Preface:

Lamentably from, Fauci to Freud, scientists have little credibility in MAGA World. This is a world of people who think psyhologists are quacks and who support a man who now is proposing to deny federal funds to any schools that mandate vacinations. Thus it is with dismay that I admit doubt that reporting about the increase in evidence Trump has dementia will convince his supporters not to vote for him.

This come with an unless, and it is a major unless. His support could significantly erode if he gets much much worse.

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It was simple to call the combination of three traits which together described Trump several years ago a triad. They were more or less equal. Now with a fourth, not a trait but a physical condition whether it’s a square, rhombus, rectangle, or trapezoid doesn’t matter. It has four sides, hence it is a quardilateral.

In June of 2019 I wrote the following using the above illustration (scroll down to end of this section if you already are familiar with Trump and how he is an exemplar for the Dark Triad):

Therapists warning about Trump’s dangerous personality should explain the Dark Triad.

An interesting notion to consider is that just as liberals are trying to rebrand the term global warming with climate crisis, perhaps those of us presenting our case to the public should begin introducing another concept in addition to malignant narcissism.

No less a well known expert than Duty to Warn founder Dr. John D. Gartner wrote about this in USA Today in 2017 (here).

I’ve seen many references in the comments to my Daily Kos (where I previously wrote) articles to another psychological concept which I haven’t written about, but it fits Trump too. This is the malevolent dark triad, which is as therapists we know refers to the combination of narcissism, psychopathy personality, and Machiavellianism.

Like it or not we as psychotherapists who have gone public are engaged in marketing when we try to add another reason why Trump is dangerous and unfit besides his being an autocratic dictator wannabe who is daily eroding our cherished freedoms.

When we write about Trump’s dangerous psychopatholgy our insights inform and arm the opposition to Trump .

We are embodying many of the ancient lessons from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” which boil down to saying that the better you know your enemy the more likely it is you will defeat him.

Wikipedia describes the dark triad as:

All three dark triad traits are conceptually distinct although empirical evidence shows them to be overlapping. They are associated with a callous-manipulative interpersonal style.

• Narcissism is characterized by grandiosity, pride, egotism, and a lack of empathy.
• Machiavellianismis characterized by manipulationand exploitation of others, a cynical disregard for morality, and a focus on self-interestand deception.
• Psychopathyis characterized by continuing antisocial behavior, impulsivity, selfishness, callousness, and remorselessness.

Trump epitomises the dark triad. 

I suggest we as psychotherapists warning about how Trump’s psychopathology makes him both dangerous and unfit introduce this phrase into our lexicon when we speak and write about Donald Trump.

Fast forward to today.

Hopefully you have been reading about the second petition started by Dr. John Gartner (Wiki profile). The first was in 2017 calling for Trump to be removed under provisions of the 25th Amendment and currently the petition is for mental health professionals to make their case for Trump having dementia. Here are some of what there mental health professionals wrote:

Gartner said Trump is displaying “a lot of clinical symptoms” of a dementia-related disorder, while President Joe Biden has merely “mixed up names and mixed up dates.”

“The kind of memory problems Trump is having are clear signs of dementia,” the expert said. As opposed to messing up names and dates, he said, he is flubbing on “people and generations.”

“Trump actually on some days thinks he’s running against Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama,” he noted. “He’s actually confusing people, he’s not confusing names.”

When asked if he believes Trump’s claim that he was being sarcastic or joking when he confused Obama for Biden, something he did again on Saturday, Gartner said “not in the least.”

“He’s told that lie 1,000 times,” he added. “Saying he’s joking is the way he covers up his cognitive decline.”

“He doesn’t look like he’s joking,” he said. “He shows no awareness – that’s part of the syndrome.”

Gartner also claimed his analysis is based on a baseline of how Trump used to behave, saying that, now, Trump “has an impoverished vocabulary.”

The “neurological smoking gun,” he said, is the “phonemic paraphasia” Trump experiences.

“Experts I’ve talked to said nobody without brain damage” experiences this, he said, noting that Trump is able to get the “stem of the real word but he’s unable to complete the real word.”

When this happens to Trump, the expert said, “You can literally see the lights are out. Someone has pulled the plug.”

Gartner is also the organizer of a petition for experts to diagnose Trump with dementia. RawStory article.

I was a psychotherapist for over 40 years but only since retiring and moving to a continuing care retirement community have I gotten to know many people as friends and acquaintances before they got dementia, and as they progressed though various stages to the point that they had to move to live in one of our memory care neighborhoods.

I also know many people who are my age, 80, and into their early nineties, who show no significant congitive impairments. One of my closest friends is 92 and will be starring as  Estragon, having memorized all the lines, when our facility presents “Waiting for Godot.” I know from philosophical disucssions I’ve had with him that he understands the existential quandaries posed by the Samuel Beckett classic.

Thi brings me back to Donald Trump and the eividence that he has early dementia and how to add this to the Dark Quadrilateral. The elements of the Dark Triad are personalty traits and dementia is a physical condition which effects many aspects of functioning but just consider memory and judgment and ask yourself whether the United States can survive having a president where these are not merely as imparied as they are at present but become worse.

Not only do people with dementia have memory problems but some of them who were never hostile or aggressive become management problems and some have episodes of paranoia. Can you imagine a Trump with dementia who becomes even more aggressive than he already is?

If you watch MSNBC you will see extensive coverage of Trump’s mental decline or if you read the interviews with Dr. John Gartner (“Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug”: Dr. John Gartner on Trump’s “accelerating dementia” for example) in Salon you realize the following:

My illustration above.

Unfortunately you won’t find ciritical coverage showing Trump’s dementia on Fox News.

I publish a new blog almost daily at Stressline.org here