Allen Frances is a psychiatrist who wrote the rules for diagnosing personality disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The DSM is the No. 1 tool mental health professionals have for making diagnoses.
Frances, a professor emeritus at Duke, doesn’t mince words about what he thinks of mental health professionals who are now using the DSM to diagnose President Donald Trump with a mental disorder. “What’s going on is bullshit,” he says
“Everyone has a personality,” Frances says. “It’s not wrong to have a personality; it’s not mentally ill to have a personality. It’s only a disorder when it causes extreme distress, suffering, and impairment.”
Trump’s willingness to lie and endless self-promotion are traits that have, so far, worked out largely to his advantage. He’s president of the United States, after all.
Psychologists don’t have such a rule, and Frances — who supports the Goldwater Rule and generally thinks mental illnesses are overdiagnosed — worries that when the petitioners and others call Trump mentally ill, they stigmatize people with psychological problems. They can also distract from the more objective criticisms you can make of his presidency. “Call him a liar, call him evil, call him a threat to democracy, call him impulsive, call him ignorant — these labels are all absolutely true — but saying he has a mental disorder doesn’t really add force to the argument,” Frances says.
Dr. F. Perry Wilson: You authored the DSM criteria for narcissistic personality disorder. This is something that many people have attributed to President Trump. You are not one of them. Do you stand by the assertion that he does not have this disorder?
Dr. Allen Frances: Well, Trump is absolutely a world-class narcissist. He has every criteria met except for two. **In addition to having the features of being grandiose, unempathic, self-involved, selfish, all the things that go into being Trump, you have to have distress or impairment, significant distress or impairment. **
Trump is a man who causes immense distress in others, but doesn’t seem to experience it very much himself. Although he’s created tremendous impairment for our country and for his business colleagues, he, himself, has been very well rewarded in politics and also in business for being a narcissist. I think that it’s reckless for people to attribute the damage he’s causing to mental illness. He’s much more bad than mad.
To lump Trump with the mentally ill is a tremendous insult to them. It stigmatizes them. Most people who are mentally ill are well meaning and well behaved, and really fine people. Trump is none of those. So that when we confuse mental illness with bad behavior, we, first of all, insult the mentally ill, and secondly, we underestimate just how evil Trump is and how dangerous.
I don’t think anyone is denying that these things are said. The argument is Frances is one physician and academic of many with an opinion on the matter.
Doctors and academics argue and debate. It’s kind of a thing.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/10/14551890/trump-mental-health-narcissistic-personality
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdaBsfu44ps
Is that enough proof for you, or do you need angels to descend from the heavens to confirm what all these journalists are saying?
I don’t think anyone is denying that these things are said. The argument is Frances is one physician and academic of many with an opinion on the matter.
Doctors and academics argue and debate. It’s kind of a thing.