Is Bush a Sociopath?

[indigobusiness]

Last night I heard it asserted, in a radio intvw, that Bush was a sociopath (as well as his entire cabal).

While I've always suspected so, I'm no psychatrist/psychologist.

Any informed opinions on this?

[Vincardog]

1. Judging by his actions YES

[murray hill farm]

2. could be...

at the least, i would say he is Borderline personality.

[politicat]

3. He's such a bundle of neurosis, picking one is the hard part.

He displays behaviors of so many that I fear it would take many hours on the couch to figure out which was primary and which were merely comorbid.

Grandiose personality, Borderline Personality, sociopathy, Hyperactivity and Attention Deficit...

I think the only thing he doesn't probably have is an eating disorder, but with his exercise habits, I could even rethink that one.

Pcat (speaking only semi-professionally, since I don't have time to be thorough at the mo'.)

[katinmn]

16. don't forget narcissism

that's another possibility

[Canuckistanian]

23. Yes, definitely narcissistic.

Notice how he has an absolute incapability to admit a mistake, no matter how minor? Or the need to strike back at detractors (usually through outside agents)? Or his stubbornness in persisting with a course of action that is untenable just because it would point out errors in judgement?

All classic signs of extreme narcissism.

[Kahuna]

17. Don't forget paranoia. That would indicate possible schizophrenia

:shrug:

[Botany]

26. Yes, but he is are nut.

Their is so much pathology in his actions that picking one out is too hard.

Send him and the rest of his neo con thugs to Iraq and let them drive the humvees.


:kick:

[skypilot]

4. That reminds me.

I have to go check out that book "Bush on the Couch" by Justin Frank.

[Mend]

20. "Bush on the Couch" is a fantastic book

Dr. Frank says he is a dry or wet drunk, appears on drugs at times, had the neurological problems of chronic alcoholism, has ADHD, dyslexia, can't deal with anxiety, and most importantly, has no empathy and is a megalomaniac with delusions of omnipotence. Great book, I highly recommend it.

[Warpy]

5. He certainly seemed to spend his youth self medicating something

However, the only thing I'd say for certain is that he's showing definite signs of Wernicke Korsakoff syndorme.

[sui generis]

6. sociopath is an older psych term, but . . . .YES!!!

He lacks remorse for his actions. Inability to empathize. No innate sense of right and wrong.

He sleeps soundly while a war he started over oil, ostensibly to overthrow a "monster" who might have killed between 3 and 5 thousand of his own people has cost the people of Iraq well over 100,000 lives, plus the lives and health of tens of thousands of our own children and brothers and sisters in Iraq.

He is a disgusting excuse of a human. If he were a critter I'd have him put to sleep so he woudn't wake up one morning and eat the face off the neighbor's kid.

[hiley]

10. Agree

totally with you.

[indigobusiness]

28. That's what I was thinking. Lack of empathy or remorse.

Inability to accept responsibiliy for specific failures.

Sociopath, psycopath may no be in vogue re: clinical nomenclature, they still have meaning and are catagorically definitive.

Who are the psychos of BushCo?

[Turbineguy]

7. I remember a cartoon

The drawing shows a patient lying on a psychiatrist's couch.

The Doctor is saying:

"My Secretary knows what's wrong with you. You're an asshole!"

[indigobusiness]

29. LOL ...There has never been any doubt of that.

hehee...

Good one.

[signmike]

33. Haha - I remember a cartoon looking over the shrink's shoulder

you see he's written on his note pad "Just plain nuts."

[indigobusiness]

36. Yeah. hee...

remember that. LOL

[Nothing Without Hope]

8. Yes, I believe that he is.

It's why he fails so miserably to try to express compassion and to predict other people's emotional reactions. He hasn't got a clue and has to fake it, follow a script.

BTW, along these lines, did you see the wonderful Pat Oliphant cartoon on Bush's response to the tsunami victims? It's shown and discussed here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2902185

[indigobusiness]

30. Thanks for bringing that cartoon to my attention. I'll repost it here:

[damntexdem]

9. Do you mean a sociopath as opposed to ...

a psychopath?

[whalerider55]

11. People of the Lie

Scott Peck, who wrote The Road Less Traveled, wrote a book based on the idea "what if evil could be diagnosed; what would it look like, and how would it manifest?"

it would look a lot like a personality disorder, like a sociopath.

hands down the scariest book i ever read, and i've read King. Especially for someone with experience in the Mental Health field.

Finally, i think all the sociopaths out there would be very insulted at your theory.

whalerider55

[murray hill farm]

18. an amazing book!

People of the lie!! If you have not read it..get at library...and read it! One of the most informative books on "evil"..and how u can feel it..and most importantly...to trust that feeling when u do feel it...and yes..it is scary!!

[eleny]

12. A friend of his tells the story

As a kid, GW would put firecrackers into frogs and blow them up. And his brother tells how he shot the little siblings in their bare legs with a bb gun and laughed and laughed as they ran away in pain. So, you tell me? Coupled with his never being able to apologize or admit he makes mistakes and allows torture - what would you call a person who can do these things? I think it's sociopathic behavior. Whatever the name - it's dangerous.

[fooj]

14. I see, a spoiled rotten SOB who has gotten away with BS

all of his life...:-(


WHAT ARE THEY HIDING???

[gizmo1979]

13. nope

Too dumb to be a sociopath.

[bigwillq]

15. No. sociopaths are usually very intelligent

And Shrub ain't that

[politicat]

32. he's cunning, but neither educated nor curious.

He doesn't display intelligence, but he's cunning in his ability to manipulate others. Remember how he drove the car through the garage door to emphasize to Our Dear Laura how she was not to criticize him? A purely violent or stupid man with his pathology would have hit her, and had to deal with the consequences of her calling the cops, the domestic violence record, etc.

Driving the car, and doing no damage to her save emotionally shows he had the ability to think through his actions quickly and efficiently, and how to terrorize rather than physically harm.

No wonder Our Lady of Frump is down with the Xanax and the ciggies and has a compulsive cleaning habit. She's self-medicating and trying to clean away the mess that is her life rather than face the fact that she's yoked to a monster.

Pcat

[indigobusiness]

37. Not always,

but often.

[Minstrel Boy]

19. "At the root of Bush's pathology is a deep dissociation."

From an analysis by Paul Levy:


The truth now needs to be uttered. George W. Bush is ill. He has a psycho-spiritual dis-ease of the soul, a sickness that is endemic to our culture and symptomatic of the times we live in. It’s an illness that has been with us since time immemorial. Because it’s an illness that's in the soul of all of humanity, it pervades the field and is in all of us in potential at any moment, which makes it especially hard to diagnose. Bush's malady is quite different from schizophrenia, for example, in which all the different parts of the personality are fragmented and not connected to each other, resulting in a state of internal chaos. As compared to the dis-order of the schizophrenic, Bush can sound quite coherent and can appear like such a "regular," normal guy, which makes the syndrome he is suffering from very hard to recognize. This is because the healthy parts of his personality have been co-opted by the pathological aspect, which drafts them into its service. Because of the way the personality self-organizes an outer display of coherence around a pathogenic core, I would like to name Bush's illness "malignant egophrenic (as compared to schizophrenic) disorder," or "ME disorder," for short. If ME disorder goes unrecognized and is not contained, it can be very destructive, particularly if the person is in a position of power.

In much the same way that a child's psychology cannot be understood without looking at the family system he or she is a part of, George Bush does not exist in isolation. We can view Bush and his entire Administration (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Ashcroft, Powell, Wolfowitz, etc), as well as the corporate, military industrial complex that they are co-dependently enmeshed with, the media that they control, the voters that support them, and ourselves as well, as interconnected parts of a whole system, or a "field." Instead of relating to any part of this field as an isolated entity, it’s important to contemplate the entire interdependent field as the "medium" though which malignant egophrenia manifests and propagates itself. ME disease is a field phenomenon, and needs to be contemplated as such. Bush's sickness is our own.

...

At the root of Bush's pathology is a deep dissociation. Like the terrorists, he has split-off from his own darker half, projecting the shadow "out there," and then tries to destroy this dis-owned shadow. By projecting the shadow onto each other, Bush and the terrorists are each seeing their own shadow reflected in the other. They see each other as criminals, as the incarnation of evil. By projecting the shadow like this, they locate the evil "out there," which insures that they don't have to recognize the evil within themselves. It's interesting to note that the inner meaning of the word mirror is "shadow holder." Ironically, by fighting against their own shadow in this way, they become possessed by the very thing they are trying to destroy, thereby perpetuating a never-ending cycle of violence. To quote C. G. Jung, one of the greatest psychologists of the twentieth century, "The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves."

Symbolically, this is the repetition compulsion of the traumatized soul gone awry, to daemonic proportions, acting itself out on the world stage. To quote noted psychologist Rollo May, the daemonic is "any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person …..the daemonic can be either creative or destructive …..violence is the daemonic gone awry." The disease takes on a certain autonomy and literally possesses the person or group, as it is self-generating, self-perpetuating and self-organizing in nature, like a closed and negative feedback loop. The person who is taken over doesn't suspect a thing as the field secretly conspires and colludes with and enables their psychosis.

http://www.awakeninthedream.com/georgew.html

[indigobusiness]

34. ***SPECTACULAR*** Well done. What an article. WOW

Thanks for that. That was more than I dared hope for. Very insightful.

---Symbolically, this is the repetition compulsion of the traumatized soul gone awry, to daemonic proportions, acting itself out on the world stage. To quote noted psychologist Rollo May, the daemonic is "any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person …..the daemonic can be either creative or destructive …..violence is the daemonic gone awry." The disease takes on a certain autonomy and literally possesses the person or group, as it is self-generating, self-perpetuating and self-organizing in nature, like a closed and negative feedback loop. The person who is taken over doesn't suspect a thing as the field secretly conspires and colludes with and enables their psychosis.---

[Karmadillo]

38. Thank you for posting this. Excellent article.

n/t

[Old Mouse]

21. You wouldn't be able to tell if a sociopath was lying or not

it takes no special observational skills to determine when he is knowingly lying.

[RC]

22. Yes, he is one of the Ice People.

See the February edition of Psychology Today, Pg 72. The ice People. No Conscience, feel no emotions and love no one.

[indigobusiness]

40. I'll look for the article

Do you have a link?

[dreamcollector]

24. I think the whole bunch are malignant narcissists

Except for Ashcroft. I just love his song about the eagle soars tooooo much to be mean about him. Tra la!

[katinmn]

25. That is an image I'd like to have erased from my memory.

:puke:

[tnlefty]

27. Uhhh, so what does that say about the 51%ers?

I no longer buy the "dumbed down by the MSM" or uninformed excuse because when confronted with facts and lots of information the Bush*bots continue to reject it. I realize that some have been affected by the cultish churches that are plentiful in my neck of the woods anyway.

I'm not trying to be humorous. I'd really like to have an idea of whether or not the 51%ers are suffering from some mental disorders of their own.

[indigobusiness]

35. That's what ratchets up the creepiness in all this.

Are we a nation driven my the majority will of a sociopathic constituency. Do the inmates run the asylum?

I know you're not kidding. I'm not either. Our nation is in serious trouble.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

31. YES. Read "Bush On The Couch."

Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060736704/qid=1104880119/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/002-5534701-0990409

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0060736704.01._PIdp-schmooS,TopRight,7,-26_PE37_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Bush Administration policies are not only a "great catastrophe" but the products of a disturbed mind, according to this provocative blend of psychological case-study and partisan polemic. Psychoanalyst Frank sifts through family memoirs, the writings of critics like Al Franken and David Corn and the public record of Bush’s personal idiosyncrasies for clues to the President’s character, interpreting the evidence in the rigidly Freudian framework of child psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. He finds that Bush, psychically scarred by an absentee father and a cold, authoritarian mother, has developed a galloping case of megalomania, characterized by a Manichaean worldview, delusions of persecution and omnipotence and an "anal/sadistic" indifference to others’ pain, with removal from office the only "treatment option." The author’s exegesis of Bush’s personality traits-the drinking problem, the bellicose rhetoric, the verbal flailings and misstatements of fact, the religiosity and exercise routines, the hints of dyslexia and hyperactivity, the youthful cruelty to animals and schoolmates, the smirk-paints an intriguing, if exaggerated and contemptuous, portrait of a possibly troubled public figure. But Frank’s attempts to translate psychoanalysis into political analysis are unconvincing. Indeed, if Bush’s reneging on campaign promises is a form of clinical "sadism," and his budget deficits an "unconscious attack on his own parents," then Karl Rove, the Cabinet, and both houses of Congress belong in group therapy with him.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description:

"I don't spend a lot of time trying to figure me out. ... I'm just not into psychobabble."

-- George W. Bush

For all his simplicity and affability, George W. Bush has remained, to paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill, "a mystery wrapped in an enigma." In Bush on the Couch, Dr. Justin A. Frank, a well-respected Washington, D.C.–based psychoanalyst and professor of psychiatry, unwraps that mystery, assembling a comprehensive psychological profile of President Bush. Using the principles of applied psychoanalysis -- the discipline of psychoanalyzing public and historical figures pioneered by Freud -- Frank fearlessly builds his case ... and reaches conclusions that are at once highly persuasive and deeply disturbing.

Through a close analysis of Bush's public statements and behavior, as well as the historical record provided by journalists, biographers, and those who have known the president well, Frank traces the development of Bush's character from childhood to the present day. Examining closely the role of the president's parents -- especially Barbara Bush, an acknowledged disciplinarian whose own insecurities may have prevented her from adequately nurturing her son -- Frank finds in Bush's childhood the roots of a dramatic psychic split that remains a dominant influence on his adult worldview. Frank argues that this split has inevitably hampered Bush's ability to manage his emotions, charging his psyche with restless anxiety, and conditioning him to view the world in the black-and-white terms that have so evidently shaped his administration.

Among the other subjects Frank explores:

* Bush's false sense of omnipotence, instilled within him during childhood and emboldened by his deep investment in fundamentalist religion

* The president's history of untreated alcohol abuse, and the questions it raises about denial, impairment, and the enabling streak in our culture

* The growing anecdotal evidence that Bush may suffer from dyslexia, ADHD, and other thought disorders

* His comfort living outside the law, defying international law in his presidency as boldly as he once defied DUI statutes and military reporting requirements

* His love-hate relationship with his father, and how it triggered a complex and dangerous mix of feelings including yearning, rivalry, anger, and sadism

* Bush's rigid and simplistic thought patterns, paranoia, and megalomania -- and how they have driven him to invent adversaries so that he can destroy them

At once a compelling portrait of George W. Bush and a damning indictment of his policies, Bush on the Couch sheds startling new light on an administration whose record of violence and cruelty seems increasingly dependent on the unstable psyche of the man at its center. Insightful and accessible, courageous and controversial, Bush on the Couch tackles the question no one seems willing to ask: Is our president psychologically fit to run the country?

[area51]

39. "Is Bush a Sociopath?"

Is the pope Catholic? </rhetorical>