Yes, I’m not a psychologist, but as a Family Practitioner in rural areas, I’ve diagnosed and treated my share of mental illnesses in my patients. So I am appalled at the press swallowing the spin that Governor Blagojevich’s desire for money/bribes is a “mental illness”.
Gov. Rod Blagojevich knew for months he was under investigation, so why was he caught on tape making so many incriminating statements? Some are wondering if there’s something wrong with his mental acuity.
Mental acuity? Do you mean his IQ (mental retardation), his judgement (frontal lobe syndrome due to an injury) or his cognitive ability (early Alzheimer’s disease)?
The reporter then quotes an “expert”:
Dr. Daniela Schreirer is a forensic psychologist at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology and she does not see any sign of mental illness in the public Blagojevich, but believes he does have sociopathic traits.
Oh, he has “sociopathic traits”. A sociopath is an inborn tendency to lack a conscience. They can lie, cheat, use drugs, harm someone, and manipulate others. A Wikipedia article says that the latest term for this type of person is anti social personality disorder, and lists the personality traits:
Three or more of the following are required:[1]
- Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;
- Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;
- Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;
- Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;
- Reckless disregard for safety of self or others;
- Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;
- Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.
Heh. That sounds like half the politicians in Washington.
Yet even a sociopath would not go around offering a Senate seat for money on the telephone if he knew that the Feds were watching him closely.
Another CBS2 reporter wonders if Blagojevich’s beautiful hair is a symbol of mental illness:
Gov. Blagojevich’s glossy locks — perfectly sculpted in rain or snow — may be an indication of a sickness beneath his scalp, said one local psychologist….
Several psychologists interviewed one day after the governor’s arrest agreed that he might be suffering from an affliction known as narcissistic personality disorder.
Reporter Gary Davis cites another article also diagnosing narcissism.
Kristen McQueary of the “SouthTown Star” part of The Sun-Times News Group…suggests, without malice that Blagojevich may not be able to control his actions.
Just in the last couple of days he seems to have been out of touch with the seriousness of the charges against him…McQueary suggests that Blagojevich may suffer from Narcissism which often begins early in life. When a person has it they deviate from normal behavior even knowing there are great risks involved.
Oh, he suffers from Narcissistic personality disorder, not anti social personality disorder.
Again, from Wikipedia:
A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts.
- has a grandiose sense of self-importance
- is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
- believes that he or she is “special” and unique
- requires excessive admiration
- has a sense of entitlement
- is interpersonally exploitative
- lacks empathy
- is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her
- shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
Again, having beautiful hair, thinking you are entitled to anything you want, and stepping on other’s rights to get what you deserve describes half the people in politics, along with a lot of Hollywood types, sports figures and rock stars.
What all these “diagnoses” have in common is that they are not describing mental illnesses per se but personality disorders.
There are, however, two “mental illnesses” that are compatible with the governor’s behavior.
One is substance abuse, especially of meth or cocaine.
The second mental illness that could cause this (and the only one that would hold up in court) is an acute manic phase of bipolar disease, an illness that used to be called Manic Depression. In this, people go from depressed/lack of energy states to life of the party/no sleep/drug abuse/promiscuity phases. If it is severe, the person can hallucinate or get delusions.
I’ve seen good, normally stable and loving people ruin their lives because they did something in a manic state; however, since Blagojevich has been under Federal investigation for four years, one doubts that a manic phase would last that long.
But all this talk of “mental illness” is actually nonsense.
You see, in a normal world, if a governor who was surrounded by ordinary honest people went and asked someone for a million dollar contribution to be appointed to a Senate seat, people would be shocked. His aides would go to his wife (or best friend) and say: Would you stop him because he’s acting crazy. The politicians approached to give the huge donations would say: Are you crazy? You should appoint me because I am the best person to represent the people of your state. If you keep asking for money, I’ll report you to the Feds (or the local newspaper).
Apparantly, in Blagojevich’s case, everyone thought his actions were a little bit more than politics as normal:
Then we have AP reporter Nancy Benac discussing if the governor actually did anything wrong:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Politicians make deals every day. They do favors and ask them in return. They kowtow to campaign contributors.It may be unsavory, but it’s often perfectly legal.The prosecutors who arrested Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich say his conduct went far beyond politics-as-usual into a shocking pattern of corruption. But where’s the line?…President-elect Barack Obama acknowledged as much Thursday, speaking of wheelers and dealers who ask “what’s in it for me?”
Silly me.
I thought those elected to office were there to serve and protect the public, not try to figure out “what’s in it for me”.
“It’s not like, ‘Gimme $50,000 in a black bag and I’ll give you the nomination,'” diGenova said.
“People give campaign contributions and expect things in exchange,” he said. “It’s all perfectly legal.”…
“Deals are made all the time in politics,” said Daniel Lowenstein, a professor at UCLA Law School. “Our system couldn’t operate without it.”
The fine line in all of this is that if the money goes to a candidate, it is illegal. If it goes to his campaign, it’s okay, as long as you can’t prove it was to buy a vote on an issue involving the donor later on.
Yet who can track all the donations to make sure that the donations don’t influence a vote? Especially if the donations came from “individuals” at a business, not from the business itself? For example, it can be argued the housing crisis at Fannie Mac/FreddieMac was caused because those organizations arranged for their “employees” to give hundreds of thousands of dollars to politicians campaign funds, and in return, were allowed to continue their bad loan practices.
This is, of course, only the tip of the iceberg, and when Obama’s huge campaign chest is lauded as wonderful by the press, his donations from “individuals” which included repeated donations from the same party make it impossible to track who gave money for what. At the same time, very little attention was paid by the press to Obama’s broken promise to comply with the (voluntary) limits on campaign spending of the McCain Feingold act; by doing so, his actions essentially made it impossible for all future candidates to limit campaign spending.
So one wonders if the US is in for a very long four years with a Chicago politician as president…
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Nancy Reyes is a retired physician living in the rural Philippines. She blogs at Makaipablog.
5 users commented in " Blagojevich: Mental illness or just “politics as usual”? "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackSomeone said in an earlier post that the criteria being described was not necessarily a mental illness, but personality disorders. Personality disorders ARE mental illness. I work in psychiatry, so this is something I am exposed to pretty regularly. The two disorders discussed however, antisocial personality disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder look and sound pretty accurate given this guy’s brazen behavoir. I would probably lean toward narcissism.
I believe he has the lovely combo of BOTH anti-social and narcissistic.
BUT, 15% of ALL people have one or more personality disorders… YES…THAT MANY!
What would be nice to see come out of this is awareness of the various personality disorders, and the implications for all of us.
Unfortunately, only borderline personality disorder is treatable, and only rarely.
Personality is pretty much fixed…so,no meds can change it…unlike mood disorders.
It all begins in childhood…more intervention is needed then, to diagnose early onset of ‘warped’ personas, and to begin attempts to learn how to treat children stuck in poor home environments, before their personas are set…
The real problem here is the attempts to use a medical model when discussing issues of psychological structures. Personality disorders such as Narcissistic or Borderline are best understood as the results of imbalanced and polarized states among the parts of a person’s psychic system. Attempting to describe these disorders as “illnesses” akin to having an infection is extremely misleading.
That is why, when we hear a politician like this described as having “mental illness,” it doesn’t necessarily feel right, and yet may indeed be hitting on something important. What IS clear with Blagojevich, if the allegations are true, is that the parts of his personality that would usually tell a person that he is overstepping his bounds were not in a balance within him.
I agree with Gina above me that the most important thing that can come out of this is more publicity and understanding of the threat of personality disorders in people in positions of power.
I agree Blagojevich probably has anti-social personality disorder because he feels no remorse over his actions and he will “fight till the very end,” which basically means he can even pass a lie detector test since people with anti-social personality disorder show no abnormal parasympathetic activity while lying.
This is the reason why lie detector tests are not admissible in court since it is inaccurate in a minority of our population. And lastly, personality disorders are not covered by most health insurances so if Gov.Blagojevich wants to get help, he’ll have to dish out $100 an hour in private pay therapy sessions (which I doubt he will do since he will likely deny to his last breath that he even has any personality disorder and instead rather assert that he is an innocent victim of political media vendetta).
So by comparison, New York Gov.Elliot Spitzer can be regarded as an honorable public hero with the humility of Gandhi since he has saved the taxpayers much time in costly litigation and distraction of our public media, servers and officials.
Actually Blagojevich’s nominee for the Senate, Roland Burris, probably has narcissistic personality disorder due to his unwise acceptance of his nomination by a governor who has been arrested and accused of a Federal crime. In addition, Mr Burris seems to be defying all of the outraged public and meda opinion by actually going on a self-promotion campaign to allow his nomination to go through. Obviously this man seems to think he deserves this no matter what the circumstance may be in this case which is truly just narcissistic.
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