GWB43 psychology--question for any DU psychologists or psychiatrists....

[texanshatingbush]

In my business life, I have never known of a manager who has, as Bush43 seems to have, such a visceral need for assigning nicknames to subordinates. We hear about "turdblossom", about "fredo", and so many others I can't remember. Seems like everyone in the Bush junta has been assigned a nickname by Dear Leader.

Question for the psych-professionals: does this "need to nickname" represent any psychological weakness or shortcoming? Like not seeing others as being equal, or not seeing others' humanity, or building a wall between himself and everything "not-self"--so that he is congenitally out-of-touch with the world's wavelength?

Just curious.....

[bdamomma]

1. I am not a psychologist or psychiatrist, but it seems like frat boys

games. these are men who never grew up. just my opinion.

[tularetom]

7. bluto, otter, boon, d-day, pinto, flounder

you might be right. Bush's new Delta name is Needledick.

[whistle]

2. George W. Bush has his share of nicknames...Dubya, shrub, Dimson, *

...Dumbson, weed, cokeo....any others?

[lvx35]

3. I'm not a shrink, but anecdotally:

the only people I remember doing that were school yard bullies, street criminals (everybody has a nickname in drug culture) and total assholes. Its an insulting thing to do.

[grasswire]

4. there has been speculation...

...that it is related to some sort of cognitive disorder, and there has been speculation that it is narcissism-related, in that he is able to feel superior to those he nicknames.

[Warpy]

11. DING DING DING

I think we have a winner.

Renaming subordinates is a show of power.

[meldroc]

16. Definitely narcissism. Mix in a generous amount of antisocial personality disorder.

In other words, Bush is a psychopath, and so are the people he surrounds himself with. Cheney, Rove, Gonzales, etc. They're all psychopaths.

Bush does this to belittle people and exert dominance over them.

These guys literally have no conscience. They have no empathy towards other people - they just consider them tools to be used and abused at their whims.

There's also the possibility Bush and Co. have Malignant Narcissism.

Ooh, found a link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malignant_narcissism

[durrrty libby]

5. I have some psychiatric nursing experience, and mostly

with inmates, but I'll take a stab.

boosh gives obviously condescending pet names to put people in their place,

and remind them that he is boss.

He fears intelligent people

[CrazyOrangeCat]

9. That makes good sense to me.

Intelligent people must frighten him silly.

(Cuz he sure is a dim bulb.)

[ginnyinWI]

10. I agree

I think it's a way to try to control and dominate. I am not a psychologist either, but my minor was psych. Nicknames are a way of saying, "you'll be called what I choose to call you--you have to submit!"

He does hate/fear intellectuals--this is his history going back to college days. People at Yale like Kerry were the types he hated the most.

[AnneD]

12. And it gives a false sense of ...

familiarity and friendship. It makes minions feel like they are special-with the in crowd, when in reality they will be cut loose in an instant. Engenders false loyality.

[bdamomma]

13. read this too.

this has to do with RW Authoritarianism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_Wing_Authoritarianism


1: Faulty reasoning — RWAs are more likely to:

Make many incorrect inferences from evidence.
Hold contradictory ideas leading them to ‘speak out of both sides of their mouths.’
Uncritically accept that many problems are ‘our most serious problem.’
Uncritically accept insufficient evidence that supports their beliefs.
Uncritically trust people who tell them what they want to hear.
Use many double standards in their thinking and judgements.

2: Hostility Toward Outgroups — RWAs are more likely to:

Weaken constitutional guarantees of liberty such as the Bill of Rights.
Severely punish ‘common’ criminals in a role-playing situation.
Admit they obtain personal pleasure from punishing such people.
Be prejudiced against racial, ethnic, nationalistic, and linguistic minorities.
Be hostile toward homosexuals.
Volunteer to help the government persecute almost anyone.
Be mean-spirited toward those who have made mistakes and suffered.

3: Profound Character Attributes — RWAs are more likely to:

Be dogmatic.
Be zealots.
Be hypocrites.
Be absolutists
Be bullies when they have power over others.
Help cause and inflame intergroup conflict.
Seek dominance over others by being competitive and destructive in situations requiring cooperation.
4: Blindness To One’s Own Failings And To The Failings Of Authority Figures whom They Respect— RWAs are more likely to:

Believe they have no personal failings.
Avoid learning about their personal failings.
Be highly self-righteous.
Use religion to erase guilt over their acts and to maintain their self-righteousness.

[Diane R]

6. It's a way to diminish other people and establish his own (in his mind only) superiority. It's sick

[ecstatic]

8. As an armchair psychiatrist, MD

I view his need for nicknames as further proof of how he just takes everything and everyone for a joke.

Interesting article on this very topic... http://www.etalkinghead.com/archives/the-psychology-of-bushs-nicknames-2006-04-27.html

Nicknames serve an important function of �dominion� for all of us, of course: they define and delimit another�s powers and status. Nicknames put people in their place. In the case of Mr. Bush�s Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, this is apparently an exalted place�she has earned the nickname, �Guru.� Others, such as Maureen Dowd, are not so fortunate. Naming of any sort serves an important ritualized function in human culture: it is the first step in gaining control over a potentially dangerous or malevolent entity. A frightening category 4 hurricane is nicknamed, �Katrina�. Osama bin Laden is christened, �The Evil One� by the President of the United States.

[Divernan]

14. What's his nickname for Maureen Dowd?

I looked it up in your link: It's "Cobra"! I also liked this paragraph from your link:

The rabbis of the Talmudic era were aware that, when mortals misuse such powers, the results can often be destructive. These sages were especially disturbed by the use of derogatory nicknames. The Talmud tells us, �All who descend to Gehenna will come up, except three�one who sleeps with a married woman; one who shames his friend in public; and one who calls his friend by a cruel nickname.� . Any child who has come home from school in tears, having been taunted with a nickname like �Fatso� or �Butthead�, understands the destructive power of such nick

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

17. Ronald W. Pies, MD. Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Tufts...

...is the author of that article.

This article helps explain the derogatory moniker's, such as "Cobra," as well as the exhalted nicknames, such as "Guru." However, I'm going to take a stab at "Boy Genius" and "Turd Blossom," to whom he has dubbed Karl Rove.

I'll speculate that, with respect to Rove, it goes back to what CrazyOrangeCat pointed out. Since "intelligent people must frighten him silly," he must put on airs that Rove is his subordinate/inferior.

[unpossibles]

15. I worked for a man who was similar

he was always spouting idiotic things, sometimes sexist or racist, but almost always insensitive, and called everyone "Buddy!" or worse, such as the two Colombians he called "The Mexican Mafia." And of course, he got angry when one of my team called him "Buddy" back to him - it was a sign of disrespect, of course. We were only to refer to him by his name or "Sir."

I could not take it for long, and picked a fight I knew I would lose over yet another nickname (he called someone with some bad dentistry "Toothy"). I told him for the umpteenth time that he could not do that, and he fired me. So I went home and called OSHA, the IRS, and Microsoft about all of the things this guy was knowingly doing wrong. :)

It actually felt good to get fired.

[carolinayellowdog]

18. Once used as a tool of racial domination

Maya Angelou describes the experience of working for a white woman who just up and decided she wanted to call her "Marguerite" because she liked it better than her real name. I heard a black literary scholar say that "calling people out of their names" was not uncommon as a way for whites to intimidate blacks, i.e. put them in their place. Always the need to put others in their place is really about claiming a higher position for oneself.

[mtnsnake]

19. He does it because he cant remember their real names. He even nicknamed his kids

because he can never remember what their last names are. Nicknames are easier to remember because they're only a single word as opposed to two words in a real name.

I'm no psychologist, but I slept in a Holiday Inn Select last night.

[L. Coyote]

20. I'm more concerned about the "God speaks thru me" ideation.

You do not need a Psyche degree to analyze that one.