"Malignant Narcissism"

My first post on this blog ended with a reference to Trump's narcissism. I'm going to comment a little further on this as I just read a brief article about Dr. John D. Gartner breaking the APA code of ethics and offering a public diagnosis of Trump without having evaluated him. His conclusion: Trump suffers from "malignant narcissism." He wrote that "Donald Trump is dangerously mentally ill and temperamentally incapable of being president." (Gartner is in private practice as a psychotherapist but also teaches psychiatric residents at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.) I was not familiar with this exact term, but I was happy to see it. For about a year I've been referring to Trump as a "malevolent narcissist." It is hard to imagine that Gartner did not mediate at length about his decision to break his profession's code of ethics. He will be harshly criticized, both from the political right and from his peers. At the moment I'm not so interested in the ethical debate. The deed is done and no doubt the CIA has taken notice. Gartner can expect to hear from them very shortly. The national security apparatus will not ignore this. Maybe his diagnosis is wrong. Maybe. But the public display of symptoms is occurring on an almost daily basis. He whines, he lashes out, he self-congratulates... If high ranking officials in the security apparatus conclude that Gartner has made a reasonable diagnosis, what next? Perhaps leaders in Congress will get the message to take it seriously. (I actually don't see that as likely to happen. At least for now.) Trump himself will see this news of course. And he will rage. Unless Bannon or someone else close can convince him to keep quiet, he will call Gartner a loser. A tricky proposition, even trickier than disparaging major media outlets or highly regarded figures in the entertainment world. But Trump could easily play this as more evidence that the "liberal elites" are out to get him and that Johns Hopkins School of Medicine is just another bastion of the left. Based on actions taken in his first week in office, I do believe the person currently in occupying the oval office is dangerously mentally ill. Yes, it is frightening.