Sadly, NYT doesn’t publish all of my pungently condemnatory comments. Here is one for oblivion, dripping with a strange irony:
Trump has accomplished what countless do-gooders of the liberal persuasion have largely failed to do: He has destigmatized mental illness. His is the first blatantly, proudly psychologically disturbed presidency, with his two virulent Cluster B personality disorders (Narcissistic and Antisocial). And he has so normalized his dysfunction that almost half the population sees a “playful sense of humor” where there is predatory cruelty. People, breathing four years of his ether, have come to view personality disorder as mere personality, narcissism as bravado, psychopathy as “winning.” So I suppose we could say “Thank you, Don. You have caused us to believe that the most pernicious mental illness is nothing other than an adversary’s ad hominem insult.”*
Goodness! Could it be true? That Trump has succeeded where all the sweet propaganda, the somber admonitory billboards, the Oprahs and Army Corps of twenty-something social workers have failed? To have us metro-emasculate mental dysfunction, diametrically transforming toxicity and dire illness into sympathy and respect for personhood?
I know the goal of destigmatization has been to help people with psychological problems not feel shameful, and to have their audience not think they are “dangerous and unpredictable.”** But our problems don’t deserve this finesse, this politically correct treatment. They are the injury caused by flawed parenting. They are murdered souls*** and lost love that didn’t have to happen. They are the prevention of identity formation, and of the future. And in the public sphere, they are the loss of billions of dollars in productivity,**** the poisoning of an entire culture, and they are homicide. President Trump is the “I AM WHO I AM!”***** of moral destruction not because he chose to be a rogue, but because of his childhood and the disorders it implanted. Say them: Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Antisocial Personality Disorder, also known as sociopathy and psychopathy. These are the words that should be on billboards, the targets whose bullseyes are the wounds we carry into adulthood, that parents inject into their “poison container” ****** children.
Frankly, the woke
destigmatizing of psychological disorder is just another species of the faux
wisdom all societies imbibe. We live on the adult plane of defense and
illusion and remain ignorant of our deeper nature. Arthur Janov noted that
parents hedge their children in, after which children hedge themselves in.******
This is what we do to ourselves when we avert our eyes from mental disaster
and indictment. Society deserves better. Trump deserves worse.
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* Actually, the comment was published many hours after it was submitted for review, in the dead of night when the world is asleep. This is what NYT does when it wants to appear accepting but doesn’t really mean it.
** https://www.apa.org/monitor/2016/07-08/upfront-destigmatizing.
*** https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/health/leonard-shengold-dead.html.
**** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsR4wydiIBI&t=514s
****** https://psychohistory.com/articles/the-history-of-child-abuse/. See first subheading.
******* https://www.amazon.com/Primal-Scream-Arthur-Janov/dp/0399505377.
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Comments are welcome, but I'd suggest you first read "Feeling-centered therapy" and "Ocean and boat" for a basic introduction to my kind of theory and therapy.