President Donald Trump uses a lot of profanity, and more so recently than he has in the past. Experts are debating whether this is a sign of cognitive decline or simply his naturally vulgar personality — and when AlterNet spoke exclusively with two mental health professionals, their opinions deviated considerably from that presented by a politically centrist linguist who writes for The New York Times.
"Some have argued that the uptick in Trump’s lexical filth is a symptom of cognitive decline, a disinhibition suggestive of dementia," wrote The New York Times' John McWhorter on Thursday. "I doubt it. The increase in his use of profanity is what you would expect, given how language works."
McWhorter disagreed with this analysis, and to explain why he broke down the three types of profanity.
"Stage 1 is blasphemous words," McWhorter wrote, noting that Trump frequently uses them, while "Stage 2 is sexual or graphic words about the body, and Trump revels in those" and "Stage 3 is racial and other slurs against groups," which Trump employs sparingly.
McWhorter added, "Today, it is such words that qualify as truly profane. We often think of slurs as distinct from swear words, but it’s an indication that they are, in fact, today’s profanity that even someone as heedless of etiquette, decorum, restraint and reflection as Trump has tended to avoid them."
He continued, "Because the Stage 1 and Stage 2 words are now more naughty than profane, Trump uses them to thumb his nose at propriety. In this, he is like an 11-year-old, snapping towels at people in the locker room — and snapping them ever more to get a rise out of the people looking on."
McWhorter concluded, "Yet he does not typically risk Stage 3 profanity. Amid his staggering megalomania and chronic logorrhea, Trump, if only for pragmatic purposes, maintains a twinkle of — of all things — decorum."
Two mental health experts disagreed with McWhorter's analysis.
Dr. David Reiss, a psychiatrist who contributed to the book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President," said that McWhorter is "trying to read Trump’s mind, if there’s any mind there to read."
"It’s possible that it’s intentional," Reiss said. "I mean, he’s that stupid to be doing it. I mean, it’s really not a good strategy, in my opinion. But I can’t say it’s not, because I can’t read his mind. But it also very well could be either cognitive decline or just disinhibition due to stress, due to medications, due to other medical issues. It could be any or all of those. And to say that anyone knows for sure other than his neurons, not without neuropsych testing. So could he be correct? Yeah, I can’t say he’s not correct. Do I think if he’s likely correct? I give it a 20 percent chance off the top of my head. But no one knows for sure."
When AlterNet asked Reiss why he gave McWhorter such low odds of being correct, Reiss argued that "I think Trump probably is getting more desperate and more disinhibited. And whether that includes loss of cognitive functioning for reasons could well be, but I can’t say definitely yes or no without looking at legitimate neuropsych testing, not just a screening that they give him. A full battery of neuropsych testing, MRI. You couldn’t say for sure. If I was betting on—which I wouldn’t, because you know who owns it—I would bet that there’s some cognitive decline mixed in with desperation. But I wouldn’t bet a lot on it. It might not be, because only his neurons know for sure."
Psychiatrist Dr. Henry Abraham, formerly of Tufts University and one of a group of 36 health professionals wrote an open letter to Congress warning that President Donald Trump in May, described McWhorter's article as "excellent" — but then, like Reiss, disagreed with the linguist's take.
"I could not disagree with him more strongly, for the following reasons," Abraham said. "In fact, there will be a test, and I’ll put the test at the end of this discussion. There’s evidence that, as time goes on, Trump is becoming increasingly less inhibited. And that is a function of the prefrontal cortex, the front of the brain, which governs conscience, judgment, insight, that sort of stuff. And the consequences of what you say. And so, sure, he is trying to up the ante of shock value, but I think he’s doing it in a way that is really unpremeditated, impulsive, and disinhibited."
He added, "This is what makes him so dangerous with respect to weapons of mass destruction, because he is increasingly disinhibited. Now, the test for my hypothesis of increasing disinhibition, of course, would be a very nice MRI of the brain, but we’re not gonna get that so easily. Also, it would be good if he had neuropsychological testing. That would be a very strong set of clues about prefrontal function. We’re not gonna get that either. And so what we need to do is to wait for him to say the N-word, because it’s clear through his history that he’s a racist. But he has so far refrained from using the N-word in public. When he gets to that point, that I think will be further confirmatory evidence that he has a progressive form of disinhibition, which of course makes him even more dangerous as a president."
