[FRIAM] Is the new president mentally ill?

[Marcus Daniels]

A better example might be something like the ACA.  The ACA required Obama to make compromises, expend political capital, and play a longer game all while taking constant abuse for it.   Or deciding how to balance national and global interests in places like Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan.   Tasks that are analytical and calculated and in the interest of the many aren’t always popular decisions at first.

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2017 2:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Is the new president mentally ill?

This is, overall, a strange concern, because you need additional layers of analysis. Functional narcissists do well because they have particular strengths, and when those strengths are on the side of third parties, those third parties tend to do quite well. To the extent that we can get Trump's narcissism to effectively feed off of the success of the country (which he seems quite willing to do), things will probably go quite well. To the extent that he is able to look at Putin and say "Who care's what you think? I'm president of the U.S., which is doing great by the way, terrific, and you are at the top of a crumbled empire," I don't think there is any risk of reaching for the football. A nuclear bomb wouldn't be good for the stock market, wouldn't help real estate prices, wouldn't help convince Ford to move that factory to the U.S., where Trump could do a ribbon cutting in front of an adulating crowd.

People keep saying that he is quick to anger, holds grudges, goes on the attack to much, but, frankly, we are mostly talking about tweets here. Has he ever bought a company just to fire someone? Is there an implication he has ever had people killed who were suing him (something well within his financial means)? Has he started a company to bankrupt someone else in the same niche who pissed him off? Are we really afraid he will go from tweet to nuclear launch with no escalation in between? What past history of escalation do we have to suggest that is a thing to worry about? And, in the mean time, might we not get some countries to the bargaining table based on the perception that Trump won't rule nuclear launch out, who might not be dealing with us otherwise?

If we are lucky, we have an effective narcissist on our side. If we are unlucky we have a reasonably competent businessman, in way over his head. Either way, I'm not worried he'll launch a nuke in week 2.



-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Supervisory Survey Statistician
U.S. Marine Corps

On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 1:54 AM, Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net<mailto:jofr at cas-group.net>> wrote:
I posted this on Google+, since we have a lot of psychologists here you might be interested too?

Psychologists, therapists and mental health professionals seem to be fascinated and terrified alike by the new president who has not only become a brand, but is nothing but a brand:

1. he seems to be a textbook case of a narcissistic personality disorder
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-greene/is-donald-trump-mentally_b_13693174.html

2. he was elected although he imitates the behavior of an massive Internet troll
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-embodied-mind/201701/unified-theory-trump

3. he displays a total lack of honesty and truth-telling
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/

All DSM-5 criteria of a narcissistic personality disorder seem to be fulfilled. Should we be worried? What do you think? He shows a clear need for instant retaliation if someone criticizes him, which is obviously some form a narcissistic rage. It is clearly more than a self-serving bias, and such a deep personality disorder is not harmless at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-serving_bias

The problem is he is in a position where he can pull the strings now, as the commander in chief of the most powerful army. The US has about 2000 nuclear weapons on high alert, and there is a soldier with the nuclear football following the president at all times. What could go wrong?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_football

-Jochen




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