Last year, psychologist John Gartner, a former assistant professor at the Hopkins School of Medicine, made national news after declaring that U.S. President Donald Trump was mentally unfit for office due to malignant narcissism and paranoid delusions.
Gartner, who has authored books such as In Search of Bill Clinton: A Psychological Biography and The Hypomanic Edge, is the leader of an organization of psychologists called Duty to Warn, which aims to apply the 25th Amendment to Trump to examine his fitness for office.
The 25th Amendment lays out the steps needed to be taken by the Vice President and “such other body as Congress may by law provide” to remove the President from office whenever he “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
As of Wednesday, Duty to Warn has gathered over 70,000 signatures on a petition the group distributed last year, demanding that Trump be removed from office due to mental unfitness.
In January, Trump requested and passed the Montreal Cognitive Assessment with full marks, according to White House physician Ronny Jackson. Gartner, however, says the Montreal test is only effective for testing severe dementia and does not test higher brain functions.
He believes that Trump requires more extensive psychological screening and believes Trump has characteristics associated with cognitive decline.
“The best way to see if someone is declining is to look at their baseline, but if you look at 10 years ago, he speaks more eloquently, he uses more superlatives, he speaks in full sentences,” Gartner said. “We have someone inclined by personality toward impulsive behavior, we have someone whose judgement and impulse control is being impaired.”
While Gartner has never examined Trump’s mental condition in person, he believes he can diagnose him via statements of Trump’s advisors and his public statements. This defies the American Psychological Association’s Goldwater rule, which prohibits mental health professionals from making diagnoses without an in-person psychological interview.
Gartner emphasized that the Goldwater Rule was a principle, rather than an actual rule or law. He also questioned the accuracy of in-person interviews, noting that the subject could lie.
“The insistence on a psychiatric interview is kind of a fetish,” he said. “There’s no way here to do an interview. We’re not allowed to see him afar, or from close. We’re supposed to act like his mental health is unknowable, like God. What if the president has gross signs of mental instability, what are we supposed to do?”
Gartner believes that Trump poses a danger to the public and that he has a duty to warn others about his instability using his professional knowledge. Alongside several other distinguished psychologists, Gartner has contributed his analyses in a book called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.
Gartner outlined four components to what he called Trump’s ‘psychological unfitness’: malignant narcissism, paranoia, antisocial disorder and sadism.
“A lot of political leaders have narcissism,” Gartner said. “But malignant narcissism includes paranoia, which Donald Trump presents due to the demonization of minorities and the press.”
He explained that malignant narcissism is a condition that is similar to psychosis, a disorder where thoughts are impaired and the person loses touch with reality. Gartner is concerned about the President’s judgement in a significant crisis, noting that malignant narcissism grows worse with power.
“If he is a malignant narcissist, his narcissism is inflamed, and his paranoia also becomes inflamed,” Gartner said. “On the first day of his presidency, he claimed that his crowd size was the biggest ever, he said that Barack Obama was bugging his office and was afraid of someone poisoning his food. He has classic grandiose and paranoid delusions.”
Presidents have often been subject to psychological scrutiny by the public, from observations that Abraham Lincoln had “melancholy” or depression as it is known today to observations that Bill Clinton was a hypomanic. Scrutiny of the mental and physical health of the 2016 presidential candidates was intense throughout the campaign in claims of Hillary Clinton’s failing health and Donald Trump’s temperamental unfitness for office.
Sophomore Julian Jackson never thought that the psychological profile of a president was important before Trump’s presidency and he thinks that it explains his controversial beliefs.
“He has radical, outlier beliefs. I think people are getting used to his presidency,” he said. “If that’s the norm, that’s a bad direction for the country to take.”
On the other hand, senior Monica Rodriguez believes that while Trump lacks the political background to be president, diagnosing Trump as mentally ill perpetuates stigma about mental illness.
“Donald Trump is a shitty person, but that doesn’t mean he’s psychologically unstable,” Rodriguez said. “Saying that mental illness defines a person and makes them ineligible for something, that’s ridiculous. I don’t think that mental illness should be defined that way. I think that’s something someone is struggling against.”
Junior Richard De Los Santos Abreu, a neuroscience and psychology double major, says that the President’s “unreasonable, illogical” statements make him question Trump’s mental fitness.
“You can’t just say that based on the way he acts, we can prescribe medication,” he said. “But there are some behaviors that suggest diseases like repetitive thoughts and impromptu actions.”
