While I can appreciate that Joyce Fahnestock’s letter “Beware of the inflated ego,” is criticizing Donald Trump’s narcissism, she does so in a way that is regrettably offensive when she refers to a so-called “addictive personality” (Our Readers’ Views, May 5).
The fact is, there is no such thing. Compulsive misuse of substances in itself is no more worthy of moralizing or stigmatizing than any other compulsive behavior; we would not say that those who compulsively wash their hands or engage in other activities have “inflated egos.”
Fahnestock references the work of one Vernon Johnson, whose writings almost of 50 years ago are riddled with the kind of moralizing and stigmatizing associated with coercion into 12-step religious groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous (itself nearing a century old). More recently, Maia Szalavitz pointed out in “Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction” that compulsive behaviors are essentially learning disorders. Seen this way, Fahnestock’s characterizations are reprehensible, since we would not use such terms to describe thosewith autism spectrum or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorders.
