John: I understand the danger of facile, hostile, and ignorant personal attacks. I don’t think Plouffe was making one. He carefully listed the characteristics of Donald Trump that align compellingly with a psychopathic disposition: “The grandiose notion of self-worth, pathological lying, lack of empathy and remorse.” I agree with you that a lot of people diagnosing Trump should take a break; but I also think that like all authoritarians who threaten democratic norms, he urgently demands of us that we understand as deeply as we can his mindset.
Two problems:
Trump’s seemingly having multiple characteristics that align, no matter how compellingly, with a psychopathic disposition is not sufficient for diagnosing him as a psychopath.
You, I nor Plouffe knows how much of Trump’s public persona is “real”. He may be just playing a man with psychopathic dispositions… which might make him an even worse candidate.
I suppose I’d make a distinction between diagnosing in a formal clinical sense and observing that a person has psychopathic tendencies. We routinely – and legitimately, as this article suggests – observe that this or that person exhibits psychopathy. This doesn’t mean (as the writer of the article I link to explains) that they’re homicidal lunatics. It merely means that the lying, risk-taking, lack of remorse, lack of empathy, and manipulativeness characteristic of the condition happens to appear in a certain person, and that we think it’s worth taking note of that.
As to the possibility that Trump exhibits a persona rather than an authentic identity – I’m totally with Hillary on this one. There’s only one Donald Trump — the one right before your eyes.
His words were: “I mean, he meets the clinical definition, OK?”
There is a tactical issue here. If we endorse this sort of amateur diagnosis – and that is what it was, as opposed to noting “psychopathic tendencies”, then certainly an actual doctor diagnosing candidates in a hostile manner is fair game? That is a road I prefer to avoid.
The fundamental question is this. Do you or do you not believe that there is something profoundly wrong with Trump in terms of perspective on the world and especially his place in it? And in ways that would make his presidency frightening to a degree eclipsing any concerns about HRC. If so, it is hard to believe that there is something wrong with reaching for the nearest intelligible (perhaps even a scientifically correct) label amidst the rhetoric of political exchange. If Democrats, overly generously, tied their hands, the Republicans would not reciprocate. They will not come close to moving political discourse to say the reliance on the precision and evidence of a discussion between particle physicists who start with different views. The Republicans lie and exaggerate (often in despicable ways) much, much more than democrats — at least this time around. We’ve seen it time and again, not only in this election, but also in the shameful and unprecedented massive resistance to a great President. The notion of parity of treatment of positions of greatly differing plausibility has brought us the sheep media who are so afraid the right will question their neutrality that they shed all hope of achieving the relatively little objectivity that is possible in politics. Please note that I am not advocating lying on the part of Democrats, only that they have the freedom to speak in necessary, vivid terms the truth as they quite reasonably understand it.
it lets us all of the hook to try and pathologize the appeal of authoritarian personalities/politics,and by using these psychiatric characteristics to demonize someone so public people are demonizing (yet again, tho this time without a mass shooting) people who suffer from these kinds of neurological illnesses, godz know they get enough of this kind of baggage without this sort of piling on.
To pathologize would be to add something that was not already there. I really don’t understand why so many are either overlooking the extreme ugliness and danger of Trump — or since that seems almost impossible — focusing on this aspect of political discourse. Fairly and reasonably understood, the claims of pathology are right. Is it a professional, territorial thing about the technical language of psychotherapy? It’s just the ever increasing richness of ordinary language. When many speciality dialects are taken up in general speech no one really misunderstands what is going on. Whether, according to the language of the DSM, he’s a psychopath, a sociopath, an extreme narcissist, lacks all or almost all empathy, he’s in some numbered paragraph or other or more, or, if not the DSM could use some fixin. But in any event no one could take these statements made by these people as serious attempts at clinical diagnosis for treatment purposes* — it’s stronger and starker than many of those I imagine. I am, however, always open to the possibility that I am missing something important.
*I’m now imagining a back and forth between Trump and a therapist. As outrageous as Tony and Melfi on the Sopranos, and likely funnier.
Greg: I think you’re right that “no one could take these statements … as serious attempts at clinical diagnosis for treatment purposes.” The fact is that we use words that began as specific psychiatric categories all the time in ordinary speech, as in calling ourselves or other people neurotic, etc. It’s a measure of the immense success of psychoanalytical language/categories as broadly shared ways of speaking about and understanding ourselves in the 20th/21st century. If we really decided that appropriating this language in common discourse was insensitive, etc., it would be the end of all Woody Allen films. Not to mention all cafe conversations.
And I take the point that suggesting that someone has psychopathic tendencies is not a pleasant thing to do. In the case of Trump, who seems to me and many other observers a person with overt and dangerous psychopathic tendencies, it’s nonetheless – IMHO – a civic duty.
Ok, DMF, on rereading, I see that your concern in the last post is about (I think) your patients. And so let me say, entirely sincerely, that that is admirable.
Nevertheless, the main problem with the Republican candidate is what anyone would call serious craziness . To give up talking about that in mass-intelligible terms would be a big mistake. It would be like producing a very, very long list of the problems my uncle has driving or walking, instead of just saying that he is nearly blind and shouldn’t be doing some things.
thanks Greg, but it’s not craziness (tho it’s maddening) it’s in fact all too normal (google cognitive-bias, or look at politics in Poland, Hungary,Philippines, etc), so yes speaking up for my patients but also trying to remind us that this is part of our usual political landscape and our populous, pace all the hand-wringing pundits who use this kind of jargon to avoid owning their own (yet again) failures to predict the future, Trump isn’t sui generis, he didn’t hijack the Repuglican party, etc.
Evil may not be banal but it isn’t some outlier either. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/how-trump-remixed-the-republican-southern-strategy/495719/
I’m going to take some time to think, on and off for a while, about what you have just written. I’ll be thinking about:
1. the likely distribution of certain extremely self-centered and destructive traits across various populations — here the thinking will be mainly a seat of the pants guess;
2. the best way to talk about this scientifically for various purposes;
3. the best way to talk about this for more ordinary language purposes, especially political ones.
very kind thanks, as those of us who regularly stop into our good hosts blog know all too well good old boys (and gals) who are willing to break laws/rules to cash in on violence, racism, misogyny, and the like are endemic to our civic lives, and millions are willing to build and attend cultish temples to barbarism. http://creativity-online.com/work/nfl-home-sweet-home/48618
And your careful evidence for those propositions? Propositions which must imply that the traits in question in HRC range beyond milder forms inevitable in politicians (I’m guessing) we both largely admire e.g. FDR and Truman. I don’t think shes a narcissist at all. She’s always been ambitious, largely for good things, sometimes for her own wealth. I don’t think she looks in a metaphorical mirror much, but of course she does want credit. Lack of empathy. Evidence? I’m more with Bernie on the policies — when they actually can be implemented. But I sense he’s much more of a narcissist. I have no easily put together set of evidence, but at least I said it was my gut, not fact. She has busted her ass to get stuff done — usually good stuff. Admittedly was often behind the curve on other good stuff. But who wasn’t who actually had a chance to have that office?
Greg,
There is nothing in saying that this kind of casual slinging around of diagnoses, by any side, is bad political discourse that amounts to saying Trump is okay.
We have now had an entire generation of propaganda emanating from Hillary and her peeps about her brilliance. The reality is that without Bill, Hillary would have ended up as a mid-level functionary in a government office or non-profit pressure group. She did not give up a dazzling and lucrative career in a big East Coast law firm–she could not even pass the DC bar exam. She was not hired at the Rose Law firm until Bubba became state attorney general, and her elevation to partner coincided, mysteriously enough, with his first term as governor. When pressed for details about major cases she won, important precedents set, or galvanizing speeches delivered as a litigator, her flacks … change the subject. Despite being touted as a top litigator, the reality is that she rarely appeared in court and caused barely a ripple when present. Her influence derived entirely from the fact she was the wife of a governor. Her brief tenure as health care czarina was a fiasco. After a group of .01%-er pals purchased a Senate seat for her, she accomplished nothing at all of note in eight years. Her time as Secretary of State was characterized by relentless influence-peddling and no success. The relentless puffery from the army of flatterers and assorted court eunuchs of the House of Clinton cannot conceal the fact that she has accomplished nothing significant on her own. It is true that she is not an empty pantsuit: it is inflated by ambition without talent, insatiable greed, unrelenting hypocrisy, and a vast desire to exercise power over other people’s lives.
August 28th, 2016 at 4:41PM
everyone–on all sides–should take a break from amateur diagnosis.
August 28th, 2016 at 5:05PM
John: I understand the danger of facile, hostile, and ignorant personal attacks. I don’t think Plouffe was making one. He carefully listed the characteristics of Donald Trump that align compellingly with a psychopathic disposition: “The grandiose notion of self-worth, pathological lying, lack of empathy and remorse.” I agree with you that a lot of people diagnosing Trump should take a break; but I also think that like all authoritarians who threaten democratic norms, he urgently demands of us that we understand as deeply as we can his mindset.
August 28th, 2016 at 10:32PM
Two problems:
Trump’s seemingly having multiple characteristics that align, no matter how compellingly, with a psychopathic disposition is not sufficient for diagnosing him as a psychopath.
You, I nor Plouffe knows how much of Trump’s public persona is “real”. He may be just playing a man with psychopathic dispositions… which might make him an even worse candidate.
August 28th, 2016 at 11:59PM
I suppose I’d make a distinction between diagnosing in a formal clinical sense and observing that a person has psychopathic tendencies. We routinely – and legitimately, as this article suggests – observe that this or that person exhibits psychopathy. This doesn’t mean (as the writer of the article I link to explains) that they’re homicidal lunatics. It merely means that the lying, risk-taking, lack of remorse, lack of empathy, and manipulativeness characteristic of the condition happens to appear in a certain person, and that we think it’s worth taking note of that.
As to the possibility that Trump exhibits a persona rather than an authentic identity – I’m totally with Hillary on this one. There’s only one Donald Trump — the one right before your eyes.
August 29th, 2016 at 8:17AM
His words were: “I mean, he meets the clinical definition, OK?”
There is a tactical issue here. If we endorse this sort of amateur diagnosis – and that is what it was, as opposed to noting “psychopathic tendencies”, then certainly an actual doctor diagnosing candidates in a hostile manner is fair game? That is a road I prefer to avoid.
August 29th, 2016 at 9:23AM
The fundamental question is this. Do you or do you not believe that there is something profoundly wrong with Trump in terms of perspective on the world and especially his place in it? And in ways that would make his presidency frightening to a degree eclipsing any concerns about HRC. If so, it is hard to believe that there is something wrong with reaching for the nearest intelligible (perhaps even a scientifically correct) label amidst the rhetoric of political exchange. If Democrats, overly generously, tied their hands, the Republicans would not reciprocate. They will not come close to moving political discourse to say the reliance on the precision and evidence of a discussion between particle physicists who start with different views. The Republicans lie and exaggerate (often in despicable ways) much, much more than democrats — at least this time around. We’ve seen it time and again, not only in this election, but also in the shameful and unprecedented massive resistance to a great President. The notion of parity of treatment of positions of greatly differing plausibility has brought us the sheep media who are so afraid the right will question their neutrality that they shed all hope of achieving the relatively little objectivity that is possible in politics. Please note that I am not advocating lying on the part of Democrats, only that they have the freedom to speak in necessary, vivid terms the truth as they quite reasonably understand it.
August 29th, 2016 at 9:24AM
Profane: I agree. He would have been smarter simply to use the language of tendencies.
August 29th, 2016 at 9:39AM
it lets us all of the hook to try and pathologize the appeal of authoritarian personalities/politics,and by using these psychiatric characteristics to demonize someone so public people are demonizing (yet again, tho this time without a mass shooting) people who suffer from these kinds of neurological illnesses, godz know they get enough of this kind of baggage without this sort of piling on.
August 29th, 2016 at 10:25AM
To pathologize would be to add something that was not already there. I really don’t understand why so many are either overlooking the extreme ugliness and danger of Trump — or since that seems almost impossible — focusing on this aspect of political discourse. Fairly and reasonably understood, the claims of pathology are right. Is it a professional, territorial thing about the technical language of psychotherapy? It’s just the ever increasing richness of ordinary language. When many speciality dialects are taken up in general speech no one really misunderstands what is going on. Whether, according to the language of the DSM, he’s a psychopath, a sociopath, an extreme narcissist, lacks all or almost all empathy, he’s in some numbered paragraph or other or more, or, if not the DSM could use some fixin. But in any event no one could take these statements made by these people as serious attempts at clinical diagnosis for treatment purposes* — it’s stronger and starker than many of those I imagine. I am, however, always open to the possibility that I am missing something important.
*I’m now imagining a back and forth between Trump and a therapist. As outrageous as Tony and Melfi on the Sopranos, and likely funnier.
August 29th, 2016 at 10:37AM
Greg: I think you’re right that “no one could take these statements … as serious attempts at clinical diagnosis for treatment purposes.” The fact is that we use words that began as specific psychiatric categories all the time in ordinary speech, as in calling ourselves or other people neurotic, etc. It’s a measure of the immense success of psychoanalytical language/categories as broadly shared ways of speaking about and understanding ourselves in the 20th/21st century. If we really decided that appropriating this language in common discourse was insensitive, etc., it would be the end of all Woody Allen films. Not to mention all cafe conversations.
And I take the point that suggesting that someone has psychopathic tendencies is not a pleasant thing to do. In the case of Trump, who seems to me and many other observers a person with overt and dangerous psychopathic tendencies, it’s nonetheless – IMHO – a civic duty.
August 29th, 2016 at 10:38AM
Ok, DMF, on rereading, I see that your concern in the last post is about (I think) your patients. And so let me say, entirely sincerely, that that is admirable.
Nevertheless, the main problem with the Republican candidate is what anyone would call serious craziness . To give up talking about that in mass-intelligible terms would be a big mistake. It would be like producing a very, very long list of the problems my uncle has driving or walking, instead of just saying that he is nearly blind and shouldn’t be doing some things.
August 29th, 2016 at 11:20AM
thanks Greg, but it’s not craziness (tho it’s maddening) it’s in fact all too normal (google cognitive-bias, or look at politics in Poland, Hungary,Philippines, etc), so yes speaking up for my patients but also trying to remind us that this is part of our usual political landscape and our populous, pace all the hand-wringing pundits who use this kind of jargon to avoid owning their own (yet again) failures to predict the future, Trump isn’t sui generis, he didn’t hijack the Repuglican party, etc.
Evil may not be banal but it isn’t some outlier either.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/how-trump-remixed-the-republican-southern-strategy/495719/
August 29th, 2016 at 11:33AM
I’m going to take some time to think, on and off for a while, about what you have just written. I’ll be thinking about:
1. the likely distribution of certain extremely self-centered and destructive traits across various populations — here the thinking will be mainly a seat of the pants guess;
2. the best way to talk about this scientifically for various purposes;
3. the best way to talk about this for more ordinary language purposes, especially political ones.
I do appreciate your point.
August 29th, 2016 at 12:02PM
very kind thanks, as those of us who regularly stop into our good hosts blog know all too well good old boys (and gals) who are willing to break laws/rules to cash in on violence, racism, misogyny, and the like are endemic to our civic lives, and millions are willing to build and attend cultish temples to barbarism.
http://creativity-online.com/work/nfl-home-sweet-home/48618
August 29th, 2016 at 1:12PM
“The grandiose notion of self-worth, pathological lying, lack of empathy and remorse….”
This is a bang-on description of Hillary Clinton.
August 29th, 2016 at 1:45PM
And your careful evidence for those propositions? Propositions which must imply that the traits in question in HRC range beyond milder forms inevitable in politicians (I’m guessing) we both largely admire e.g. FDR and Truman. I don’t think shes a narcissist at all. She’s always been ambitious, largely for good things, sometimes for her own wealth. I don’t think she looks in a metaphorical mirror much, but of course she does want credit. Lack of empathy. Evidence? I’m more with Bernie on the policies — when they actually can be implemented. But I sense he’s much more of a narcissist. I have no easily put together set of evidence, but at least I said it was my gut, not fact. She has busted her ass to get stuff done — usually good stuff. Admittedly was often behind the curve on other good stuff. But who wasn’t who actually had a chance to have that office?
August 29th, 2016 at 1:49PM
Greg,
There is nothing in saying that this kind of casual slinging around of diagnoses, by any side, is bad political discourse that amounts to saying Trump is okay.
August 30th, 2016 at 7:34AM
We have now had an entire generation of propaganda emanating from Hillary and her peeps about her brilliance. The reality is that without Bill, Hillary would have ended up as a mid-level functionary in a government office or non-profit pressure group. She did not give up a dazzling and lucrative career in a big East Coast law firm–she could not even pass the DC bar exam. She was not hired at the Rose Law firm until Bubba became state attorney general, and her elevation to partner coincided, mysteriously enough, with his first term as governor. When pressed for details about major cases she won, important precedents set, or galvanizing speeches delivered as a litigator, her flacks … change the subject. Despite being touted as a top litigator, the reality is that she rarely appeared in court and caused barely a ripple when present. Her influence derived entirely from the fact she was the wife of a governor. Her brief tenure as health care czarina was a fiasco. After a group of .01%-er pals purchased a Senate seat for her, she accomplished nothing at all of note in eight years. Her time as Secretary of State was characterized by relentless influence-peddling and no success. The relentless puffery from the army of flatterers and assorted court eunuchs of the House of Clinton cannot conceal the fact that she has accomplished nothing significant on her own. It is true that she is not an empty pantsuit: it is inflated by ambition without talent, insatiable greed, unrelenting hypocrisy, and a vast desire to exercise power over other people’s lives.
August 30th, 2016 at 10:14AM
and Trump’s worse. Sad this is the choice we face.