trump's evil is not caused by or excused by mental illness.

I have to admit that all along there's been a nagging question in the back of my mind .. I mean I know he's a narcissist, but is he really a nut job or is he doing ALL of his crap on purpose? I think of a statement by Omarossa (sp?) ... something along the lines of trump becoming the most important person in the world ... what better revenge?

...boils down to- acute, cynical selfishness- they see themselves as 'owed more abundance' than others judged less deserving.

This article is not really about Trump. This article is about the philosophical question of what is the distinction between evil and illness. It's the flip side of the philosophical question of how good and evil are perceived: Is this perceived through the faculty of reason/intelligence, or is there a separate moral faculty that perceives good and evil. The fact is, no one knows, and I see no way to build an experiment that would determine which it is (or even whether it is the same for all humans.)

But in a sense it doesn't matter. The fact is that, whatever else he is, Donald J. Trump is dangerous. And so are the people in line to succeed him if he is simply removed from office. I'm a lot more interested in how can we get ourselves out of this with a minimum of destruction than I am in the question of whether he is sick or evil.

I'm not going to go on a rant or get into a circular argument over this. but isn't being a "really bad person" a sure sign of mental pathology?

So ... what you're saying is, he's competent to stand trial for treason.

Good to know.

Dump’s malignant narcissist behavior has hurt him though. He’s had to pay thousands of settlements. U.S. banks won’t lend to him. He has a special prosecutor after him. Madoff eventually went to prison and his son committed suicide. The same can happen to Dump.

Trump is a psychopath (I guess one says "sociopath" these days). He doesn't have empathy or compassion; he is impatient, self-centered, a risk-taker, likes to cause pain and anxiety, easily bored, short-tempered, vengeful, and holds grudges; it takes a lot of novelty to excite and interest him (high resting arousal). So he enjoys raising hell by goading a nuclear country's leader, threatening war, and so forth.

I think many of his backers are angry people too, who get a vicarious twang out of seeing him wreak havoc, sow discord, and verbally abuse others.

Many people are secret "Walter Mittys" who have these conquering hero fantasies while living provincial and boring lives. They love to identify with Trump's horrific manners. They like to see him insulting others and being a slob and a jackass because they can't get away with that themselves. They have fantasies of buying that restaurant where they were insulted and firing the rude waiter --- and here is Trump who can actually do that! All the approval they give Trump just fuels his own immaturity and bad behavior.

He needs the sort of discipline handed out to a recalcitrant child: remove his tweet toy, prohibit him from playing golf when he speaks rudely, punish him for not sitting up straight and paying attention to the reports he is supposed to hear. Remove privileges if he doesn't fulfill his responsibilities. No second scoop of ice cream if he uses bad words to describe a minority. This is all he understands. But who will bell the cat?

He says a diagnosis of Trump would "also requires that there be, as a result, clinically significant distress or impairment. Trump is a great causer of distress in others. He’s creating horrible impairment in our democracy, but there’s no evidence to indicate that he would meet the grounds of clinically significant distress or impairment to himself." In other words, you can be the craziest motherfucker who ever walked the earth, but as long as you're rich and can surround yourself with toadies who protect you, you can't be diagnosed with a mental illness. Wow. Talk about your class privilege. THAT is insane. You can be a really smart psychopath who rapes and kills every day and enjoys it and never gets caught, and you can't be diagnosed with a mental illness because you're not causing distress to YOURSELF. Seems to me that harming others should count at least as much as causing yourself distress. I'll bet whoever came up with this stupid way of looking at things was a financially secure white male.

I am usually skeptical of "either/or" diagnosis from an expert from an armchair who also has never clinically tested Trump. He just countered the 70,000 professionals who consider Trump mentally ill. I also noticed when he was asked about minority grievances, he simply ignored them like the expert politician's favorite past time. Another line, that caught my attention was there will be a Women's March this month which he quickly added, "so what?" Another clue that I found disturbing was that he has never participated in any activist protest. This only reveals to me, he has lived a very comfortable life situated atop the Ivory Tower, and is less concerned with the people he was quick to blame in his analysis.

In my humble opinion, Trump is a malignant narcissist, morally bankrupt, and criminally liable for a long history of criminal corruption.

I think it's one from Column A (narcissistic personality disorder), one from Column B (horrible person), and one from Column C (dementia).

Column D (all the above).

Ah yes, the Horrible Person grounds for impeachment. Lock him up! Of course, Obama was likable and smooth as he totally protected all Banksters and totally destroyed civilized Libya.

“civilized Libya”. 😂🤣😝...... So funny!!

This is an extremely interesting, compelling article. 👍

AF: All [Murdoch] has to do is turn Fox News against Trump and Trump is toast....
This and what follows I find just as worrying as Trump himself.

Wish people would stop wet dreaming about Trump's regime being "held accountable."

We the People do not have a history of holding our elected and/or appointed govt. leaders accountable.

He has a special prosecutor after him. If the house flips he’s getting impeached. If Mueller’s report is good enough he’ll be convicted.

Well, when are we going to start doing it? You have to start somewhere. THE VOTING BOOTH.

The people who voted for that bellowing pig are just as loathsome and worthless.

The election of Trump proved that there is a serious sickness at the core of this country. And I fear that this administration may prove to be the final unraveling of the American experiment. November is 10 1/2 months away, which is PLENTY of time to destroy this once great country.

The sickness is so many people realized both parties are so horrible and corrupt that they voted for Any change. Whether that was a bad idea or not will be left to the future, but not to some asinine Russia Conspiracy Theory.

He is a sick person.

All Republicans are nuts!

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Hatch is also the same clown who claimed trump might be the greatest President in our history, after the recent tax bill was passed.

"Allen’s description of Trump as a man who is mentally fit" because "it also requires that there be, as a result, clinically significant distress or impairment...there’s no evidence to indicate that he would meet the grounds of clinically significant distress or impairment to himself."

I see what Dr. Allen is saying over all, BUT Trump IS mentally impaired. The only reason he's 'ok' is because other people have been paid to take care of his life for him. You can not, in good conscience, say paying others to cover up your deficiencies and handle your messes means you are functioning fine. Because of money he isn't in prison right now. From all we've seen, he's assaulted women, committed fraud, been key in money laundering, cheated on his taxes, refused to pay his debts, obstructed federal justice, etc.

Take away his money and what do you have? A psychopath living in a long term motel eating spagetti-os out of a can, conning what he can to stay off the streets. I'd say he might have turned into a crime boss except he's too lazy and doesn't have the attention span.

I think you can if you have the money and they are as morally bankrupt as you are

I agree. Just because he's not foaming at the mouth, eating bugs, drinking his own pee and throwing his shit against the wall doesn't mean his behavior, verbalization and ideation isn't so far off the norm that he isn't nuts.

We do consider high functioning psychopaths mentally ill, don't we?

Yea just like he's the healthiest president ever! O_O He's fcking insane and has heart disease so stop making excuses for him.

https://uploads.disquscdn.c...

There are people with mental illness, and then there are people that are fucking nuts. Being fucking nuts is not a psychiatric condition. Trump is fucking nuts, that is an armchair diagnosis based on my observations of his behavior. Now, the medical professionals can argue about what is wrong in his head, but people with common sense know fucking nuts when we see fucking nuts.

In our guts we know he's nuts.

https://i.imgflip.com/22i1d...

"Allen’s description of Trump as a man who is mentally fit but morally
bankrupt deserves some turning over, in part because it doesn’t let the
president off the hook."

Exactly! Don't give this heaping, steaming pile of vile, fetid shyte a mental pass. He is EVIL and deranged because of his evil. Period.

You know, even if Trump doesn't clinically suffer from a "mental illness", being a "really horrible person" should make him clearly unfit for the presidency. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment doesn't require either physical or mental disability. It states that if the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the vice president will take over as acting president.

This is not a permanent removal of the president, and details that when he is again able to do his job, he can resume control. Either the president's cabinet or Congress can invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or determine that the president is still unfit to resume his duties though.

The real issue, is that Trump has never been able to discharge the powers and duties of the president. He's boldly displayed that inability for the whole world to see, and Congress has pointedly ignored it, while his cabinet actually supported his childish tantrums. His need to be the center of attention and his thirst for adoration shows that his narcissism is indeed a danger to this country.

The author mentioned the bigotry, misogyny, and Islamophobia that's become such a blatant problem in this country over the last decade, and how it's so damaging to our society. However he barely skimmed past the fact that greed has been taking this country down for the last forty years. Ever since Reagan started the tax breaks that were nothing but an unconditional gift to the wealthy and the corporations, there have been fewer and fewer opportunities for work for the people of this country.

The Republican party caters to the avarice of the affluent, while ignoring the needs of the majority of the people in this country. Trump is a perfect emblem of that avarice and self-centeredness, that's been destroying this country for most of the people. Basically, Trump has unintentionally brought all the problems of this country into the spotlight by his own behavior, and only the delusional are able to ignore that and still support him...

I like to believe that a person who derives so much of their worth from hurting others must be sick. It makes me feel a little better about the innate goodness of the universe. If he's not sick, then the universe is a sick and evil place. A view that is a lot more plausible now than it was a year ago.

What you describe is the satisfaction he gets from bullying, belittling, groping unsuspecting women, the riling up his crowds by encouraging violence, with the lack of any indication of empathy. This all fits into the diagnosis of malignant narcissism. Look it up for more and see whether you agree with Dr. Francis or with the therapists like me who think he suffers from this disorder.

Thank you! I’m no psychologist, but I do use my brain to think critically. It doesn’t take a psychologist or psychiatrist to peg this demagogic NPD.

It is quite possible to be nuts, a horrible person and suffer from dementia.

For the most part, being diagnosed with a mental illness DOESN'T let someone "off the hook" for their actions. That's only true when their mental illness is so severe they've lost any sense of right or wrong, legal versus illegal. Very few people have mental issues so severe they could be considered legally insane. Trump is bonkers crazy, but he knows it when he commits a crime. That's why he hides those crimes from discovery and lies to cover them up. The legally insane make no such efforts to hide their wrongdoing.

Is megalomania a mental illness, because he certainly is one.

Technically non-delusional megalomania is a symptom of severe narcissism whether in narcissitic personality disorder or malignant narcisism. If it is at the delusional level it is a possible symptom of manic, psychotic, or paranoid disorders. A grave concern among many psychotherapists like me is that under extreme stress, if Trump's world falls apart, say because of Mueller, he could become delusional and dangerous.

(I have been writing about Trump's psychopathology - sometimes called Trumpology - for over a year, so if you Google my name and the president's you can find me.)

I agree with most of what Dr. Francis says except that as someone who considers Trump to fit the diagnosis which never made it into a DSM, malignant narcissism. I think a diagnosis is important because it sounds an alarm bell about the possibility the president could decompensate and do irreparable damage before the 25th Amemdment could be initiated.

AlterNet is not correct on the front page in saying "The president is more "bad than mad," according to the man who wrote the book on personality disorders" because there is simply no one book on personality disorders. There are numerous books on personality disorder. Francis claims credit for writing the criteria forNarcissisticrcissitic Personal Disorder (NPD) in the psychiatric diagnostic manual. Not to get into the finer points of distant, let alone in-person - diagnosis if Trump suffers from malignant narcissistic personality disorder this is exponentially more dangerous than if he had full-fledged NPD.

It is important to understand that the various editions of the psychiatric manual have added, changed, or eliminated diagnoses since the first edition published after World War II.

Hal Brown, MSW

If he's not crazy as in certifiable he's certainly dancing around the definition of crazy. More important is how his followers justify his crazy public pronouncements and his private behavior. He really is a monster, sort of like Mussolini.

All of this points to how bad a candidate Hillary Clinton was to lose the election to her. Unfortunately, the Democrats aren't putting up candidates who show much concern for the Democratic base, the working class.

She didn't lose the election. Putin appointed trump to the position of president and the russians are still in our compromised election system. So if anyone thinks the 2018 elections are a sure thing for the dems....think again. No one and i mean NO ONE is doing a damn thing about getting the russians out of our elections. Trump is Putins choice as his agent of chaos in our country. He and the gop are the enemy from within!

Amen. I don't ever want to hear Michael Moore or Bernie Sanders talk about white disenfranchisement ever again. Call it it what it is - bigotry, racism and sexism.

WRONG!!

This is the time when psychiatry is not needed and inappropriately casts Trumpy in a sympathetic light.

Trumpy is NOT a terrible person. Trumpy is a TRAITOR who traffics in evil. He's intent on destroying the nation from within. He's a RUSSIAN AGENT. Stop giving Trumpy a pass on his loyalty to Russia, to Putin. He's Putin's agent and, if left to his own devices, he'll allow Putin to make all decisions within the White House.

Time and again, when Trumpy demonstrates his loyalty to Russia, US politicians and the US media look the other way. They refuse to recognize the obvious. Only on a few occasions did US politicians express the horror of what they know (Remember Feinstein's look of death after a meeting with the US IC? THAT'S how everyone should be reacting.)

"Trumpy is NOT a terrible person."

Isn't being a traitor who traffics in evil the very definition of a terrible person? The author was not giving rump a pass. He was saying the opposite - that people should not use psychiatry to give him a pass.

IMO, the term "terrible person" suggests that Trump's characteristics can be kept at a distance from any of us who are observing him. That "terrible-ness" is a thought, and the thought can be used to inoculate us from the real, physical and emotional impact of his presence in our personal and national lives. The situation is much more immediate, more threatening, more dangerous than that. A "terrible person" might be used to describe a family member who, for example, is a raging drunk who abuses his spouse and children. THAT'S terrible. But Trump is a traitor who's given the nation's main adversary, Mr. Putin, an open door to the White House, and who's employed numerous Russian agents into the White House to steer policy into areas favorable to Russia without any domestic political consensus whatsoever. He introduced Russian agents into the Oval Office and has given Russians some of our state secrets in a unilateral fashion. That's not "terrible." That's evil and treasonous.