As President Donald Trump continues to behave bizarrely and erratically—attacking his own attorney general, launching into a political tirade during a speech to Boy Scouts, bringing his 11-year-old son into the burgeoning Russia controversy—a professional association of psychoanalysts is a professional association of
I don’t need a Dr to tell me trump is onE crazy sumbeyaACH…Now his stupid followers mite need that tidbit of info…But most will call it fake news.
Three thoughts immediately occur to me – that a psychiatric group controls what each psychiatrist
can confirm or deny for a patient which I would say is an enormous problem with basic psychiatry.
See comment below.*Secondly, if it hasn’t been clear to all Americans over the last decades that our MIC/CIA/NSA has
been in the hands of really insane people then our own citizens are having trouble seeing reality.
Third, as for this –
**“Trump’s behavior is so different from anything we’ve seen before.” **
—Dr. Prudence Gourguechon
That seems a really dumb statement as it is based on the belief that presidential
behavior isn’t at times very well hidden from the public …
We do know that LBJ by his own description was aggressively criminal and unbalanced
and that was also reported by Pierre Salinger who reported that both he and Bill Moyers
believed him to be “clinically psychopathic.”
And, by testimony of Billie Sol Estes to Congress, LBJ was also responsible for murders of
those in his way, via his own personal executioner, Malcolm Wallace.
At some point because of his need to “confess” a psychiatrist held to a gag rule was hired
for $1 million to hear his confessions.
Nixon was also obviously unbalanced - even further by large amounts of prescription drugs and
alcohol he was taking as Watergate closed in on him. Nixon was also made so paranoid by the
anti-war movement and the young protesters that he had armed troops in the basement of the
White House.
We have been told since early childhood to honor and esteem things that really don’t deserve it –
things like our Constitution and our Founders who betrayed the people from the first days in
creating an Elite Patriarchy – and we were never able to overcome the control they were given
over our “people’s” government, the nation’s wealth and natural resources.
Supporting Slavery was another fascist touch as well as Genocide versus the native people in
order to steal their land.
What child was ever able to challenge the myths taught in our elementary schools?
On psychiatry …
I don’t know that the profession has ever given just challenge to Sigmund Freud’s “Oedipus Complex”
but certainly Betty Friedan was qualified to do so and she untied women from him and dumped him
in the garbage can.
In the Oedipus Complex, Freud made the outrageous claim that it is infants, toddlers and young children
who are the sexual aggressors against adult males – fathers, grandfathers, uncles, cousins and male
friends of the family.
And Freud by doing so betrayed the young patients who had confided in him their abuse by males in
their families…
Actually, Freud didn’t even go so far as to make clear that our sexual abusers of children are MALES.
Many shrinks are in the profession due to having family members who have psych diagnoses/issues. Same with pysch nurses. This is a gross overgeneralization but one that is iknown by many healthcare workers. So, it should come as no surprise that psychiatrists are often times balancing their own issues with those of their patients. This leads to therapies that drag on far too long as well as milking patients. who can afford the luxury of paying for psychoanalysis. There is never a clear end game as they believe the issues go on for one’s lifetime. Is is a shameful act of corrupting one’s mental health. I will tell you this. If these comments begin, it is likely they will never end. Chatter away. It won’t get rid of this disaster any sooner. It will give Trump more air time and reason to Tweet.
I concur. Though Johnson did push through the Civil Rights bill and got Medicare signed into law. But aside from this, he was a vile excuse for a human being. Dick Nixon interfered with the Paris Peace Talks, to get himself elected, resulting in the needless deaths of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese but, gave us the EPA. Somehow these scumbags possessed a shred of humanity now and then. Trump however - well he’s evil in it’s purest form.
Trump is a perfectly normal fascist, conservative, antisocial, asshole billionaire businessman, like the Kochs and the GOP and Blue Dog’s owners.
Ethical codes that psychiatrists, psychologists and other psychotherapists etc. agree to when they accept a license, and state laws that allow practice only under such licenses, mandate certain limits about what can be said about a patient or client, and for good reason. But der Gropenführer is not a patient or client of anyone speaking out, afaik.
Most professionals now take Freud with a grain of salt, precisely because after uncovering and speaking about the abuse he saw as rampant in fin de siècle Vienna (The Etiology of Hysteria, 1896), the resulting firestorm of condemnation by those not willing to hear the truth (the secondary denialists, on which all subsequent denialism is based*), Freud recanted and spent the rest of his life making up absurd fantasies about the structure and function of the mind, to fit his retraction. The story is told in The Assault on Truth, by former Sigmund Freud Archivist Jeffrey Masson. Feminism and other post-1960s liberation movements have been tremendous revealers of the essentially diseased nature of our society, call it Wetiko Disease/malignant egophrenia (Paul Levy, eg), Emotional Plague (W. Reich), Civilizational Autism (me), collective attachment disorder ("), complex PTSD (Judith Herman, etc.) “Failure to face the shadow/ unwillingness to face the pain of self-examination” (Jung, M. Scott Peck), an addiction (Chellis Glendinning) sado-spiritual masochism (Mary Daly) or other. Wetiko Disease especially could be considered simply extreme conservativism or psychopathy.
What should concern us as much as any of this is that now that the idea is broached, the Republicans will use it to savage anyone they don’t like. Anyone who’s argued with denying delayalists has seen every argument justifiably used against the denialists then used, usually unjustifiably and as weaponized projection, against those pointing out the insane behavior of the right. It doesn’t matter whether any more psychologists etc. speak out. The tactic WILL henceforth be used by the right. Get ready by educating yourselves about psychology.
There’s clearly a difference between the “normal” insanity of our culture–which I point out constantly–and the White House resident’s special, easily diagnosable Narcissistic Personality Disorder or Malignant Narcissism (elements of both NPD + Anti-Social PD, aka psychopathy or sociopathy–DSM V). The very fact that Trump and all his handlers are unable to hide his obvious emotional disease is diagnostic. Only the rampant malignant narcissism that infects US culture has allowed his disease to be hidden in plain sight; “US exceptionalism” is the common term for the NPD part; the ASPD part manifests as all aspects of empire–colonialism, neo-colonialism, neo-conservatism, growing inequality and climate catastrophe and the larger eco-psychological crisis. Your idea of blaming the victim is a common thread among all those, integral to both the individual and collective condition whatever the name.
Most abusers in the way we think of abuse are male. Not all are, and the types of abuse that have devastating effects on children, people, society and thus the rest of nature are broad, (ranging from neglect to brutal invasion, with neglect often doing the most profound damage to victims and survivors) deep, (Stockholm Syndrome should be called Patriarchal Family Syndrome) mostly ignored, and endemic in non-indigenous societies.
In fact, while Wetiko Disease is spread within a society by Patriarchal Family Syndrome, it’s spread from society to society largely by the Wetiko Dilemma–societies facing invasion or dispossession are forced to either be annihilated or become infected by adopting cruelty, psychopathy and objectification as a way of life. While a perfect example of point 7, being a nutcase AIDS and Climate Denier, James DeMeo brilliantly researched and pointed this out in his book, Saharasia. And the US catching the more virulent strain of Wetiko that infected the Nazis, causing its even more blatant behavior since WWII, is an example as well, I think. (It’s especially interesting that the strain was annealed and intensified in Germany in the crucible of the Versailles punishment in the middle of the second thirty years war, and then largely (though not completely) cured–in Germany but not the US–by the matriarchal nature of the Marshall plan after the war. The US sank almost immediately into
Many (but again, not all) of those who have most effectively pointed out our problem have been (deeply) wounded healers. This is to their credit, not their shame. Freud, Reich, and others paid very high prices for their insistence on speaking out, some more than others, and some held to their truth more than almost anyone else in history. Only a few writers and other artists have come anywhere as close to directing attention to the rot at the center of civilization as brilliantly and effectively as the lineage that comes from Freud’s 1896 attempt to tell the truth. Jung in particular is one of the most wise and insightful humans who’s ever lived–a true revolutionary–and we’d do well to listen to him and others doing this varied work. While Freud, Reich, Perls, and others have fallen under the shadow they tried to reveal (their public acclaim and the projections that came with it no doubt a big cause), each has contributed a lot to the wisdom of humanity that can be sifted out from the rest. Jessica Benjamin (The Bonds of Love) and Ron Kurtz (Body Centered Psychotherapy (Hakomi)) are among those who have helped us most, along with Marion Rosen and a dozen or more women who also (with Reich) fled the Nazis and gave direction to liberation movements in the US in many ways.
Standing on the shoulders of dwarves. Der Gropenführer is as much a product of his time as they were of theirs. They had a more liberal culture pushing them to do what they did, largely out of expedience and desire for popularity (to offset their other shenanigans? Maybe, like many ultra-conservatives of today gave up on gay marriage, for example, because it didn’t matter to them nearly as much as their core issues. Nixon probably didn’t give a damn about the environment but EPA, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, etc. increased his power and ability to screw people and nations much more thoroughly in other ways. No one is either perfect, or perfectly evil. IL Drumpfe is able to get more of the conservative agenda accomplished because 50+ years of relentless blaring of conservative frames over the media have made both them and most people in the US believe more perfectly psychopathic things about… well everything, and elect a vastly more conservative government, local, state, and federal. Having an EPA and cleaner world has made life better enough in visible ways that it may actually have helped to push the less obviously destructive aspects of the conservative agenda through.
It should be clear to any knowledgable casual observer, that Mafia Don is stark raving fucking nuts. It has been on display since his younger years and certainly center stage during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Vincent Van Gogh. was not a psychiatrist, but he said something then, which is still meaningful today:
“Orange is the color of insanity.” Ring a bell? 
So the “professionals” are just now noticing that the orange guy is batshit crazy? Jees, guys, tell us something we don’t know.
Excellent post, quite long though, bu I slogged through it and learned a lot from it.
Thank you
I do reject your repeated mention of the term “Gropenfuehrer”. as well as many other attempts to attach a German connotation to this abomination by calling him Herr Drumpf etc. Trump was born, raised and educated (such as it is), entirely here and has been under the influence of US society during his whole life.
With exception of a roughly 25 year period, which was largely precipitated by the Treaty of Versailles, Germany has been a leader of the positive on this globe.
From Otto von Bismarck’s social reforms in the 1880s through renouncing racism and antisemitism after WWII in words and through deeds, to being one of the largest contributors to the UN, even while still being denied membership, - to its leadership in environmental issues, that country has been a positive global influence ever since its unification less that 1 1/2 century ago.
So let us keep our shame, where it belongs, in the US.
Just what Golestan said: thanks. Just the Patriarchal Family Syndrome term was worth the read.
I appreciate your points, which you can tell because I said almost all of them first.
However, Germany was a problem long before the Versailles treaty. Its original unification came out of expansionist nationalist movements and the Second Thirty Years War (1914-1945) obviously didn’t start with Versailles. West Germany then Germany has been (mostly) a paragon since then, as I said. And some of my best friends…live in the Ruhrgebiet. LAL Lachen aus loud.
I’d make the comparison to Darius or Sargon of Akkad but nobody would know what the hell I was talking about. And I didn’t say Herr Drumpf I said (spelling it wrong to remove the “Eye” / “EL” confusion: IL Drumpfe, not wanting to slight the Italians by leaving out that comparison. The Rusti Mussolini is much more like that namesake anyway–more narcissistic than Hitlerian psychopathic (and as opposed to Stalin’s pathologically exaggerated Tough-Generouos type from Hakomi.)
And Bismarck? Social reforms? Weren’t we just talking about good mixed with horrific somewhere?
If the shoe fits…
Gotta run. beasts to feed.
Well, you know a lot about psychiatry, but are not very well informed about European history. To lump both wars into the same pot is absurd. It was the treaty of Versailles which pumped all resources out of Germany to ripen the country for the emergence of a strong man and radicalism a completely different scenario tha the Kaiserreich . This situation was avoided after WWII by inclusion of Germany into the Marshall Plan. The second WW was strictly expansionary, the first one was not
Interesting that this is now being ‘allowed’ by a professional association of psychoanalysts. Why couldn’t they have done that with W Bush when he said god told him to invade Iraq, eh? Dick Cheney? He’s obviously got some serious mental problems. Or Bill Clinton. Or HW Bush. Dan Quayle?
A-hahahahaha!
This is not really going to tell us anything that we haven’t figured out already, but since they’ve gone and broken the ice I certainly would like to hear about what they think of Hillary’s “We came, we saw, he died” and the cackle of laughter she gave out while watching the video of the leader of Libya getting a knife shoved up his rear by al Quida clones. Or maybe look at her TPP is good for us speech and the frack the planet speech or the ones to Wall Street where she pointedly says she’s got a public policy and a private policy ie: the REAL policy she will use. How about her ‘Russia invaded Ukraine’ speeches when it was her little friend Viki Nueland who got busted for her taped conversation on a cell phone about spending $5 billion on “Yats is our man.”
And since we’re at it, let’s take a look at ALL the presidents since 1980 when our Alzheimer’s President came into power. And all the vice presidents since then. And every sitting Senator and Congressman and the head of any federal agency and their assistants. And anybody who is actually running for any office of any kind whether it be local, state, or federal.
If one keeps going with this, there will eventually be absolutely nobody mentally or emotionally fit to hold office based on past behavior or statements on or off the record including those candid hot mic oopsies that keep popping up.
That might be a good thing. Those who want power are usually the least qualified is what I’m thinking…
Teresa, I thought of this, too, and wonder if Trump sooner or later will tweet himself into admitting criminality when he flies off the handle. I think I will enjoy this, even though as you say, psychiatrists have a tangled web of motives.
