Rudy Canoza
2024-12-24 20:26:56 UTC
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Permalinkpathological appeal and how to wean people from it
By Tanya Lewis edited by Dean Visser
January 11, 2021
The violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Building last week, incited by
President Donald Trump, serves as the grimmest moment in one of the darkest
chapters in the nation’s history. Yet the rioters’ actions—and Trump’s own role
in, and response to, them—come as little surprise to many, particularly those
who have been studying the president’s mental fitness and the psychology of his
most ardent followers since he took office.
One such person is Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist and president of the
World Mental Health Coalition.* Lee led a group of psychiatrists, psychologists
and other specialists who questioned Trump’s mental fitness for office in a book
that she edited called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and
Mental Health Experts Assess a President. In doing so, Lee and her colleagues
strongly rejectedthe American Psychiatric Association’s modification of a
1970s-era guideline,known as the Goldwater rule, that discouraged psychiatrists
from giving a professional opinion about public figures who they have not
examined in person. “Whenever the Goldwater rule is mentioned, we should refer
back to the Declaration of Geneva, which mandates that physicians speak up
against destructive governments,” Lee says. “This declaration was created in
response to the experience of Nazism.”
Lee recently wrote Profile of a Nation: Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul, a
psychological assessment of the president against the backdrop of his supporters
and the country as a whole. These insights are now taking on renewed importance
as a growing number of current and former leaders call for Trump to be
impeached. On January 9 Lee and her colleagues at the World Mental Health
Coalition put out a statement calling for Trump’s immediate removal from office.
Scientific American asked Lee to comment on the psychology behind Trump’s
destructive behavior, what drives some of his followers—and how to free people
from his grip when this damaging presidency ends.
*What attracts people to Trump? What is their animus or driving force?*
The reasons are multiple and varied, but in my recent public-service book,
Profile of a Nation, I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic
symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the
developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically
attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of
self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy
by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When
such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar
pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-shared-psychosis-of-donald-trump-and-his-loyalists/
What attracts Trumpswabs to Trump is their stupidity, their immorality, their
gullibility and their total detachment from reality. They are mentally ill.
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Every Republiscum/QAnon accusation is, in fact, a confession
Every Republiscum/QAnon accusation is, in fact, a confession