economic interests – because they fantasize that they themselves are just a few lucky bounces of circumstance away from being wealthy, and therefor are in favor of laws and standards that will protect their wealth once they get there.
I wonder if something similar happens with Trump: “why, I could swagger into some political situation and yell loudly until I intimidated people into doing things my way… I identify with this man!”
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It’s also a mix of wanting to see others suffer below them.
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I think the idea that Trump is just acting when he acts the way he acts suspends disbelief a little too much. So not only is he so perfect at acting out NPD that a university psychology professors is archiving footage to use in lectures on the disorder, but he can keep it up all day, never know when the cameras will be on him, and he has decided that is a good idea because despite the fact that behaving like a manipulable, vindictive bully seems like a bad thing when running for president he saw in a prophetic dream that this time it would work wonders (where “working wonders” here means barely eeking out a win with a substantial loss in the popular vote against one fhe least popular candidates to ever run).
You can’t diagnose someone with a disorder by watching tapes of them, and laypeople shouldn’t think they should diagnose disorders in any event. While any given person might be a Machiavellian using their iron will to maintain their act with their acting ability that is leagues above your ability to detect deception, it’s pretty unlikely.
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It’s many things at once, but it’s impossible to caricature someone with a personality disorder.
It is wave and particle, sincerely them and an absolute “act” depending on how you look at it.
My experience comes from dating a person with BPD for 6 years or so. Results may vary. Consult a doctor.
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I really can’t think of any one who is a more archetypal clinical narcissist than Trump. It isn’t even close. NPD can be difficult to diagnose for lack of clear details, but in the case of Trump it couldn’t be more clear because he has such a gigantic public record. The man literally puts his name on everything in giant gold letters. He has a very public history of pathological lies. His thin skinned reactions and vindictiveness are famous nationwide, thanks largely to Twitter. He ticks every box for NPD, in ways so grandiose that other people with NPD can’t even come close.
You don’t have to be an orthopedic surgeon to diagnose a bone sticking out of someone’s leg as a broken bone - doesn’t mean I could treat the break, but it would be ridiculous for anyone to cry “you can’t say it’s a break, you aren’t an MD!”
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I have BPD (at least I think I do, psychiatrists have given me various diagnoses but my regular psychologist just recently had a sort of ‘aha’ moment and came around to the idea), and the internal experience of not being yourself is very real. I usually choose to act in ways based on how I think it will make other people react because I don’t have a genuine intention of my own.
I expend a massive amount of thought and energy to act like a “normal person” so that I can have a job and have relationships. The idea that someone would expend a similar level of energy to pretend to have a personality disorder so that they can, what, accrue all the benefits that fall upon people with personality disorders? Somehow it doesn’t seem plausible to me.
However, I have no reason to think the internal world of a person with NPD even vaguely resembles that of a person with BPD. In fact, I have to think they are quite different, almost opposite. I have a feeling that people with NPD have more of a problem with their sense of self drowning out the world than they do with the world drowning out their sense of self.
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I agree.
There are some people who demand that Science should all be done with proper double-blind experiments. You can’t prove global warming according to some because you can’t do experiments on a global scale ( yes - it is currently proving itself, you fools, but we will only have a sample of one, so it still won’t be a proof ). Astronomy is not science because we can’t do astronomical-scale experiments. Psychology is not a science either, because we trying to analyse a human mind using a human mind. We can’t prove Trump is pathologically narcissist - you can’t tell it with a blood analysis or a Voight-Kampff test - so it’s just a guess. it’s just a theeeeeory.
Actually, that’s how all Science starts. You start off labelling and grouping phenomena. You group animals and plants. You make a cloud atlas. You class the astronomical nebulae by shape. Gradually, patterns emerge. It is enough, given limited data, to hypothesise that Trump may be a narcissist. I do not know the type, but it appears several others do. I have, similarly, understood an aquaintance’s winning ways but unpleasant behaviour by learning what a psychopath is. We do no necessarily know why people fall into these types, and we cannot say that out classification is complete, or even correct in the general case. Very few bits of science end up having the awesome precision that particle physics does, but that does not mean they are broken. Even particle physics does not claim to ‘know’ - it is just very good at prediction.
We do not imply that someone who is not ‘normal’ is defective. I am not autistic, but I have trouble working with some of the more shout people at work who use anger, or the simulation of anger, to get their point across. Proper autistic people can be exceptional programmers, but be unable to work in an office at all. Psychopaths can be exceptional at other jobs (I went to a very good Royal Institute lecture on this earlier this year). Other traits that do not fit in with modern society may have been invaluable to an iron age chief, or a solitary explorer.
In the interest of good science, I hope any Boinger out there would say if they found that Trump did not fit with this narcissist personality trait as they have experienced it. I fear they might not do so, as this would make them seem like a supporter. Cut this paragraph out and use it as an indulgence: we need to know.
As for the Trump: I did not know about the Narcissist Personality before today, but there was something the cut of that cove’s jib that I never really took to. The description seems to fit, but it is the opinion of people who have actually met this sort that can convince me.
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Oh no, psychopaths are often vital contributors to society, and they never seek help. It’s more of a disorder on a continuum than a full disease. It has been found that by people doing research that many folks in the action professions - police, fire and military test out as psychopaths or nearly so. Fighter pilots, astronauts, quarterbacks, CEOs, folks who are calm under pressure fit the mold. It doesn’t mean you’re evil. But when winning becomes top priority, well…
The co-author of “The Art of the Deal” has actually used the word “sociopath” in discussions about his experiences with the Dear Elected One.
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Figuring trump out isn’t rocket science but the opportunists without souls that swarm around him…that’s where we’re in trouble
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I would suggest you look at the Obama administration’s dealings with whistle blowers.
Onus is on you to make your point.
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I just want to add a final thought that coalesced in my mind last night. I’m not really talking about anyone in this forum but articles blew up all over the web with people speculating about him having a disorder and people saying we shouldn’t say he has a disorder because we aren’t doctors and we haven’t examined him.
That whole, “We shouldn’t say he has a disorder,” doesn’t seem properly qualified to me with “We shouldn’t say he doesn’t have a disorder.” As a non-professional who hasn’t examined Trump I’m just as in the dark about him not having a personality disorder as I am about him having one.
I think Trump is male. I haven’t asked Trump so in some sense I shouldn’t gender him, but having observed him a lot in public I’d be pretty surprised if he regarded himself as a woman. I think Trump is heterosexual. Again, I haven’t asked him, but he sure talks about women a lot (which, as some have pointed out in reference to NPD, might just be an act - at least pretending to be heterosexual is something I can imagine someone running for president as a Republican doing) [ETA: No bi-erasure intended, obviously if Trump is not “heterosexual” odds are good he still enjoys sex with women].
I ought to be properly agnostic about these things, but I’ve made up my own mind based on the evidence in front of me. I hedge this by being willing to change my mind if I’m told I’m wrong (and not “proven to be wrong”, if Trump comes out as America’s first female president he won’t have to prove anything to me).
But for most people he is straight because he hasn’t shown himself to be gay. He is cis because he hasn’t shown himself to be trans. He doesn’t have a personality disorder because he hasn’t been diagnosed with one by a professional.
There is no default person. One of the reasons we should be careful about assigning these labels to people in our head is because we don’t want to create a bubble around ourselves where we assume that our friends aren’t trans, aren’t gay, and don’t have invisible disabilities. Most of the people who interact with me daily would probably be downright shocked to find out I have a personality disorder or a mental illness.
One of the things the article pointed out was that this isn’t the 1960’s anymore. We should be destigmatizing mental differences instead of stigmatizing them by suggesting with our language and tone that they are insults or accusations.
And there is a difference between saying that proudly displaying negative features of NPD makes you a bad president and stigmatizing NPD, just like there is a difference between saying that not having use of your legs would make you a bad firefighter and stigmatizing mobility devices.
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For those of us who have suffered at the hands of those with NPD, being told that we aren’t ‘professionals’ and thus not allowed to point out that he exhibits all of the symptoms perfectly feels a lot like being gaslighted.
We’re not crazy; he’s really acting this way.
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