Dear Signer,

                  I’m working with George Conway’s Anti-Psychopath Political Action Committee. Their mission is to educate undecided voters in swing states about Trump’s dangerous psychopathology through TV advertising, highway billboards, and increased media attention. They plan to put millions of dollars into this campaign. 

One key element will be the letter below, signed by as many mental health professionals as possible. If you are a licensed or retired mental health professional, I’m asking you to let me add your name by emailing me at johndgartner@comcast.net  For once, we CAN make a difference. Hope I can count on you. 

Best,

John Gartner, Ph.D.

A letter from mental health professionals on Trump’s dangerous psychopathology

As mental health professionals, we have an ethical duty to warn the public that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy. His untreatable severe personality disorder — malignant narcissism — makes him deceitful, destructive, deluded and dangerous—in short, grossly unfit for leadership.

Trump exhibits formal symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder, psychopathy (now called anti-social personality disorder), paranoia, and sadism, a toxic combination called malignant narcissism. This psychological type was first identified by Erich Fromm to explain the psychology of history’s truly “evil” dictators, like the one he fled in1933. 

Detractors object that we mental health professionals cannot render such a diagnosis without first examining the patient, citing the “Goldwater Rule.” But since that rule was written, the field has adopted the DSM diagnostic system which relies exclusively on “observable behavioral criteria.” For many years, we’ve all observed Trump’s behavior, thousands of hours of it in fact. We’ve also received numerous first hand reports from those who have worked with him or who know him well, people we call “informants” in psychiatry, who often help us establish a diagnosis. 

For example, to pick one of his disorders, it's not difficult to see Trump meets the behavioral criteria for Anti-social Personality Disorder (one of the components of malignant narcissism): “Failure to conform to social norms and laws,” “repeated lying,” “reckless disregard for the safety of others,” “irritability,” “impulsivity,” “irresponsibility,” and “lack of remorse.” One doesn’t even need to be a clinician, or even hold a college degree, to see that this list describes Trump’s behavior.

Because of their sadism, malignant narcissists perversely revel in their destructive power and enjoy inflicting suffering on the “others” they see as enemies. For example, during the January 6 insurrection, Trump watched the violence he unleashed for three hours on TV, enraged he couldn’t be driven to the Capitol to see the mayhem up-close. Firsthand witnesses have testified he responded with “glee,” watching his favorite parts “over and over” on “rewind.”

To make matters worse, Trump appears to be showing signs of cognitive decline that urgently cry out for a full neurological work-up, including an MRI and neuropsychological testing. These symptoms include: a dramatic decrease in verbal fluency, speaking incoherently, exhibiting frequent phonemic paraphasia, confusing people (not just names), and exhibiting deteriorating motor functioning (including a wide based gait). We suspect the results of such an evaluation (which we will never see) would be disqualifying in and of themselves. Like his malignant narcissism, if Trump does have organically based cognitive decline, that too will only get worse over time. It would grossly degrade his judgment, impulse control, memory, attention, reality testing and capacity to process information, beyond his current low levels, and make the symptoms of his personality disorder worse by a large order of magnitude.

People suffering with mental illness are no more likely to be dangerous than anyone else in the general population. Malignant narcissism is the very rare exception. Without question, malignant narcissists have been history’s most grandiose, paranoid and murderous leaders. Inevitably, they grow out of control and ultimately destroy the nations they lead. 

We are clinical mental health professionals who fear that the public does not fully understand the implications of giving power to someone this profoundly disturbed. Much of our work focuses on helping people realize that a catastrophic outcome they fear is not, in reality, likely. In this case the opposite is true: The American people underestimate the danger posed by installing such a sick man in the highest seat of American power.

As mental health professionals we feel a desperate duty to warn our fellow citizens of this imminent catastrophic public danger, before it’s too late.