Is Bush a confabulator?

My husband and I (both doctors) were talking about Bush's tendency to make things up -- and he really believes his fabrications. We both realized it's a classic case of confabulation. We think Ronald Reagan had it as well, and for Reagan it was a symptom of Alzheimers.

We're starting to think Bush has a genuine neurologic problem:

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Confabulation

Confabulation is a memory disorder that may occur in patients who have sustained damage to both the basal forebrain and the frontal lobes, as after an aneurysm of the anterior communicating artery. Confabulation is defined as the spontaneous production of false memories: either memories for events which never occurred, or memories of actual events which are displaced in space or time. These memories may be elaborate and detailed. Some may be obviously bizarre, as a memory of a ride in an alien spaceship; others are quite mundane, as a memory of having eggs for breakfast, so that only a close family member can confirm that the memory is in fact false.

It is important to stress that confabulators are not lying: they are not deliberately trying to mislead. In fact, the patients are generally quite unaware that their memories are inaccurate, and they may argue strenuously that they have been telling the truth. Neither should confabulation be confused with false memory syndrome, the phenomenon whereby otherwise normal individuals suddenly "remember" supposedly-repressed incidents of childhood abuse or other trauma. Confabulation is a clinical syndrome resulting from injury to the brain.



The exact causes of confabulation are unknown, but basal forebrain damage may lead to memory impairments, while frontal damage may lead to problems in self-awareness. Thus, the patient may have a memory deficit but be unaware of his deficit. In the example above, the patient was asked what he ate for breakfast and reported having eaten eggs (a plausible but false memory). It may be that, confronted with the question, the patient experienced a memory gap, and retrieved a related memory about a different morning, in which eggs were served. Being unaware of his own memory problems, he assumed that the retrieved memory was accurate, and answered accordingly. In this sense, his answer - and the memory it was based on - may have been quite accurate; the events simply did not happen at the time he claimed.

Confabulation sometimes resolves spontaneously with the passage of time; in other cases, therapy can help the patient become more aware of his tendency to confabulate and reduce the instances of confabulation.




http://www.memorylossonline.com/glossary/confabulation.html

The man IS a liar - he's not harmlessly misspeaking about what he had for breakfast. He stands in front of the American public and lies from script.

This explanation would let him off the accountability hook. He has to be held accountable for everything that comes of his mouth and every decision he makes.

I think he also has a case of situational dysphagia--not simple aphagia, since his "mistakes" often seem to give his words an "evil" meaning rather than a mere slip of the tongue.

and are easily led.

what I believe is right I believe. Does this GWB quote clear it up. In his mind he cannot tell a lie and he is unable to make a mistake, because God appointed him to rescue us heathens from ourselves.:dunce:

He exhibits so many symptoms of neurologic damage. Not only the confabulation, but also the repetitive phrases and words he continually relies on: "Make no mistake." "Move heaven and earth", etc., etc.

I don't think the man realizes he's spoutng total nonsense. Cheney and company know these are lies, but W. may not.

Reagan probably didn't realize he was lying, either.

I have a dad with Alzheimers, and he used to confabulate all the time. I've had alcoholic patients who will SWEAR that something was true, even get angry when you point out the impossibility of their statements.

Bush is, quite simply, not mentally competent to be running this country.

The rest of us usually berate ourselves (and worry about future Alzheimer's indignities) when we realize that we were wrong; Bush* just gets mad at the messenger(s) for questioning his authority.

Reagan's diagnosis of Alzheimers is notable, since the onset of Alzheimers clearly precedes the more overtly dysfunctional phase by several years. Reagan, like Junior, was a willing "front man."

As you point out, he's not competent.

The people around him (family, cronies, party members, administration appointees) know better than you and I that he's a fool, a boob, and a phony. Now he's a fool, a boob, and a phony on an international stage. Even if he isn't actually running things, he's an embarrassment to this country and its people every time he opens his mouth or does a photo-op.

So how did he get chosen by people who know well what a royal fuck-up he is and always has been? Or was this a power play by Rove, who saw a way to make himself a bigger player by boosting the guy he was tied to? And if that's the case, how did he do it?

as he said in his speech.

I deal with this in my mother. It's very difficult to say whether the person is aware of these constructions. I think it's pretty clear they're aware of some "process" ... but I think they regard it as a kind of "logic" -- filling in the blanks.

Dim Son clearly suffers from NPD/APD (per DSM-IV). It's pathological. At some level, he's aware of it. I quite frankly think he deals with it with a kind of overcompensation: "faith." Sadly, however, the pathology is evident there as well.

It allows him to look moral.

It precludes questioning of his choices or motives.

It glosses over the need to provide evidence or clear explanations based on evidence.

It is a much nicer (for him) explanation of how he got where he is than the truth: God chose me serves his ego much better than corrupt people in daddy's pocket picked me.

Bush has to use the faith argument or his whole world falls apart.

I can see why he likes it; I don't see why anyone falls for it.

A purely defensive move not grounded in conscience.

I believe the Bush family is busy at work trying to get Bush off the hook for crimes of his administration. They do not care about us-they care only about him and themselves. Remember that they deliberately covered for him and let him tell the lie of omission about his criminal record-the drunk driving arrest in Maine. Honorable people who cared about our country would have counseled him to be honest.

Members of his administration also need him to finish out his term in the hopes that he can pardon them if crimes surface in the remaining months of the administration. (As was done by the first President Bush-who pardoned his Secretary of Defense thus ending a special prosecutor investigation into his own administration which might have led to Bush himself being charged).

Bush will first be presented as having been poorly served by the intelligence community and others. This process was begun by David Kay.

If this doesn't work he will be presented as having mental problems and thus not responsible for what he has done or not done. Others will be blamed.

While I have always believed that George w. Bush has serious mental problems, let's remember that serial killers also have mental problems. We bring them to justice.

Bush's public performances are uneven. At times he is reasonably articulate, coherent, and forceful. he is known to have a quick, if somewhat biting, sense of humor.

He did not have to have a national press conference this week. It was a political choice and I believe it was done to set the stage for an incompetency defense if one should be needed in the near future.

The pardoning of Richard Nixon by Gerald Ford set the stage for Nixon underlings to remain in government service-several of those people are at the heart of our current troubles. Let's not allow that to happen again.

:hi:

most of the core bushgang are sociopaths.

Amoral. Liars. Thieves. They literally do not care who dies or suffers while they are enriching themselves.

As cover for the greatest theft in history, they've had to create a fantasy world in which every set of real events has a phony alternate propaganda story.

L'il George, being the stupidest of the bunch, often has trouble keeping the entire fantasy in its little brain and keeping the reality (which if exposed would bring them down) separated from the fantasy.

That, plus you are right. He lies compulsively, reflexively. It's like a nervous tic he can't control anymore.

We have Babs to thank for this evil cretin.

... for breaking a treaty? He'd been meaning to use the subjunctive ("if they break the treaty, we will ...") but it came out wrong.

I think that his poor cognitive and verbal abilities are coming out like this ... he's managed to convince himself that certain things are "true" when he's confabulated them ...

For example, the times he said he'd seen the first plane crash into the WTC. He probably believes he really did see that, after getting confused about when he saw the footage -- plus he may have stumbled over "I saw the plane had crashed" vs. "I saw the plane crash". (Admittedly the networks replayed the tapes of both impacts so much in the days after the attacks that this may have been a factor ... but he IS supposed to be President after all, and one would think that he would be able to examine his own recollections with some objectivity.)

p.s. Personally I don't think that being ill is justification for screw-ups of this magnitude. Bush isn't so stupid that he wouldn't realize that he's a) having problems, and b) this kind of thing would impair his ability to do the President's job. Therefore he is still culpable. My guess is that the vast majority of people who had said that they liked Bush as someone they could have a beer or a coffee with would NOT select a brain surgeon, accountant, or car mechanic using that criterion.