Michael Bader, D.M.H.

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You Don’t Need to Be a Shrink to Understand Trump’s Mind

October 26, 2017 by Michael Bader

Everybody knows that Donald Trump is mentally disturbed. His mental illness is hiding in plain sight. Someone who can never admit a mistake or show remorse or guilt is unbalanced. Someone who frequently brags and demeans others is emotionally insecure and volatile. And someone who appears to lack empathy invariably has something missing inside. No one has to go out on a limb to know that these things are true.

When I say that “everybody knows,” I realize that that isn’t literally true. Many people seem to like and admire Trump, and likely believe that critiques of his psychological stability originate from the liberal media and his political opponents. Instead, when I say that “everybody knows” Trump is disturbed, I’m saying you don’t need to be a trained psychiatrist or psychologist to believe that he is riddled with extreme emotional conflicts that hamper his ability to be a responsible leader. You just need some combination of common sense, intuition and empathy. Most psychotherapists understand their clients with just such tools. In this sense, analyzing Trump’s mind is almost as easy for the lay person as for the so-called expert.

For example, is anyone surprised that someone who smiles and clowns around all the time might be hiding depression or sadness? Or that a bully might secretly feel weak and scared? Or that a braggart is likely defending him or herself against feelings of insecurity or inferiority? Or that an abuser might have been abused as a child? These inferences don’t require speculative diagnostic leaps or specialized psychiatric knowledge, but are knowable through the ordinary emotional intelligence that guides us in normal social life.

Read the full article at alternet.org

The Breakdown of Empathy and the Political Right in America

December 22, 2016 by Michael Bader

In 1978, developmental psychologist Edward Tronick and his colleagues published a paper in the Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry that demonstrated the psychological importance of the earliest interactions between mothers and babies. The interactions of interest involved the playful, animated and reciprocal mirroring of each other’s facial expressions. Tronick’s experimental design was simple: A mother was asked to play naturally with her 6-month-old infant. The mother was instructed to suddenly make her facial expression flat and neutral; to remain completely still, for three minutes, regardless of her baby’s activity. Mothers were then told to resume normal play. The design came to be called the “still face paradigm.”

When mothers stopped their facial responses to their babies, when their faces were still, babies first anxiously strove to reconnect with their mothers. When the mothers’ faces remained neutral and still, the babies quickly showed ever-greater signs of confusion and distress, followed by a turning away from the mother, finally appearing sad and hopeless. When the mothers in the experiment were permitted to re-engage normally, their babies, after some initial protest, regained their positive affective tone and resumed their relational and imitative playfulness.

When a primary caretaker (the still-face experiments were primarily done with mothers, not fathers) fails to mirror a child’s attempts to connect and imitate, the child becomes confused and distressed, protests, and then gives up. Neurobiological research (summarized by child psychiatrist Bruce Perry and science writer Maia Szalavitz in their book, Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential—and Endangered), has powerfully demonstrated that in humans and other mammals, a caretaker’s attunement and engagement is necessary to foster security, self-regulation and empathy in the developing child. Parental empathy stimulates the growth of empathy in children. The infant brain is a social one and is ready to respond to an environment that is appropriately nurturing.

Read the full article at alternet.org

Springsteen’s Astounding Candor: Born to Tell the Truth

October 11, 2016 by Michael Bader

The Boss’s autobiography lets us in to his most private experiences.

One Saturday afternoon in the early 1980s, I was home visiting my mother who lived in a small two-bedroom apartment in the wealthy community of Rumson, New Jersey. I was in my early 30s. I was walking down Bellevue Avenue, admiring the gorgeous and stately homes partially hidden behind walls and high hedges, and as I reached Ridge Road, I stopped in front of one of these mansions. I knew it belonged to my high school musical hero, Bruce Springsteen. No, unlike what Springsteen admits doing at Graceland, I did not climb the wall and try to meet my hero. I just remember looking with a longing, a nostalgic ache, desiring something I couldn’t articulate. I guess I wished I could go inside, see Bruce in his “natural state,” hang out, get close to him, or be a fly on the wall, observing what mattered to him.

It’s a bit embarrassing now to admit to being such an adoring fan; somehow, it doesn’t sit so well with my more cynical and dignified adult identity. Still, even when I first heard him and his band, Steel Mill, playing on the Jersey Shore in the late 1960s, I wanted to get to know him. Even then, Springsteen had that effect on his fans. As a performer, he gives until he drops, exhausted—and so do his fans, feeling that we have just been transported to a better place. We want to get closer to the source of that experience and visit that place again.

What a delight then, it was, to read Bruce Springsteen’s new autobiography, Born to Run. He lets readers in and shows them so much more than his home. He shares his most private experiences with an astounding candor and psychological-mindedness, beginning with accounts of his earliest childhood in Freehold, New Jersey, all the while meticulously tracking his long (and meteoric) public journey to the very top of the rock ‘n’ roll world and popular culture.

Read the full article on alternet.org

Why Golf is So Frustrating

December 17, 2014 by Michael Bader

Golf seems like such a good idea, doesn’t it? It shouldn’t be the nightmare it is for so many people. Spending the morning with your friends, beautiful surroundings, playing and competing, occasionally making contact with the ball so sweet you can hardly feel it, but can only marvel at the sight of the ball doing exactly what you want it to do. No wonder so many people play it.

Therefore, it’s puzzling that more people have been leaving the sport than picking it up. It’s estimated that, in 2013, 4.1 million more people quit golf than began to play it. Moreover, within each golfer this approach/avoidance tension exists as well. Too many of us have God on one shoulder and the Devil on the other. And most golfers don’t know why.

I’m one of them. I’ve been playing for 13 years. Although my game has waxed and waned, the reality is that my scores are pretty much the same now that they were 10 years ago. And I’ve taken dozens of lessons. I shot in the low 90, sometimes the upper 80s, too often the mid to high nineties, occasionally breaking the century mark, just as occasionally getting into the low or mid 80s. Am I unusual? I don’t think so. The average male golfer in the United States shoots in the mid – 90s. Further, most people don’t get much better at golf over time—a few strokes here or there but nothing significant. At a conference of golf teachers and professionals, golf guru Fred Shoemaker asked if the teachers in the audience had seen their students get significantly better over the last 10 years. No one raised his or her hand.

Read the full article on TheMindofGolf.com

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