One of the classic signs of serious mental illness is “inappropriate affect.” In this context, “affect” is the emotional face we present to the world. To the extent that a narcissist’s only emotional fixed point is his own need, most of a narcissists affects are actually faked, but that doesn’t mean they’re inappropriate.

The narcissist knows that it would harm his best interests if he were to giggle uncontrollably at a funeral or pick a fist fight with a patient in hospice. Normal people wouldn’t even think of doing such things (outside of the comedy universe), but a narcissist might want to do both, only to stop himself for fear of breaking cover.

Sometimes, though, narcissists, and other sick people, are so disconnected from reality — including their reality of their own best interests in a given situation — that they can no longer stop themselves from presenting an entirely wrong emotional face to the public. That completely disconnected emotional presentation goes by the shorthand title of “inappropriate affect.”

One of the major subsets of inappropriate affect is “inappropriate laughter.” There are seldom any good excuses for behavior. Here’s one short, computer-generated, somewhat repetitive list of some of the major causes behind inappropriate laughter:

Causes of Inappropriate laughter:

The following medical conditions are some of the possible causes of Inappropriate laughter. There are likely to be other possible causes, so ask your doctor about your symptoms.

Drug intoxication
Substance abuse
Dementia
Temporal lobe injury
Alcohol intoxication

Common Causes: Inappropriate laughter

Some of the possible common medical causes of Inappropriate laughter may include:

Drug intoxication
Substance abuse
Dementia
Temporal lobe injury

Other Causes: Inappropriate laughter

Some of the less common causes of Inappropriate laughter may include:

Tic disorders
Tourette syndrome
Social anxiety
Angelman syndrome
Pseudobulbar palsy
Gelastic epilepsy
Brain tumors
Multiple sclerosis
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

I don’t mean to write a psychological treatise here. I freely admit I’m not qualified to do so, other than having the dubious pleasure of knowing over the years people suffering from narcissism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, dementia, etc. Instead, this information is a set-up to the fact that Barack Obama has been behaving very peculiarly lately, with the most obvious manifestation of this peculiar behavior being inappropriate laughter.

Think back to his meeting with Texas Governor Rick Perry regarding the tens of thousands of children storming the border. This flood of humanity has been overwhelming resources and bringing both crime and disease in its wake (and that’s not even counting the crimes visited upon the children themselves, especially sexual crimes).

Even if Obama’s ideology means that he is celebrating the breakdown of America’s border, a high-functioning narcissist would recognize that the public doesn’t want to see the American president laughing about a man-created disaster our southern border. Laughter, however, is precisely what the president offered to the American people:




Looking at that picture, the first thought a mentally healthy person would have is “There’s something very wrong going on there.” (As for the laughter from Obama’s entourage, we know he surrounds himself by “yes” men, so it’s not unreasonable for those same “yes” men to laugh when the boss laughs, no matter the absence of actual humor.)

It would be easy enough to pass off what happened in the Texas meeting if it weren’t for the fact that Obama was at it again just today. This morning, news broke that Malaysian Airlines, which already lost a plane with all its crew and passengers just a few months ago, once again lost a plane.

This time, if reports are accurate, pro-Russian forces in the Ukraine deliberately shot down a passenger jet traveling from Amsterdam to Malaya. All 295 people aboard the plane died, including 23 Americans.

No matter how one looks at the crash, it’s no laughing matter. There’s the human tragedy of so many deaths, there’s the national tragedy of so many American deaths, and there’s the international concern of Russian forces shooting down planes. Putin may have bitten off more than he can chew with his Ukraine adventure, but the fact remains that it’s a big deal when the Russian military kills close to 300 people, many of them Americans, and apparently does so intentionally.

So what does Obama do in the face of this big and serious deal? He gives the event a cursory 40 second salute and then, as if by the click of switch, reverts to his prepared remarks, smiling and cracking jokes:

-SNIP-

There's more:http://www.bookwormroom.com/2014/07/17/i...ental-disorder/

I'm more concerned about the apparent mental disorder of 50% of this country. What's up with THAT?

Well said truthkeeper.

We might recover from a psychopathic president with delusions of grandeur.

We will never recover from a nation populated with psychopathic voters with entitlement delusions.