Dr. Mary Trump on Her Uncle
Oct. 26th, 2020 11:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ndrosenThe Sunday Washington Post included an article by Dr. Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, criticizing the American Psychiatric Association for its rules against psychiatrists diagnosing public figures whom they have not personally and thoroughly examined (to oversimplify her views somewhat). She argues that the APA should take an official position on Dishonest Donald’s disordered, impulsive, self-defeating, and destructive behavior, and that its neutrality leaves Americans without the tools necessary to evaluate and understand that behavior.
I respect the gentlewoman (so unlike her uncle), but I’m not persuaded. Americans who follow the news can see what a crook, bungler, and habitual liar DJT is, without instructions from psychiatrists, and whether or not he quite fits the official definition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or some other official “mental illness” (and, as I recall, a psychiatrist who more or less wrote the description of Narcissistic Personality Disorder said that Trump doesn’t technically qualify, since NPD patients suffer problems in life from their supposed disease, and DJT doesn’t, having managed to get away with appalling attitudes and conduct). Americans who live within a bubble, or who put their hands over their ears and yell “Fake news!” when confronted with accounts of their leader’s faults and misdeeds, are not very likely to be persuaded by a diagnosis from a psychiatrist, or even from an official commission of the APA.
I respect the gentlewoman (so unlike her uncle), but I’m not persuaded. Americans who follow the news can see what a crook, bungler, and habitual liar DJT is, without instructions from psychiatrists, and whether or not he quite fits the official definition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or some other official “mental illness” (and, as I recall, a psychiatrist who more or less wrote the description of Narcissistic Personality Disorder said that Trump doesn’t technically qualify, since NPD patients suffer problems in life from their supposed disease, and DJT doesn’t, having managed to get away with appalling attitudes and conduct). Americans who live within a bubble, or who put their hands over their ears and yell “Fake news!” when confronted with accounts of their leader’s faults and misdeeds, are not very likely to be persuaded by a diagnosis from a psychiatrist, or even from an official commission of the APA.
