Personalities

President Trump is a Psychopath: See How Dr. Greenwood Proves It!

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Back on February 9, 2016, I posted an article entitled “Did You Know?  Are you a psychopath?” with  http://www.msn.com/en-us/health/wellness/7-facts-about-psychopaths-you-didn’t-know-before as a source.

However, on Twitter June 27, 2020, I found a reference to another article about psychopathy which was more detailed than the one I found previously on MSN.   I followed the source and made a copy of the whole 51-page article from https://medium.com/@vgwcct/a-duty-to-differentially-diagnose-the-validity-underpinning-the-diagnosis-of-the-president.    “A Duty to Differentially Diagnose:  The Validity Underpinning the Diagnosis of the President:  The Substance Behind the Assertion the President has a Serious Psychiatric Condition”.

The article/thesis was written by Vincent Greenwood, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Washington Center for Cognitive Therapy, washingtoncenterforcognitivetherapy.com.   It took me a few days to get through it because I wanted to understand his viewpoint of us not judging President Donald J. Trump who has a mental illness.  Greenwood writes in layman terms so that anyone can understand what he is trying to say. 

He began with two patients going through stress because it was 2020.   “The election year was upon us and the stakes were existential-level profound…more like something precious and vital to their core was under siege…the soul of the country…”

Basically the 45th President “has a disorder with no cure”.   “If you are the psychopath, you need to have a protective concern for all that cross your path, but unfortunately the president is incapable of developing that concern.   It is easy to be judgmental when the diagnostic signs of an illness are traits like constant lying, callousness, and remorselessness.”

“Do we have agency over our impulses and behavior, or are they determined by forces beyond our control (the venerable free will vs. determinism debate)?  What is our moral duty as a society if we had the power to predict that, some among us, are destined to inflict serious harm on our fellow citizens?   How do we balance the civil liberties of a potential perpetrator with the safety of the community?”

Dr. Greenwood answers these questions and more.   He gives a brief history starting with the development of psychiatry as a medical specialty back in 1844.   Reliability and validity were established by the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I) first edition 1952, 1968’s DSM-II, 1980’s DSM-III (the differences between editions were the number of diagnoses as they increased).

Next came the checklist for certain personality disorders:   The Hare Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (PCL-R) which measures the degree of psychopathy (1980 and revised 1991).   There are 20 items for which the examiner is asked to provide a rating of 0, 1, or 2 and the psychopath scores at least 25 or more on the above list of traits. 

“We don’t appreciate how many psychopaths, these dangerous predators [who score 30] are among us because some of the key traits (superficial charm, an ability to con others, lying) are designed to keep the condition hidden from others.”   Dr. Greenwood also discusses the difference between psychopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD) which is a formal diagnosis in DSM-V.

He used examples we could relate to like the “Pre-Cogs” in the movie Minority Report (2002) with Tom Cruise in which crime was reduced to zero in Washington, D.C. because people were arrested before they committed the crime.  The memories of the Pre-Cogs were hacked just as any communication today can be and Tom Cruise’s character was sought for a murder he had not thought of beforehand.

This history of psychopathy was eye-opening and so interesting that I had to read it all.  Dr. Greenwood proves his point!

Written by Rosa L. Griffin 

Review of book, Sula, by Toni Morrison

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I have finally read a book by Toni Morrison.    It was not hard to read, and she has a multitude of interesting characters to dig into.   The way she tells the story will have you hypnotized and entertained.   Her book is realistic about an isolated black town in Ohio which could still exist today.   The town was built upon a literally rocky hill called the Bottom that could not guarantee any crops—not like the fertile valley below in which white people lived.

Her book, Sula, begins with a black veteran of World War I who is released from a military hospital.  The doctors fixed his physical wounds, but not his mental wounds from seeing a fellow soldier’s face be blown off in front of him.   We used to call that condition shell-shocked when I was growing up, but now it’s called PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and is treatable.   His character, Shadrack, plays a role throughout the book, especially in establishing an annual National Suicide Day which people’s lives revolve around like it’s an official holiday.

There are various people with various issues in this small segregated town uphill from wealthier white Medallion City below.   As in all groups, there are good and bad people and others who are a little of both.   It is the story of two families:   Eva’s family that gave birth to Nel and Cecile Sabat’s family that gave birth to Sula.

Eva married an unfaithful philandering man who left her to feed 3 children in the dead of winter.  And, since there was no aid to help her, she had to depend on her neighbors’ help to keep her children alive until she could find some income.    She ended up leaving her children with a neighbor temporarily (10 months) until she found income as a result of a loss of one leg.    Eva was able to secure her family’s future by having a house built in which she could have paying boarders while restricting herself to the fourth floor.  

Hannah, her oldest daughter, a free spirit who kept Eva’s house in the form of cooking and cleaning and taking care of her own daughter, Sula, was known for having sex with every man in town—married and unmarried, but she never took ownership of the men which pleased their spouses.   Eva’s young son, Plum, went away and came back a cocaine addict.

Cecile Sabat had a daughter, Rochelle, who became a prostitute in a house of ill repute, and had one daughter, Helene, who her grandmother Cecile got as far away from Helene’s mother as she could.   Helene ended up marrying an older man, Henry, who she seldom saw because he was a merchant marine.   Henry treated Helene well and gave her what he could.   She was content to have one child, Nel.

Nel ended up being friends with Sula as a child.  Sula caused a little boy to drown while she and Nel watched.  They got away with that crime.    When Sula left town, Nel was despondent, but eventually got married.

However, when Sula returned to town, she had the same reputation as her mother Hannah except Sula, instead of tossing the men back, she possessed them so much that they didn’t want to go back to their wives after she ditched them.   The townswomen hated her for it because they lost their husbands when Sula didn’t want them anymore.   This was Sula’s attempt to feel love.

Sula was a sociopath and psychopath to me, but today it’s called antisocial personality disorder.   According to WebMD, she had a “poor inner sense of right and wrong” nor could she “seem to understand or share another person’s feelings”.   Sula had no conscience much like a psychopath would and a weak conscience like a sociopath.   Both lack empathy to know how another person feels.

Sula used her beautiful façade to attract men just as a flower attracts bees.   She was even found by her friend Nel having sex with Nel’s husband in Nel’s house which was the death of their friendship, and her husband left Nel just as the other husbands left their wives because of Sula’s rejections.   She told Nel that she didn’t think Nel would mind if Sula had sex with Nel’s husband.   I rest my case.

However, when Sula finally found a man she could love, I believe she thought she had a lot in common with him.   But, as soon as he found out she was in love with him, he fled the town just as she would have.   I really enjoyed the book.   There was never a dull moment in the Bottom.

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

“56 Ending or Canceled TV Shows for 2019-20 season”, www.tvseriesfinale.com

Miriam Margolyes; Josefina López

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I watched a compilation of the Graham Norton show online and fell in love with his very humorous show.   On one such compilation, Miriam Margolyes had been a frequent guest on his show and got along very well with his diverse guests.

Miriam Margolyes is an Australian-British actress and voice artist.  She was awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) in dramatic arts.

The first time I saw her was as an instructor, Professor Sprout, in the Harry Potter movies.   The next time I saw her she was portraying Miss Fisher’s snobby, prudish, bossy aunt, Prudence Elizabeth Stanley, in the Australian television series, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. 

Talk about playing against type—she is nothing like the part she was playing on that show.   She has a great sense of humor and great timing with her jokes.  Miriam had every guest cracking up in each episode of Graham’s show in which she appeared.  Will.i.am, an American rapper, was one of them.   Her appearances on Graham’s show have made me one of his fans.   I’ll have to start watching his show.

Real Women Have Curves

I want to look into this comedy, Real Women Have Curves, by Josefina López.   Josefina is a Chicana playwright.   Her play about Hispanic female workers has been made into a movie for which she is also co-author of the screenplay.

Sources:

Wikipedia

http://www.miriammargolyes.com

http://www.josefinalopez.co/index.html

twitter.com/grahnort   Graham Norton is an Irish television and radio presenter, comedian, actor and author based in the United Kingdom

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

 

Review of movie Leave Her to Heaven, based on a book by Ben Ames Williams

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Here’s another example of a fictional psychopath in the movie “Leave Her to Heaven” (1945) which was Fox’s highest-grossing film of the 1940’s.

The movie is about a beautiful socialite Ellen Behrendt (played by Gene Tierney, nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award).   Ellen is the former fiancé of the recently elected county district attorney, Russell Quinton (played by Vincent Price).  When she meets Richard, she quits Russell without any explanation.

Novelist Richard Harland (played by Cornel Wilde) is invited to her parents’ house for dinner.   Ellen leaves their house for 12 hours until Richard comes looking for her.  A clue to her personality, her father refused to go looking for her.  Unfortunately, Richard marries Ellen and becomes the male in her life who must give his full attention to her at all times after her father’s death.

Husband Richard soon realizes that Ellen is jealous of his writing, his adopted sister-in-law, his brother—anything or anyone that takes attention away from her.  Unfortunately, Richard was too gullible to see that his wife was dangerous until she herself told him so.

Ellen’s character fits the characteristics of a psychopath.  She possesses “a lack of empathy and feeling for others, selfishness, lack of guilt, and a superficial charm that manifests exclusively to manipulate others”. (See my essay, “Are You a Psychopath?” published in WordPress).  But, the romance changes into a horror movie when Ellen takes it to the dark side of psychopathy by drowning her husband’s disabled brother Danny (played by Darryl Hickman) in the lake, killing their unborn child, and committing suicide to frame her husband and adopted sister, Ruth (played by Jeanne Crain).

The most unbelievable part (Oh, forgive them Perry Mason) is the laughable trial scene highlighting Vincent Price.  Vincent Price’s prosecutor/anguished boyfriend as well as Richard’s defense lawyer/friend, Glen Robie (played by Ray Collins) were the worst lawyers.   Ray Collins was cheated out of the role he could have played.  His character Robie and the judge were asleep at the wheel.

The prosecutor badgered the husband unendingly without one objection from Richard’s lawyer/friend for the last third of the movie.  The prosecutor should have recused himself from this case because of a conflict of interest and lack of impartiality, knowing his romantic background with Ellen before her marriage to Richard.   I guess the filmmakers wanted to create more horror by adding Vincent Price to the horror abounding in the movie.

Normally, I stop watching a movie that loses its senses which this movie did by then.   But I had to see what was so Oscar-worthy.   Gene Tierney’s performance was Oscar-worthy.  She made me believe she was a killer.   However, Cornel Wilde wasn’t given much to work with in this part.  His character was clueless most of the movie as people can be when they are in love.  He sat still and looked handsome.

The other thing that I didn’t like about the movie was the title, “Leave Her to Heaven”, because it implied that Ellen should go to heaven because she was so good.  But, the book author, Ben Ames Williams, drew the title from Shakespeare’s quote in Hamlet, “leave her to heaven, and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge to prick and sting her.”  The title should have been: “Send her straight to Hell!”

This was the second movie in which I saw Gene Tierney as a murderous psychopath, but in the movie, “Razor’s Edge”, she killed people emotionally, not physically.   Otherwise, she was usually the epitome of innocence in her film roles.

Sources:  Wikipedia, IMDb.com

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

 

 

 

Did You Know?   Are You a Psychopath?

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When you think of psychopaths, who do you think of?

Ted Bundy, Hannibal Lecter (movie), Dexter (tv show)?

But, according to MSN’s online article, “7 facts about psychopaths you didn’t know before,” psychopaths are people who possess “a lack of empathy and feeling for others, selfishness, lack of guilt, and a superficial charm that manifests exclusively to manipulate others”.

A few TV characters come to mind:   Jim Parsons’ character, Sheldon, on the Big Bang Theory; Martin Clunes’ character on public TV, Martin Ellingham, on Doc Martin; David Mann’s character, Mr. Brown, on Meet the Browns; Tony Shaloub’s character, Adrian Monk, on Monk; Benedict Cumberbatch’s character, Sherlock Holmes, on Sherlock; Jamie Dornan’s character, Christian Grey, in the movie, 50 Shades of Grey, etc.

“Psychopathy is not a psychiatric diagnosis—not a recognized psychiatric or psychological disorder.”

“Psychopathy is dimensional in nature—spectrum between minor, moderate and severe.”

“Psychopaths and sociopaths are not the same.    The difference lies in having a conscience which a psychopath does not have, but does have the ability to blend in.”

“Psychopaths aren’t always violent.    Most rely on their nature and ability to charm for other things like the business world.”

“…But they are overrepresented in prison.    50 to 80 percent of prisoners meet criteria for antisocial personality disorder.”

“Female and male psychopaths may be very different.   Females may express their psychopathy through behaviors that are often mistaken for other mental illnesses”.

“The Amygdala may play a significant role in psychopathic tendencies.      “Associated with emotional reactions, decision-making, and fear…having reduced integrity or function.”

http://www.msn.com/en-us/health/wellness/7-facts-about-psychopaths-you-didn’t-know-before/ar-CCeVsV?li-AAa0dzB&OCID-DELLDHP#page=8

Another example is the fictional Batman.

“He has no superpowers but has psychopathic tendencies.  His genuine need to save the citizens of Gotham keeps him from having an outright case of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), the diagnosable condition most associated with sociopathy.”

Batman:  Portrait of a Psychopath, https://www.fandom.com>articles, January 9, 2017

Excerpts submitted by Rosa L. Griffin