Speculating on the various types of mental illnesses that Trump may suffer from is a common pastime these days. For example, a petition intended for mental health professionals stated the following:
We, the undersigned mental health professionals (please state your degree), believe in our professional judgment that Donald Trump manifests a serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of President of the United States.
Said mental illness is specifically “Malignant Narcissism” according to the petition’s author Dr. John Gartner, a specialist in personality disorders and depression.
Dr. Gartner states that the disorder has four toxic components: narcissism, paranoia, anti-social personality disorder, and sadism. Does that sound like Trump? More than a few would probably say unequivocally yes.
But Dr. Allen Frances, who wrote the clinical criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder and was the chair of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) IV Task Force stated the following recently (emphasis added):
It’s an insult to people who have real mental illness to be lumped with Trump. Most people with mental illness are well-meaning, well-mannered and well-behaved. And Trump is none of these. Trump is bad, not mad. And when bad people are labelled mentally ill, it stigmatizes mental illness.
He goes on to say (emphasis added):
In order to qualify for a mental disorder you not only have to have the personality features, you also have to have clinically significant distress or impairment caused by them. Trump causes distress, but there is no evidence that he experiences it. And instead of being impaired by his narcissistic behavior, he is rewarded for it, to the extent of being elected president of the United States.
In other words, he causes chaos and loves it. He frequently makes claims that cannot be substantiated and doesn’t care in the least about it. He attacks the press and the judiciary. But none of that makes him mad, just bad. And when you’re the President of the United States, that’s really bad.
On CNN today, Dr. Frances stated that the solution to Trump is political not psychological.
I’m obviously no mental health expert, but I do know that not being able to empathize with others is considered a mental disorder. I agree that Trump chooses most of his behavior, and since he’s rewarded for those choices, he’s not motivated to change. I don’t think that fact means that he can’t also have an underlying mental illness. His “badness” as you say, may make it so he doesn’t care that he’s a danger to society and will therefore never seek help.
The main point was that whether he has a mental disease or not, therapists should not be making public diagnoses without actual examination which happened in this case. Dr. Frances also stated that for there to be a mental disorder, there must be “clinically significant distress or impairment”. Trump clearly does not exhibit that behavior. He also said that Trump is “bad not mad”. In fairness, you could argue that he also made a public diagnoses.