us illness deserves wide circulation. What is interesting about it is that it does not exempt us but points out how we are part of the problem. ]

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BUSH'S UNIQUE PSYCHIATRIC PATHOLOGY

I would like to speak the marginalized voice. This voice is often joked about, but it is deadly serious. It is like there is an elephant in the living room, and no one is talking about it. It is exactly like the emperor has no clothes, and no one is saying the obvious. Situations like this literally demand to be pointed out, to be named. There is a field of fear and cover-up that gets constellated around someone like Bush that inhibits people from speaking the truth. This is analogous to how people were afraid to disagree with Bush after 9/11 for fear of being called terrorists. ("You're either with us, or you're a terrorist.") But the truth needs to be uttered.

George W. Bush is ill. He has a very peculiar, insidious and malignant psychiatric disorder. I know this psychiatric disorder well because my father suffered from the exact same condition. There are a number of ways of describing it, as it is a multi-faceted complex whose underlying dynamic is to resist, at all costs, self-reflecting and seeing what his real situation is. What is scary is that part of his illness is his willingness to do everything and anything to hold on to the position of power that he is in, as he is addicted to the temptation of power. He is also unable to genuinely accept responsibility for his actions, always blaming others. His illness is sociopathic in nature. Due to the deep split in his nature which has led him to project the shadow, instead of being one with himself (whole, holy), he is literally "besides himself," which is another way of saying that he is out of his mind. There is no sense in editing and diluting what I am trying to say, beating around the bush, so to speak. The President of the United States is a certifiable madman. And yet, he has a certain sort of coherence and charisma that can entrance those who don't see through his subterfuge. It makes me think of the great Thomas Merton, who commented on the case of the obviously demented Nazi, Adolf Eichmann, "One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane."

Psychologically speaking, one facet of Bush's condition is what is called "malignant narcissism." This is a narcissist who reacts to others who don't support and enable their narcissism, with sadism. In my lifetime I have never seen so many books come out by past members of this very administration that are holding up the mirror and reflecting Bush's shadow (too bad Bush doesn't read books), and the Bush administration always reacts by trying to destroy the messenger, just like a mean-spirited, malignant narcissist. Malignant narcissists have contempt for anyone who disagrees with them (as it threatens their narcissism), as well as having contempt for the rule of law (which they, in their narcissism, believe they are above). Professor Sulak Sivaraksa likens Bush to two other malignant narcissists, Hitler and Stalin. Sivaraksa argues that Bush's declaration of an "axis of Evil," Hitler's "Final Solution," and Stalin's "pogrom of peasants" were actually analogous attempts "to perfect the world by destroying the (perceived) impurities." Another modern day malignant narcissist is none other than Saddam Hussein!

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The great German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's talked about a condition that he called the "pale criminal," which is a chillingly accurate description of Bush, and helps to even more fill out his psychiatric profile. Jung felt that the pale criminal idea of Nietzsche was so profound that he referred to it in articulating a particular type of personality disorder. To quote Jung, the pale criminal "simply will not and cannot admit the he is what he is; he cannot endure his own guilt, just as he could not help incurring it. He will stoop to every kind of self-deception if only he can escape the sight of himself... which consists essentially in one hand not knowing what the other is doing, in wanting to JUMP OVER ONE'S OWN SHADOW, AND IN LOOKING FOR EVRYTHING DARK, INFERIOR AND CULPABLE IN OTHERS... but since nobody can jump out of his skin and be rid of himself, they stand in their own way everywhere as their own evil spirit."

Jung continues that the pale criminal's unconscious identification with one side of the polarity, his "God Almightiness, that is to say all those qualities which are peculiar to fools and madmen and therefore lead to catastrophe, merely fills him with arrogance and arouses everything evil in him. It produces a diabolical caricature of man, and this inhuman mask is so unendurable, such a torture to wear, that he tortures others disrupts the laws of humanity, and sins against all the rules of the human community; ...he has to keep his crime secret... he is the most violent breaker of the bond of the human community."

Nietzsche referred to it as "pale" criminal because the person would have their breath taken away and become pale at the sight of (their unconscious shadow self) in the mirror. It is not my habit to diagnose and pathologize people, but in this case it is both necessary and a relief. With the Bush administration, it is as if a bunch of criminals have co-opted our government. They should be tried for war crimes. Or put in psychiatric prisons. At the very least they should not be allowed to run the country. We, as a people, need to recognize the severity of the danger our country is in, and act.

At the root of Bush's whole process was an unwillingness and inability to experience his own sense of sin, of guilt, and of shame. He was clearly unable to experience his own weakness and vulnerability, his own sense of failure. This threatened his narcissism too much. By being unwilling to look at and experience his own darker half, he dissociates and projects out the shadow onto others, which is the very impulse of the split and traumatized soul. He then lies to himself and others, and begins to believe his own lies, which has a very mesmerizing effect on the listener. This entire process, combined with his complete unwillingness to self-reflect is the very dynamic which drafts him into being an agent for the deepest evil to enact itself through him. By being unwilling to experience his shame he shames, and curses (like a demon) the entire world.

It is important to name this situation. Bush is suffering from a peculiar manifestation of delusional, hysterical mental illness that is self-perpetuating in nature. We can call it PCMNTD - Pale Criminal/Malignant Narcissist Trauma Disorder. It should be entered into the DSM IV, the psychiatric diagnostic manual, immediately. The prescription - a good, long rest.

Keep up the good work,

Steve

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Here are the first 3 pages of this excellent essay...

BUSH'S PSYCHIATRIC PROFILE: HE'S CERTIFIABLE

by Paul Levy

One good thing I can say about President Bush is that he's gotten me interested in politics. Before he came to office, I was mainly interested in spiritual matters, and considered politics a "distraction." There was something that I noticed getting played out through George W. Bush as president, though, that really got my attention. I was having a reaction to, and being triggered by something in him. In his campaign he promised us a foreign policy with humility, and yet, his actions seemed so arrogant, so full of hubris. I was sensing a deep incongruity in him, like there was some unfinished psychological process that he was unconsciously playing out. The problem was, though, that because of his position, his unconscious was playing itself out and being dramatized on the world stage, where it was negatively affecting the lives of billions of people. I saw that he was unwittingly evoking and literally creating more of the very situation that he was claiming to be fighting against. It was as if he was fighting against his own shadow, which is a battle that can never be won. There seemed an element of craziness in it.

I would like here to speak forth the marginalized voice. This voice is often joked about, but it is deadly serious. It is like there is an elephant in the living room, and more and more people are pointing at it. The emperor has no clothes, and people are noticing. Situations like this literally demand to be named. There is a field of fear and cover-up that gets constellated around someone like George Bush that inhibits people from speaking the truth. This is analogous to how people were afraid to disagree with Bush after 9/11 for fear of being called terrorists. ("You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists.") But the truth needs to be uttered.

George W. Bush is ill. He has a sickness of the soul, a psycho-spiritual dis-ease which is very prevalent and symptomatic of the times we live in. Because it is an illness that is in the soul of all humanity, and because he seems like such a "regular guy," it is very hard to recognize. The fact that Bush is sick might be a shock to some, but when you simply look at what I am pointing out, it is not hard to see. And once you get in focus what I am describing, it is easy to see it from then on, because it is so obvious. This is why most people miss it. It might involve changing your perception in a radical way, or maybe simply recognizing that these words articulate what so many of us experience and know in our hearts, but never had the words for.

I know this disorder intimately well because my father suffered from the exact same condition. Dealing with this illness in my father almost killed me, but because of my ordeal, I have unique insight into its dynamics. There are a number of ways of describing it, as it is a multi-faceted complex whose underlying, self-generating dynamic is to resist, at all costs, self-reflecting. At the root of this process is a deep dissociation, where the person splits-off from their own darker half and projects the shadow "out there," and then contracts against and tries to destroy their own dis-owned shadow. To quote C. G. Jung, one of the greatest psychologist of the twentieth century," The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided (not in touch with both the light AND dark parts of themselves) and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves."

It is not that the threat of terrorism is not real, but that Bush's policies in dealing with terrorism are actually putting fuel on the fire. The way Bush is fighting terrorism is actually the very act which is invoking and creating more of it in the first place. Talking about Bush's policies on terrorism and his pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, Al Gore says, "Instead of making it better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation``He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfullness, and bungling." Iraq, instead of being, as Bush declared, "the central front in the war on terror," has now become, as Gore points out, "the central recruiting office for terrorists." Gore continues, "the unpleasant truth is that President Bush's utter incompetence has made the world a far more dangerous place and dramatically increased the threat of terrorism against the United States." As the International Institute for Strategic Studies points out, the Iraq conflict "has arguably focused the energies and resources of Al Qaeda and its followers while diluting those of the global counterterrorism coalition."

Bush is not in conscious relationship to a part of himself, which is then possessing him from behind, beneath his conscious awareness, and enacting itself through him. By disassociating from his own shadow and projecting it onto a supposed "other," and wanting to destroy the other, he has become possessed by the very same darkness he is trying to destroy, just perpetuating the never-ending cycle of violence. It is truly a diabolical, infinitely-regressing, self-perpetuating, closed, negative feedback loop that is completely inverted and crazy-making. This is the repetition compulsion of the traumatized soul gone awry, to daemonic proportions. In the repetition compulsion, the way the person tries to resolve their trauma is the very act which recreates it. To err is human, to persevere ("stay the course") in error is truly diabolical.

By projecting the shadow, to again quote Jung, "it deprives us of the capacity to deal with evil." Jung stresses the importance of consciously developing what he calls one's "imagination for evil," which is to consciously recognize one's potential for evil and integrate one's dark side into one's wholeness, which includes both light and dark. If we have no imagination for evil, to quote Jung, "evil has us in its grip``.for only the fool can permanently disregard the conditions of his own nature. In fact, this negligence is the best means of making him an instrument of evil."

By projecting the shadow, Bush is unwittingly being a conduit for the deepest, archetypal evil to possess him and act itself out through him. At the same time, ironically enough, he is identified with the light and imagining that he is divinely inspired. He then believe that any action he desires is justified in the name of God, as he can rationalize it as being God's will. This is a very dangerous situation, as Bush has become identified with and possessed by the hero, or saviour archetype. This figure is religious in nature, as it derives from the transpersonal, archetypal dimension of the collective unconscious. Being inflated with the hero archetype, he (archetypically) wants to save the world from evil and liberate the planet.

This behavior is symptomatic of the religious right, which Bush is now recognized to be the leader of, as well as fundamentalism (be it Christian or Moslem, or whatever form this polarization takes). They identify with only one side of the polarity (the light), and are fanatically convinced of the rightness of their viewpoint, which they consider non-negotiable. People who disagree with them are seen as threats and agents of the Devil, who need to be destroyed. Could it be there is a deep sense of insecurity, of dis-ease, about the fundamentalist's fanatically held beliefs? The fundamentalist splits-off from, and projects outside of themselves (and actually dreams up into materialization) their dis-owned shadow, in the form of the Devil (one of whose inner meaning, besides "the liar," is "the adversary"). And then they try to kill the adversary, or "enemy combatant," who is seen to be the Devil incarnate. But fighting the Devil is radically different than loving God.

Bush's illness is sociopathic in nature. By projecting the shadow, he is genuinely unable to accept responsibility for his actions, always scapegoating and blaming others. Denial is a key part of his arsenal, and it is so pervasive and insidious that he doesn't even know he's in denial (he's in denial that he's in denial`..). He is truly unconscious, as if he is dreaming. In addition, this kind of denial cultivates an infinite web of deceit that is always hiding from itself. If a single individual was acting out an analogous inner process in their life that Bush is enacting on the world stage, they would be diagnosed with having a schizoid, dissociative disorder, with self-destructive tendencies. Due to the deep split in his nature which has led him to so steadfastly project the shadow, instead of being one with himself (whole), President Bush is literally "beside himself."

CLIP - Read the rest of this very interesting analysis (8 more pages to go) by CLICKING HERE (sorry I cannot display this URL - hidden in the HTML coding - because this would trip the anti-spam system of all 340+ AOL subscribers on this list and they would never receive this part of this compilation, not to mention creating for me the VERY time-consuming chore of having to reset the rise.up listserver system I use to "no bouncing emails"

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