DONALD TRUMP IS NOT MENTALLY ILL: HE IS A SERIOUSLY DISORDERED PERSONALITY.
By Niall McLaren
In a commentary on Donald Trump’s suitability to be president of the US and thereby most powerful individual in the world, John Lord described him as:
“…a sick deluded man… A deluded pathetic liar …. a person of limited intellect and understanding … an ignoramus…”
He further suggested Trump is seriously retarded educationally, has the manners of a playground bully and is an “incoherent mess” with no insight or self-awareness. Strong words indeed. I believe they voice a very real fear that we, the 95% of the world’s population who live outside the US, have every reason to be frightened for our welfare should Trump win.
On the latter points, I heartily agree. Trump is major concern and it reflects very badly on the US political process that he has been able to get this far. By all means, let the child born in a log cabin enter the White House but can you keep the clowns out? However, I have to disagree on certain points, that Trump is mentally ill.
I will set the record straight here. Most emphatically, Donald Trump is NOT mentally ill. He is not of limited intellect and nor is he an ignoramus. There is nothing to suggest he is an alcoholic or drug addict and he certainly does not have brain damage.
Donald Trump is highly intelligent, he has a capacious memory (well, as good as any other baby boomer such as myself), he is remarkably astute in dealing with people, and he knows his game as well as anybody at the big end of town. At the same time, he firmly believes he can get away with whatever takes his fancy, be it declaring bankruptcy to avoid debts or grabbing passing women by the vulva. He is seriously and serially dishonest, deals comfortably with criminals and scoundrels, believes any bit of scurrilous nonsense that comes into his head and expects everybody else to fall for it, and doesn’t have a clear plan for the future beyond grabbing the most celebrated position in the country. He isn’t interested in government, doesn’t have any understanding of macroeconomics or international law, regards laws as impediments to be overcome or weapons to bludgeon the weak, uses people mercilessly and doesn’t show any capacity to maintain stable adult relationships. He is promiscuous, remorseless and contemptuous. At the same time, he is highly creative in the way he approaches his life’s goal of expanding his wealth and power.
This, of course, is a textbook description of a term that was used in psychiatry for nearly a century before the American DSM-III got rid of it, the creative psychopath. On the evidence available in the daily press, and without having examined this man, I believe there is strong reason to suspect that he shows the cardinal features of a creative psychopath. If so, he would be unfit to hold public office. If he wins the forthcoming election, I believe that my children’s lives, and the lives of all other defenceless citizens of the world, will be seriously and adversely affected, perhaps permanently. And there is nothing I can do about it.
(Why did the DSM-III dispense with the term ‘creative psychopath,’ replacing it with the term Sociopathic Personality Disorder? Because the sociopath is defined as somebody with a criminal record. That meant that people like Bernard Madoff, Kenneth Lay, and Bernie Ebbers, all of whom were friends of Donald Trump, couldn’t be classified as untrustworthy individuals. This was convenient as it meant that only the poor could be labelled and discarded. Also, since he is a public figure, I am within my rights to comment on his mental state insofar as it concerns me).
