Paul Ryan is convinced that Donald Trump has a narcissistic personality disorder

[ad_1]

What he did – as documented in the new book “Peril” by authors Bob Woodward and Robert Costa – was both remarkable and revealing.

“Ryan began, on his own, to research how to deal with someone who was amoral and transactional. The exercise at first was difficult. Ryan wanted to call himself a” man of policy “but his madness was not reaches from the fields of Social Security and Medicare to psychiatry.

“Then a wealthy new York doctor and a Republican donation called Ryan and said ‘You have to understand what narcissistic personality disorder is.’ “

The doctor sent a memo to Ryan about “how to best deal with someone with an anti-social personality disorder” and various links to medical journals on the illness. Ryan, Woodward and Costa said, “studied them for weeks, convinced Trump had a personality disorder.” A spokesman for Ryan did not respond to a request for comment.

Ryan concluded that the deal with Trump was not worth it – surprising the world of politics by announcing his retirement in early 2018.

This episode is one in a series on “Peril” that suggests that top Republican leaders, despite insisting all is well with Trump at the top, believe that something could be wrong with the President.

Obviously, Trump has never been diagnosed with any mental illness as far as we know publicly.

But Ryan, worth noting here, is far from the only person convinced that Trump suffered from narcissistic personality disorder. In an essay in June 2016 for The Atlantic, Northwestern University psychology professor Dan P. McAdams diagnosed (from a distance) the former candidate as similar, writing in part:

“People with extreme narcissistic needs want to love themselves, and they desperately want others to love them to somehow admire them, see them as brilliant and powerful and beautiful, even if only to see them, period. the main purpose of life is to promote self -greatness, for all to see. “

And Jennifer Senior, writing in The New York Times in 2019, put it this way:

“A number of Donald Trump’s critics have reached a consensus: We’re governed by someone with a narcissistic personality disorder, almost certainly with malignant diversity, and it’s time to call it by their name.”

According to the DSM-5, the seminal guide to mental illness and disorder, a person with narcissistic personality disorder exhibits “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), in need of admiration, and lack of empathy. ” questions about his mental health and intelligence previously, calling himself a “very stable genius” and even forcing White House doctor Dr. Ronny Jackson to administer a cognitive exam during his annual physical in 2018. Jackson next told reporters that Trump scored well

The debate about what, really, is wrong with Trump – or whatever there is – has long been raging, and this book will only stimulate that debate. But what is clear is that people like Ryan, who has spent many times working closely with Trump, thought something was seriously wrong. That Ryan – and the rest – said nothing to the public and did nothing to stop him from leading Trump to grow bigger and more chaotic, culminating in inciting unrest on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol.

[ad_2]