As a retired clinical counselor, wish you could emphasize the "fascination" we have as social creatures when presented with aberrant behavior. Takes awhile for us to process and figure out. Also, our truth bias, again as pro-social creatures, that what we are told is true, and must be "taken in" and processed to determine if actually false. Takes time and effort and is exhausting. Thanks for your courage, commitment and continued work, Bandy.
Maybe one of the many problems ... media (eg George Conway) calls him 'narcissist' as tho public understands that. They don't. Time for MSNBC or CNN at least to focus in the mental health / manipulation issues.
I read TSnyder and RBen-Ghiat. I want to read more of RJLifton.
Are there any experts here that could weigh in on the field of psychohistory and why it has not flourished?
I am mostly self read, so far from any expert, but my common sense tells me that paradigm shifts are more dangerous in a chaotic crisis.
I revere the field of neuroscience, which to me, includes psychiatry and everything regarding mental wellness.
However, psychiatry as a field, has seemingly held many controversies over our history.
I don’t know the answers. But Biden hit it out of the Ballpark. I feel like someone finally addressed my concerns.
Politics seem more powerful than anything else in the world.
Understanding behavior seems to be a tool of politicians to gain power. Keeping that a secret encourages manipulation? Is that correct?
I think we have to start with Brain science 101 in preschool. It’s our most essential organ, why are we not taught how to care for it right alongside reading, writing and arithmetic??
"There is another option ... to embrace a new paradigm that includes mental health, so as to employ real solutions to the problems that gave rise to the Trump phenomenon...."
What is mental health but a life-affirming involvement in the joy of being? Practicing good mental health means re-evaluating our arbiters of truth: science and religion.
We need a science that knows thinking and feeling are both rational psychological functions that allow us to evaluate the rightness and wrongness of what is before us. Today's science views Mass, Movement, and Space as the Trinity of reality. Where is life in this Trinity? Nowhere, which is perhaps why today's science has a hard time grasping mind, consciousness, and mental health.
McGilchrist notes neuroscience indicates one hemisphere of our brain is detail–oriented while the other is whole-oriented, which might be why we use science to focus on the details of what we sense and think about what is around us, calling it “nature,” and why we use religion to focus on the ONENESS of what we feel and intuit about what is within us, calling it “being.”
We look to science to help us get a rational grasp on truth, not realizing how contaminated by Ego it is. Ego causes us to misuse the potential objectivity of science by obscuring what is before us with Ego’s insatiable need for power and certainty for itself. When we consider our planet, we can see our use of the Egoic scientific method has created a reign of terror for everything but our Ego, ignoring perhaps 90% of what is around us and perhaps allowing our science to help humanity commit species suicide.
We look to religion to help us approach the divine (what Ego can't perceive), but it too is contaminated by Ego when it approaches an unknowable wanting power and authority for itself. Evil is the conscious, willful violation of another's appropriate boundary. Religion without Ego knows the unknowable is not an image of Ego's idea of itself.
If we want to get a handle on mental health; if we want objective, accurate arbiters of truth, we identify, see-through, and tame Ego in our professions and ourselves. I know Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, and Taoist practitioners with lifelong experience at taming and even annihilating Ego. Where I haven't found such practitioners is among today's mental health professionals, associations, and schools. Perhaps someone here can tell me where they are because we badly need better paradigms upon which to build our lives.
I'm pretty sure your readers could not agree with you more. Unfortunately, it feels like we are "pissing in the wind" when it comes to comparing the mental fitness of the two candidates, as well as the "mental fitness" of their supporters. The media is not helping. Biden's team of speech writers and advisors are not helping. They need to start.
BEST POLITICAL "STUNT" = Have Biden "challenge" Trump to a SPECT brain scan used for assessing (unofficially) Trump's mental illness & Biden's lack of dementia... ? Nobody in the medical community would be willing to do this BUT it would bring more attention/ publicity to Trump's mental illness...
Averting calamity is certainly needed globally, in a period when diverting calamity consciousness is the dismal defense of calamitous persons caught up in power and in the populace. Reverting to calamitous persons in elections may be ruinous to constituencies spared the full force of continuous calamity in leadership.
I hope mainstream media picks up on your post, Dr. Lee, and I'm so grateful for your work. I agree Trump's mental incapacity is the most pressing issue facing us today. I wrote an essay on this subject in August 2022 that speaks exactly to the media's mishandling of the truth. Perhaps I can post it here if this is allowed: https://deborahsosin.com/blog/f/are-we-ignoring-trumps-mental-unfitness-at-our-peril
I don't think there are easy answers. People specialize in "de-programming" people in cults. I don't think you can reach them by reasoning with them. My view -- start with very simple goals which are not at all controversial like, "we need to work together." The problem, tho, is even that may be a bridge too far. Listen to C-Span callers filled with venom. The channel fosters opposing views but many listeners are closed minded. And people who watch that channel are presumably interested in opposing views. People think in sports-metaphors. Winners and losers. Civics is not like that, but not everyone is into civics.
Underlying Trump's chaos is broken society of economic stagnation, massive inequality and plutocracy. There's a lot of discussion of dictatorial and chaotic character of Trump but most of the damage Trump will do is in economic arena. Poverty, unemployment, starvation will rise and there will be more redistribution of wealth upwards. This will further radicalize society, make it more unstable and uninformed. Poor desperate people lose their thinking faculties and prone to brainwashing more easily. Violence, intolerance, racism will rise in society under Trump's highly foolish policies.
I am not interested in Biden's rhetoric on SOTU, i am more interested in substance. For example, Biden's latest budget proposal on reforming tax system, welfare programs (like Child tax credit to tackle poverty), housing development, plans to bring down drug costs are really substantive policies. Rhetoric of politician isn't worth anything, it's the policies that actually matter.
I am concerned about Biden's age as well. He stutters, talk gibberish and seems lost at times. But his policies are still on right track. Policy ideas are not created from podium and campaign rallies, they are created with competence, experience and consultation with technocratic experts. Word i am getting from people is that Biden's economic team is plenty of smart people and Biden listens to them. That's the reason US has the fastest economic growth and lowest unemployment in decades.
I am very disappointed with Biden's middle east policies as he has allowed a Genocide to take place in Gaza. Biden's foreign policy guys (Sec of State, WH COS etc) are not the best people. But Trump will do worse things in middle east and domestically to Muslims, Mexicans, immigrants in America. Trump really is a chaos candidate. With Trump you will have Genocide in Palestine as well as Ukraine. Plus Muslims and brown people in US maybe rounded up & sent to detention centers. US alliance system will crumble.
Does anyone believe that the "language" that would actually "penetrate the mind or personality" of the "Trump Psychopaths" is actually "Sarcasm?" Not that it would change them or reach them but "wound/weaken" them to incapacitation or at least semi-incapacitation (mentally/emotionally)? And what about Humor and comments with humor? Would that also "break through the barriers in the minds" of the Trump Cult Followers in order to "By-Pass" their warped cult-following mechanisms in their minds? Not including the top crazy followers/psychopaths, but those who are "in denial" about reality/the truth/etc., and Would both humor and/or sarcasm pass through the "blood brain barrier" of Cult Followers....so to speak...? (Sorry obviously I'm not trained in psychiatry...and I'm bastardizing/mis-using terminology, but you can hopefully see what I'm getting at.... :) )
"All wars, be it World Wars or political wars... begin not on any far off, smoke-filled 'Battlefield' but in a place called 'Family' inside a dwelling called 'Home...'" Just ask Aloise Hitler... Maybe we should have commercials running before Nov. 7th? Like: "Psychopathy! It's what's for dinner! (If you eat at Mara-Lago...)" (then explain the symptoms of psychopathy/pathological world "leaders" & what all those historical "Killer Gladiators/Psychopaths/Blood-Lusting Emperors/Kings & Other Monsters had in common... Monsters like Trump have always had the advantage of destruction/annihilating the innocent & the true Humanitarians because the psycho/monsters are willing to destroying everything & everybody to get what they want & what they get is NEVER enough so they have no "Off/Stop Button" (unless it gets stopped by those of us who are horrified at "fighting/shooting back.") What other choice is there but to hold our breath, pinch our noses closed; ask for forgiveness of the innocent/collateral damaged while doing "battle" in whatever form that might be against the "Blood Lusting Gladiators/Kings of Psychopathy?" I vote for the mental illness commercials about Mara-Lago...
"MENTAL ILLNESS OF OUR POLITICAL LEADERS..." a sponsored by the average American who donates $$$ to start the "Marathon of Psychiatric Truth" = We The People..." deserve... at the very least... political leaders who are sane!!! (Or at least semi-sane!) per Personality Disordered... This Hail Mary would at least get political attention; prove not be "connected" as a "political stunt" by Biden; explain the reality of Trump's dangerous brain (connected to his 91 indictments) by going into his past/family background at a psychiatric/neuro-science level... KAH-BOOM! A wake up call to those minds who are still "reachable" as opposed to those who are equal to or even worse than Trump's brain & immoral character... like the "Plague Boys" -- "Quack-Anon" -- "Oaf Keepers!" & "Gun Psychopathy Diseased" & political satanic morons like "Marjorie Taylor-Gang-Greene" who (on video) abuses Parkland School Shooting Victims at the Capitol... :(
As a retired clinical counselor, wish you could emphasize the "fascination" we have as social creatures when presented with aberrant behavior. Takes awhile for us to process and figure out. Also, our truth bias, again as pro-social creatures, that what we are told is true, and must be "taken in" and processed to determine if actually false. Takes time and effort and is exhausting. Thanks for your courage, commitment and continued work, Bandy.
Brilliant. Strong piece.
Maybe one of the many problems ... media (eg George Conway) calls him 'narcissist' as tho public understands that. They don't. Time for MSNBC or CNN at least to focus in the mental health / manipulation issues.
I read TSnyder and RBen-Ghiat. I want to read more of RJLifton.
Are there any experts here that could weigh in on the field of psychohistory and why it has not flourished?
I am mostly self read, so far from any expert, but my common sense tells me that paradigm shifts are more dangerous in a chaotic crisis.
I revere the field of neuroscience, which to me, includes psychiatry and everything regarding mental wellness.
However, psychiatry as a field, has seemingly held many controversies over our history.
I don’t know the answers. But Biden hit it out of the Ballpark. I feel like someone finally addressed my concerns.
Politics seem more powerful than anything else in the world.
Understanding behavior seems to be a tool of politicians to gain power. Keeping that a secret encourages manipulation? Is that correct?
I think we have to start with Brain science 101 in preschool. It’s our most essential organ, why are we not taught how to care for it right alongside reading, writing and arithmetic??
"There is another option ... to embrace a new paradigm that includes mental health, so as to employ real solutions to the problems that gave rise to the Trump phenomenon...."
What is mental health but a life-affirming involvement in the joy of being? Practicing good mental health means re-evaluating our arbiters of truth: science and religion.
We need a science that knows thinking and feeling are both rational psychological functions that allow us to evaluate the rightness and wrongness of what is before us. Today's science views Mass, Movement, and Space as the Trinity of reality. Where is life in this Trinity? Nowhere, which is perhaps why today's science has a hard time grasping mind, consciousness, and mental health.
McGilchrist notes neuroscience indicates one hemisphere of our brain is detail–oriented while the other is whole-oriented, which might be why we use science to focus on the details of what we sense and think about what is around us, calling it “nature,” and why we use religion to focus on the ONENESS of what we feel and intuit about what is within us, calling it “being.”
We look to science to help us get a rational grasp on truth, not realizing how contaminated by Ego it is. Ego causes us to misuse the potential objectivity of science by obscuring what is before us with Ego’s insatiable need for power and certainty for itself. When we consider our planet, we can see our use of the Egoic scientific method has created a reign of terror for everything but our Ego, ignoring perhaps 90% of what is around us and perhaps allowing our science to help humanity commit species suicide.
We look to religion to help us approach the divine (what Ego can't perceive), but it too is contaminated by Ego when it approaches an unknowable wanting power and authority for itself. Evil is the conscious, willful violation of another's appropriate boundary. Religion without Ego knows the unknowable is not an image of Ego's idea of itself.
If we want to get a handle on mental health; if we want objective, accurate arbiters of truth, we identify, see-through, and tame Ego in our professions and ourselves. I know Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, and Taoist practitioners with lifelong experience at taming and even annihilating Ego. Where I haven't found such practitioners is among today's mental health professionals, associations, and schools. Perhaps someone here can tell me where they are because we badly need better paradigms upon which to build our lives.
I'm pretty sure your readers could not agree with you more. Unfortunately, it feels like we are "pissing in the wind" when it comes to comparing the mental fitness of the two candidates, as well as the "mental fitness" of their supporters. The media is not helping. Biden's team of speech writers and advisors are not helping. They need to start.
Bandy, is it possible we are also seeing signs of stage 4 syphilis? Bleeding hands (numbness), tip of nose degrading, increasing mental disorder?
BEST POLITICAL "STUNT" = Have Biden "challenge" Trump to a SPECT brain scan used for assessing (unofficially) Trump's mental illness & Biden's lack of dementia... ? Nobody in the medical community would be willing to do this BUT it would bring more attention/ publicity to Trump's mental illness...
Averting calamity is certainly needed globally, in a period when diverting calamity consciousness is the dismal defense of calamitous persons caught up in power and in the populace. Reverting to calamitous persons in elections may be ruinous to constituencies spared the full force of continuous calamity in leadership.
I hope mainstream media picks up on your post, Dr. Lee, and I'm so grateful for your work. I agree Trump's mental incapacity is the most pressing issue facing us today. I wrote an essay on this subject in August 2022 that speaks exactly to the media's mishandling of the truth. Perhaps I can post it here if this is allowed: https://deborahsosin.com/blog/f/are-we-ignoring-trumps-mental-unfitness-at-our-peril
Dear Bandy, I continue to support all your efforts to speak truth to justice and educate the public about critical issues. Warm regards, Lynn
I don't think there are easy answers. People specialize in "de-programming" people in cults. I don't think you can reach them by reasoning with them. My view -- start with very simple goals which are not at all controversial like, "we need to work together." The problem, tho, is even that may be a bridge too far. Listen to C-Span callers filled with venom. The channel fosters opposing views but many listeners are closed minded. And people who watch that channel are presumably interested in opposing views. People think in sports-metaphors. Winners and losers. Civics is not like that, but not everyone is into civics.
Underlying Trump's chaos is broken society of economic stagnation, massive inequality and plutocracy. There's a lot of discussion of dictatorial and chaotic character of Trump but most of the damage Trump will do is in economic arena. Poverty, unemployment, starvation will rise and there will be more redistribution of wealth upwards. This will further radicalize society, make it more unstable and uninformed. Poor desperate people lose their thinking faculties and prone to brainwashing more easily. Violence, intolerance, racism will rise in society under Trump's highly foolish policies.
I am not interested in Biden's rhetoric on SOTU, i am more interested in substance. For example, Biden's latest budget proposal on reforming tax system, welfare programs (like Child tax credit to tackle poverty), housing development, plans to bring down drug costs are really substantive policies. Rhetoric of politician isn't worth anything, it's the policies that actually matter.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/bidens-2024-us-government-budget-is-also-campaign-pitch-2024-03-11/
I am concerned about Biden's age as well. He stutters, talk gibberish and seems lost at times. But his policies are still on right track. Policy ideas are not created from podium and campaign rallies, they are created with competence, experience and consultation with technocratic experts. Word i am getting from people is that Biden's economic team is plenty of smart people and Biden listens to them. That's the reason US has the fastest economic growth and lowest unemployment in decades.
I am very disappointed with Biden's middle east policies as he has allowed a Genocide to take place in Gaza. Biden's foreign policy guys (Sec of State, WH COS etc) are not the best people. But Trump will do worse things in middle east and domestically to Muslims, Mexicans, immigrants in America. Trump really is a chaos candidate. With Trump you will have Genocide in Palestine as well as Ukraine. Plus Muslims and brown people in US maybe rounded up & sent to detention centers. US alliance system will crumble.
Does anyone believe that the "language" that would actually "penetrate the mind or personality" of the "Trump Psychopaths" is actually "Sarcasm?" Not that it would change them or reach them but "wound/weaken" them to incapacitation or at least semi-incapacitation (mentally/emotionally)? And what about Humor and comments with humor? Would that also "break through the barriers in the minds" of the Trump Cult Followers in order to "By-Pass" their warped cult-following mechanisms in their minds? Not including the top crazy followers/psychopaths, but those who are "in denial" about reality/the truth/etc., and Would both humor and/or sarcasm pass through the "blood brain barrier" of Cult Followers....so to speak...? (Sorry obviously I'm not trained in psychiatry...and I'm bastardizing/mis-using terminology, but you can hopefully see what I'm getting at.... :) )
"All wars, be it World Wars or political wars... begin not on any far off, smoke-filled 'Battlefield' but in a place called 'Family' inside a dwelling called 'Home...'" Just ask Aloise Hitler... Maybe we should have commercials running before Nov. 7th? Like: "Psychopathy! It's what's for dinner! (If you eat at Mara-Lago...)" (then explain the symptoms of psychopathy/pathological world "leaders" & what all those historical "Killer Gladiators/Psychopaths/Blood-Lusting Emperors/Kings & Other Monsters had in common... Monsters like Trump have always had the advantage of destruction/annihilating the innocent & the true Humanitarians because the psycho/monsters are willing to destroying everything & everybody to get what they want & what they get is NEVER enough so they have no "Off/Stop Button" (unless it gets stopped by those of us who are horrified at "fighting/shooting back.") What other choice is there but to hold our breath, pinch our noses closed; ask for forgiveness of the innocent/collateral damaged while doing "battle" in whatever form that might be against the "Blood Lusting Gladiators/Kings of Psychopathy?" I vote for the mental illness commercials about Mara-Lago...
"MENTAL ILLNESS OF OUR POLITICAL LEADERS..." a sponsored by the average American who donates $$$ to start the "Marathon of Psychiatric Truth" = We The People..." deserve... at the very least... political leaders who are sane!!! (Or at least semi-sane!) per Personality Disordered... This Hail Mary would at least get political attention; prove not be "connected" as a "political stunt" by Biden; explain the reality of Trump's dangerous brain (connected to his 91 indictments) by going into his past/family background at a psychiatric/neuro-science level... KAH-BOOM! A wake up call to those minds who are still "reachable" as opposed to those who are equal to or even worse than Trump's brain & immoral character... like the "Plague Boys" -- "Quack-Anon" -- "Oaf Keepers!" & "Gun Psychopathy Diseased" & political satanic morons like "Marjorie Taylor-Gang-Greene" who (on video) abuses Parkland School Shooting Victims at the Capitol... :(