I typically discuss the causes of and impediments to physical health in this blog, as I learn more about them as I go, and as best as I understand them.
But emotional health and physical health are related and overlapping to various degrees, and in rare cases the emotional health of a single individual can change history, start wars, and be the cause of genocides. And I would also say emotional health should not be conflated with politics, but usually is. And I am also not very interested in politics, but I am concerned, as many are, that Trump is a clear and present danger to the US and the world. Is that political? No, I think it transcends politics.
So today I'm going to make an exception and discuss what constitutes "personality disorder", and the book 27 mental health professionals have collaborated on, the title of which you see above, and can be bought on Amazon (or perhaps checked out at your local library):
There are 10 of the so-called personality disorders, a good overview of them can be found here:
It's important to note at his point that the perfect human with none of the traits of personality disorder has never existed, we all have some of these traits, and we might say they exemplify what we commonly call neurotic traits. Has there ever been a perfect human with zero neurosis? Not likely, but the lucky are close enough that these conditions never rise to the level of significant dysfunction.
Every one of the personality disorders are identified as having certain personality "traits", and is thought of as a disorder when an individual demonstrates the majority of these traits consistently. And when enough of these personality traits have accumulated in one individual they are said to be "pathological", or dangerous to others.
Many mental health professionals (probably fair to say the majority of them, numbering in the thousands) identify in Trump narcissistic personality disorder, which is described at this link:
But to cut to the chase I have reproduced the list of narcissistic traits here:
(click for bigger)
The list of traits may be in no particular order, but the first, grandiosity, is probably the most significant. With grandiosity comes intolerance of any view but theirs, or we might say a dictatorial trait, with overt and pronounced hostility towards others who may disagree.
In my opinion it's quite easy to recognize Trump in this list of character traits.
So then we come to the question how and why is this a dangerous condition for a world leader to have? With grandiosity and a lack of empathy comes a ready capacity for genocide. It might be said in fact every genocide in history has been committed by a grandiose pathological narcissist.
And if we can agree Trump has the unfortunate condition of pathological narcissistic personality disorder, another question is raised: is it even marginally OK for the commander of the most powerful military in the world to be pathologically disordered?
Psychology may not yet be a mature enough discipline for the majority to be aware of these questions. So while one requirement for election to high office is a medical exam, a psychological exam, arguably more important, is not yet "a thing".
Shouldn't it be? If it were a thing there might be less confusion about the resolution of this kind of issue.
And if Trump were "our dictator", "dissidents" who write posts on blogs like this one might be incarcerated, or worse.
And yet we still cherish that most basic democratic right, freedom of speech, don't we?
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