Doctor describes Trump as paranoid and insane

Kraepelin, of Munich, helped lay the groundwork for modern psychiatry. Chief among his contributions are his descriptions of “mixed states” in manic depression (known today as bipolar disorder).People with bipolar disorder do not toggle between euphoria (mania) and gloom (depression). Elements of both states can be suffered at once.Extreme anxiety, for example, can produce excitement and depression together — a mixed state.In reading Kraepelin’s book, one cannot help but notice that over and over again he is describing Donald Trump. Most of this column will simply quote Kraepelin, from R. Mary Barclay’s translation of “Manic Depressive Insanity and Paranoia,” (Ayer Co., 1987).Anyone who reads the news can fill in the blanks.“(T)he delusion formation peculiar to paranoia … may develop in the two fundamental directions of ideas of injury and of exaltation. … At first it remains within the limits of suspicious conjectures, arrogant and overweening self-conceit; but these draw ever-fresh nourishment from the prejudiced evaluation of the experiences of life, and they become more and more fixed. … The patients become arrogant and high flown; when they are contradicted, or on other trifling occasions, they fall into measureless fury, which is discharged in outbursts of rank abuse.”In mixed-state insanity, patients “display exalted self-consciousness, are pretentious and high-flown, but by no means of cheerful mood; they rather appear dissatisfied, insufferable, perhaps even a little anxious. They have something to find fault with in everything, feel themselves on every occasion badly treated …“Mood is permanently exalted, careless, confident. The patients have very marked self-confidence, put an extremely high value on their own capabilities and performances, boast with the most obvious exaggeration. They wholly lack understanding for the morbid imperfection of their temperament. Rather they are convinced of their superiority to their surroundings.”Kraepelin calls this a “grumbling mania.”“Toward others they are haughty, positive, irritable, impertinent, stubborn. They show little sympathy with the sorrows of others; they enjoy deriding, teasing, and ill-using those who, they think, are their inferiors. …“An exalted self-consciousness frequently exists. The patient is … cleverer than all other people, understands everything better … they must demand large sums in compensation. … Mood is for the most part excited, irritated, and embittered. …“The patient … brings actions for damages … addresses querulant petitions to the authorities … in which he generally makes use of very violent language … demands the removal and punishment of his opponents and makes claims for compensation. Further, he tries to stigmatize the infamous game of his enemies publicly by means of the newspapers or by broadsheets … He also, perhaps, sets about doing something conspicuous in order to direct attention to his endangered position, causes a street riot …”Kraepelin defines paranoia as a fixed delusion which may include a “morbid interpretation of actual events or by pseudo-memories.”In extreme cases, “the delusion of persecution (causes) patients finally proceed to dangerous attacks on their supposed enemies.”Paranoid maniacs frequently indulge in “exaggerations and distortions.” In their mania they often “invent nicknames,” chortling, perhaps, while at the same time exhibiting “a great emotional irritability. The patient is dissatisfied, intolerant, fault-finding … he becomes pretentious, positive, regardless, impertinent and even rough, when he comes up against opposition to his wishes and inclinations; trifling external occasions may bring about extremely violent outbursts of rage.”In describing paranoiac mania, Kraepelin wrote: “Many patients display a veritable passion for writing, and scrawl over sheets and sheets of paper with disorderly effusions.”In this mania, and he provides examples, many patients descend/ascend into CAPITALIZING without cause. “The handwriting of the patients may at first be quite regular and correct. In consequences of the excitability, however, it usually becomes gradually always larger, more pretentious and more irregular. There is no more consideration for the reader; the letters run through one another; are scribbled; more words are underlined; there are more marks of exclamation …”And what may happen to folks like this?“As everywhere they prove themselves useless, the patients invariably fall into financial difficulties. When their means are exhausted, they begin to borrow, to raise money on credit, to run up bills … to defraud.” Such people, Kraepelin says, often end up as “morbid liars and swindlers.”Kraepelin was a psychiatrist. He had no beefs against his patients; he was trying to help them, to do which, he thought, he had to describe them. He admired many of his patients, who fought, like Quixote, through what, to them, was a dangerous and heroic life.“One patient,” Kraepelin reports, “called himself a ‘magnificent masturbator.’”And that pretty much sums up Donald Trump.(Twelve eminent medical doctors expressed similar concerns in April this year in a statement published in theCongressional Record.)Categories / Op-Ed, PoliticsSubscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads