The Psychopath potus (It's DJT, Not BHO)

This post concerns another internet meme found at the top of the Right-wing, Trump-supporting blog Who's Your Daddy.

(The image is from remarks Obama made in East Room of the White House on 1/5/2016 while discussing proposed gun control measures following the Sandy Hook shootings).

So, as people who've visited this blog know, the proprietor likes to change up the memes at the top of her blog regularly. This one is gone now, but it was there for a few days prior to the publication of this post. In any case... is Obama a psychopath because of the way he wiped away tears? And is this according to The Body Language of Liars by behavioral analyst Glass?

As it turns out... no. Lillian Glass says "a popular meme misconstrued one of her quotes and made assertions that aren't credible or ethical".

According to Dr. Glass, the thrust of the meme is unequivocally false. Whether folks believe President Obama's tears at the 1/5/2016 appearance were legitimate or not, the meme based on that moment in no way represents the analytical work of the body language expert to whom it is attributed. (Crocodile Jeers by Kim LaCapria. 1/7/2016 Snopes).

Also, I think it's pretty sick to suggest that President Obama's tears (in reaction to 20 small children being blown away) were fake. Anyway, as far as psychoanalysis of presidents go, my go-to guy is Dr. Justin Frank (author of Bush on the Couch & Obama on the Couch).

Regarding Obama, Dr. Frank says Obama is "an admirable and down-to-earth individual who is generally in excellent mental health". NOT a psychopath, in other words.

As for incoming pee-otus Trump? Dr. Frank confirms that the orange buffoon is 100% certified nuts (my paraphrase). "I think that he and his thin skin allows him to tune into narcissistic loss and pain. And so he can feed his audience and be fed by them" Frank said on the 12/6/2016 airing of The Thom Hartmann Program.

Justin Frank: And so one of the senses that I have psychologically of Trump's power is that he really understands how to have power, how to execute power, and how to scare people. ... His father was a very successful businessman who also scared people and bullied people. And he said the most important thing is to win. Trump competed with his older brother ... Fred Trump Jr. was just too nice a guy and easy going to be a killer. And Trump's father wanted somebody who was going to be really tough and Donald... turned out to be that kind of kid who was a fighter in school, got into fights, who was very much of a bully and didn't really believe in rules and had to be sent to military academy in order to calm down. I think that it was also that [Fred Trump Jr's] alcoholism, part of the destruction has to do with turning their back on him because he was just a nice guy and that's what narcissistic and sadistic parents do. And the competitiveness with the brother, Donald, is what is called, and Anna Freud talks about identification with the aggressor [1+2]. If the father kicks the son, the son kicks the dog. And this is what we've got.

So, Frank is saying that Fred Trump Sr was "narcissistic and sadistic" to his brother, Fred Jr, because he was a nice guy (unlike Donald) and that Donald helped his father destroy his brother. Regarding Trump's tweeting, Frank said it shows that, unlike past presidents who acted as "father figures", Trump is "very similar to a ten-year-old child". Frank further remarks on "the danger that Trump invites because of his bombastic behavior and his incitement to hate".

Justin Frank: ...if you're a father, you have a super-ego function. You have to help your children learn about the Ten Commandments, learn about right and wrong, learn about not killing, learn about respecting other people, learning about paying attention, not coveting this and that. Trump is not that kind of person. He is not going to be a super-ego leader in this nation. He's going to be a super-ego permission giver. So just this morning the New York One television station said that there's about a hundred and twenty percent increase in violent crimes since the election. ... Hate crimes, rather, not violent, hate crimes. I mean that's really, that has to do with a permission to hate and a permission to be destructive.

"He shouldn't be President [because] this is a person who hates reality". Compare that to Obama, who Frank described as "an admirable and down-to-earth individual". In response Thom said "now we have a child king, basically. It's like the boy king in the French court in the 17th century". Although Thom said maybe Trump is malleable. That if you flatter him perhaps he'll listen to, and be influenced by what you have to say (meaning there may be some hope).

Frank's response was that Trump is "not malleable. ...look, for 8 years Obama thought Mitch McConnell would be malleable. He's not. Trump is even less malleable".

As to whether the Orange One is a psychopath, neither Frank nor Hartmann asserts that Trump is. Because Dr. Frank, an author who practices and teaches psychoanalysis, and Hartmann, a former psychotherapist, wouldn't offer an diaginosis of psychopathy because "there is no actual diagnosis of psychopathy in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (How is psychopathy diagnosed?).

Although I would say that DJT checks off all the boxes. Among the characteristics of a psychopath we find: superficial charm, grandiose sense of self worth ("I'm really smart"), need for stimulation/prone to boredom, pathological lying, conning/manipulative, parasitic lifestyle (paid no taxes for 20 years), poor behavioral controls (tweeting), promiscuous sexual behavior (hits on women even when married), many short term relationships (3 wives), juvenile delinquency (From The Art of the Deal: "As an adolescent, I was mostly interested in creating mischief"), etc.

Yep, Donald Trump is a psychopath. My opinion, as I am not in any way qualified to make a diagnosis of anyone's mental health. But I think all the evidence says the Orange One has the "personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, egotistical traits". We know for sure that he is a thin skinned narcissist who is COMPELLED to lash out at every slight (often via tweet). That's proof enough to conclude that this man has some serious mental problems, I think.

Video: Thom speaks with Dr. Justin Frank on his radio program (12/6/2016) about Donald Trump (20:02).

Footnotes
[1] "Identification with the aggressor was first described by Anna Freud in her book The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, first published in German in 1936" (International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. Copyright 2005 Thomson Gale).
[2] Austrian-British psychoanalyst Anna Freud (12/3/1895 to 10/9/1982) "was the 6th child of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays".

Update 12/29/2017: Technically speaking, Trump is a sociopath. Although, even if what is claimed in the meme at the top of this post is true, Obama would also be a sociopath. As per Healthyplace.com (the largest consumer mental health site on the net), "Sociopaths are often called psychopaths and vice versa but there are differences between a psychopath and a sociopath. Psychopaths, for example, are far more likely to get in trouble with the law while sociopaths are much more likely to blend in with society. And while sociopaths and psychopaths do share some traits, sociopathy (antisocial personality disorder) is generally considered less severe than psychopathy". NOTE that the title of my post is what it is (and I will leave it unchanged) because the meme claims that Obama is a PSYCHOPATH, not a sociopath.

SWTD #370