Trump’s Pathology Is Also His Brand - Sunday June 23rd, 2019 at 3:16 PM | The Psychoanalytic Activist - By Stephen J. Ducat
Trump’s Pathology Is Also His Brand Sunday June 23 rd , 2019 at 3:16 PM The Psychoanalytic Activist 1 Share By Stephen J. Ducat The Problem of Diagnosis Debates rage in the increasingly politicized world of mental health clinicians about how to name and understand Trump’s evident psychopathology. Is he a narcissistic psychopath, a psychopathic narcissist, or simply a ruthless con man who managed to grift his way into business and then into the White House? There are those cautious souls that still abide by the “Goldwater Rule” a proscription against clinicians diagnosing politicians and others in public life who haven’t been interviewed directly. This was an attempt by the American Psychiatric Association to prevent the kind of reductive and politically motivated pathologizing that was directed against Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential campaign. As it turns out, the rule was an overreaching corrective for an overreaching us...