One of the most unusual and unprecedented aspects of the Trump presidency is the degree to which anti-Trump “mental health professionals,” office holders, news reporters, media pundits, celebrities, and ordinary people are willing to publicly share their psychiatric and psychological assessments of the president. They do so to buttress their view that he is a unique threat to this republic and the world, and therefore must be removed from office. Anti-Trump commenters treat that outpouring of psychological narrative diagnosis and characterization as synonymous with clinical truths. They are not.
The frequency and apparent acceptance of these commentaries lead this analysis into unusual territory for what is ordinarily an effort to develop valid explanatory theories of a president’s psychology and their implications for his leadership and governing style. Any attempt to develop an accurate psychologically framed analysis of this president must, of necessity, address these issues. That is especially the case given the formal clinical and psychoanalytic training of the author.
These issues include but are not limited to the following kinds of questions: Is the president “mentally ill”?; Does he exhibit the characteristics of the severe psychopathology outlined in the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-V) manual?; If so, what are the diagnoses that best fit what “mental health practitioners,” and others claim to see in Trump’s psychology on the basis of their observations;? and is Trump therefore psychologically unfit to hold office?
It is essential to make absolutely clear at the outset that in addressing these and the related questions that follow, absolutely no Trump psychiatric or psychological “diagnosis” of any kind is being implied or will be offered. The Goldwater Rule takes the position that it is unethical to offer a “diagnosis,” especially a public one, without having engaged with or treated the person involved. That makes good sense on ethical and assessment grounds for many reasons. Giving public “diagnoses” of any person, even a public figure, on the basis of news accounts—often inaccurate, limited, highly selected parts of a president’s words, and not seriously coming to grips with ones’ own strongly held political preferences—as most anti-Trump “mental health professional” do, is not only a severe lapse of professional ethics and personal integrity. It is a recipe for poor evaluation and analysis.
One central reason why this is the case is that what a patient thinks of what they do, and why they think that way, is a critical part of psychoanalytic and psychiatric evaluation and diagnosis in a clinical setting. One cannot simply infer that kind of foundational motivational information on the basis of what you observe casually at a distance by using the latest headline, relying on the latest narrative meme, or generalizing from your own self-confirming assumptions.
Consider for example one fairly common anti-Trump psychiatric meme, that Trump needs adoring crowds because of his narcissism. Why exactly does he need them? Is it to bolster grandiose or fragile levels of self-esteem? Or, is the first operating as a compensation for the second as Harold Lasswell’s famous dictum that “political man” seeks power to “overcome low estimates of the self” suggests.1 In theory, Trump’s supposed need for adoring crowds either is to buttress or confirm his narcissism. Which is it though? Are his crowds meant to compensate for Trump’s low self-esteem or confirm his sense of superiority?
That example makes the issue clear. One cannot simply attribute a motivation to Trump’s “narcissism” without some attention to what that terms actually means beyond its ordinary, and even its basic clinical understanding. Moreover, the term itself provides no particular motivational diagnosis. A diagnostic category or term, by itself, is not synonymous with the motivation underlying it. Yet, the anti-Trump psychiatric narratives and memes often treat them as indistinguishable.
These questions point to more basic starting questions. Exactly what is meant by saying that Trump is “narcissistic,” or has a “narcissistic personality” disorder? What does it mean to say that he suffers from “malignant narcissism”? If these characterizations are to be any more than psychiatric name calling, they must reflect real knowledge of, and grappling with the range of theory and analysis that underlies them. Most such characterizations of Trump do not.
A psychologically framed portrait of a president, such as this one, is very far from a “diagnosis,” that seeks to place a president in a category that reflects his degree of functional capacity or impairment within the context of established psychiatric diagnostic categories. Our purpose here is to develop an understanding of this particular president and to use that knowledge to develop and refine a theory of presidential performance more generally. The basic question we ask is not how well the president functions according to psychiatric diagnostic criteria. It is rather whether our psychologically and political anchored portrait accurately describe the essential elements of this president’s political leadership and governing choices.
President Trump’s Psychology as a National Emergency
Many commentators are convinced they know the real Donald Trump. He is, they think, so obviously shallow, insecure, and garish that single clinical words or catch phrases are all that are needed to find a narrative that will psychologically tar and feather him. He is, take your pick: a “cruel sadist,”2 a “sociopath,”3 a “narcissistic sociopath,”4 crazy,5 a “raving lunatic,”6 a monster,7 shows a “degree of detachment from reality,”8 or has “spiraled into an ideological psychosis.”9 These characterizations are little more than name-calling masquerading as analysis.
With sentiments like these voiced repeatedly by media commentators, carried by major news and media outlets and echoed by establishment power holders across the civic spectrum, it is small wonder that many alarmed Trump opponents feel that there is no line that shouldn’t be crossed in their efforts to defeat him. That includes characterizing President Trump’s psychology on the basis of speculations garnered from a single quote or the latest newspaper headlines and drawing the most radical, damaging, disparaging, and unsubstantiated conclusions.
One psychiatrist who has written an unrelievedly harsh partisan book on the president,10 writes that Mr. Trump is such a clear and present danger to the county and the world that he should be immediately hospitalized against his will. The psychiatrist in question is Justin Frank MD who has written two highly partisan presidency books, one a psychology bashing exercise on George W. Bush and the other a fawning sycophantic adulatory book on Barack Obama.
In his personal blog entry entitled: “Now is the Time,” posted March 5, 2017, he writes11:
Donald Trump is unstable, and there is no need to list the evidence here. As President of the United States, his behavior presents a clear and present danger to an entire nation, if not the world. We cannot employ, as president, someone too impulsive to think, unable to reason, and unable to engage in complex discussions with the various government agencies from State to Defense to National Security to Justice. In fact, if he were my patient I would insist that he be hospitalized before attempting psychoanalytic treatment … the people I’ve treated who behave like President Trump require hospitalization—even if against their will.
“No need to list the evidence here” is, of course, a way to avoid addressing and assessing it. This is the opposite of scholarship, whether psychoanalytically or otherwise based. It is, however, a recipe and detailed road map for blatant partisanship and shallow, fatuous analysis.
Dr. Frank is not alone in having been trained at one time on the necessity of careful professional analysis that is jettisoned when it comes to Donald Trump. John D. Gardner, PhD., an anti-Trump stalwart wrote a petition that read12:
We, the undersigned mental health professionals (please state your degree), believe in our professional judgment that Donald Trump manifests a serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of President of the United States. And we respectfully request he be removed from office, according to article 4 of the 25th amendment to the Constitution, which states that the president will be replaced if he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
This “mental health professional” recently claimed the following in his FaceBook page13:
PREPARE FOR THE APOCALYPSE I’m no Nostradamus, but as many of you know, from day one I have been uncannily prescient about one thing: Donald Trump. Here are my 15 predictions for 2020–2025:
1) Sanders will win the nomination 2) Trump will win re-election 3) Civil unrest will erupt with killings in the streets 4) The federal civil service will be purged of Democrats and others deemed not loyal starting at the top and working their way down the chain. 5) Millions of undocumented immigrants dragged from their homes and detained at the border will be held in the concentration camps in the desert 6) The Supreme Court will reverse Roe v. Wade by 7–2, and make a generation of partisan decisions. 7) Reporters and other political enemies and will be jailed by the state, or roughed up and killed by rogue MAGA-heads and shadowy paramilitaries 8) The pace of global warming will accelerate along with catastrophic weather events of Biblical proportions. 9) There will be more outbreaks of new diseases and our largely defunded public health system will be inadequate in response 10) The market and the economy will crash. 11) Israel will suffer a catastrophic attack. 12) The Western alliance will shatter, as Trump withdraws from NATO and our former friends realize we have switched sides. 13) Putin will dramatically escalate his cyberattacks and military aggression against Western democracies, while other strongmen also feel emboldened to commit atrocities. 14) No more free and fair elections. Through voter suppression, misinformation, foreign interference, and direct hacking of voting machines, Republicans will maintain one party minority rule no matter how small their base. 15) Trump will employ a “tactical” nuclear weapon—an unprovoked first strike—in an unnecessary war he precipitates without consulting Congress.
Dr. Frank’s observation about there being “no need to list the evidence” seems to fit well with these observations by this self-described and self-congratulatory “uncannily prescient” pundit.
President Trump: Narcissist-in-Chief?
If there is one term that is thought to define President Trump, it is narcissism.14 At first glance the term seems to fit, at least in its common understanding. There is Mr. Trump’s brash and indisputably ostentatious display of his wealth. That is frequently accompanied with a vocabulary of his self-proclaimed accomplishments that seems limited to superlatives. There are also his frequent public fights with those that oppose him. These, and similar items, have given rise to a cottage industry of pundits who define this president’s more complex psychology with a single, overused, and misapplied clinical term.
Single Psychiatric Terms and Complex Psychological Realities
Every president comes into office with their own ambitions, their own strengths and limitations, and their own understandings of the circumstances they face and what to do about them. They also come into office with a distinctive set of psychological characteristics that either help or hinder their navigation of the presidency’s complex demands. These basic considerations clearly apply to Mr. Trump as they do for every president.
Almost all modern presidents share some core psychological elements, like ambition, even though they can differ in the amounts they bring to the office.15 Other traits like significant resilience, substantial reserves of personal energy, or overt public combativeness are less evenly distributed in the general or presidential population. A president’s specific package of psychological traits—say Reconstruction level presidential ambitions, substantial amounts of energy, overt public combativeness and resilience may be very unique indeed. Donald Trump’s constellation of core psychological elements is a case in point.
Consider in this regard just one of Trump’s core traits—his energy levels and sleep patterns.
The following exchange with reporters took place following the president’s physical16:
Q:
How much sleep does he get, on average?
He doesn’t sleep much. I mean, I would say that—you know, this is just my guess based on being around him. I didn’t ask him this question, so I could be wrong on this, but I would say he sleeps four to five hours a night. And I think he’s probably been that way his whole life. That’s probably one of the reasons why he’s been successful, I don’t know.
Trump has commented on his own sleeping habits as follows: “You know, I’m not a big sleeper. I like three hours, four hours, I toss, I turn, I beep-de-beep, I want to find out what’s going on.”17 It’s clear that Trump’s unusual amount of sleep does not interfere with his energy levels.18
This is one of several clearly observable and consequential Trump psychological and leadership traits. It is the analyst’s task to begin to assemble the particular elements that comprise a president’s psychology, ask how they are related, examine their origin and development, and examine how they affect the core elements of presidential performance—leadership and judgment reflected in choice.19 A relentless focus on a single presidential trait is unlikely to provide an adequate account of a president’s psychology or an explanation for his choices, especially if that trait—narcissism in the case of President Trump—is misapplied or poorly understood by those who reflexively reach for it as an explanation.
Trump’s “Unfitness” for the Presidency
The issue of the use or misuse of a single psychological term to characterize a president who is clearly more complex than his caricatures is distinct from the question of what presidential characteristics, or lack therefore, constitute “unfitness” for the office.20 In a previous publication I used the term “psychological suitability” to assess the character unfitness arguments on strictly psychological grounds.21 As analyzed further in Chapter 7, Trump critics however use the term “unfit” to cover a vast range of psychological and political conceptual territory, and make a large number of unfitness claims. They offer numerous and varied reasons why Trump is “unfit,” without much effort to describe or analyze the criteria they use. This does a disservice to an important set of issues for any president, not only for Mr. Trump.
Some criteria of Mr. Trump’s unfitness, like his supposed “TV addiction,”22 seem closer to hyperbole than analysis. Some others raise important questions that it would be useful to discuss, for example, what is adequate preparation for the presidency (see Chapter 9)? Other serious issues like the question of Trump’s impulsiveness23 would also benefit from analysis.
In Trump critics’ view his impatience is a by-product of his narcissism because he needs instant gratification. The same holds true for his supposed impulsiveness. That too supposedly comes from a narcissistic inability to restrain himself. We argue below that there is a distinction between impatience and impulsiveness. They are not synonymous. Moreover, neither is necessarily linked to “narcissism.” Other more fitting explanations are available.
President Trump’s Narcissism, Impulsiveness, and Impatience
Among the many critical analyses of President Trump, concerns about his impulsiveness ranks high. Looking over the first 100 days of the Trump administration, the Wall Street Journal worried—“The most important issue is whether Mr. Trump can discipline his own pattern of setting policy by impulse.”24 Even before then, the ordinarily thoughtful25 foreign policy analyst Robert Kagan worried that, “the thing that ought to keep you up nights as we head into the final 100 days of this campaign, is that the man cannot control himself. He cannot hold back even when it is manifestly in his interest to do so.”26 Impulsiveness is also a cornerstone of the argument that anti-Trump “mental health experts” make against allowing him to remain in office because (see Chapter 7), among other reasons, the “president lacked the ability to make rational decisions.”27
It is true that Mr. Trump can be impulsive. However, part of his impulsiveness is due to his impatience. The two are not synonymous. Impulsiveness reflects an inability to restrain the discharge of impulses. Impatience is not so directly tied to failures of impulse control as it is to ambition’s goals, wanting to accomplish them, and being frustrated by delays, whether intuitional or oppositional. Impatience reflects intelligence’s assessment of what is standing in the way and making a judgment about what to do about that. It is therefore far from mindless instinctual discharge.
Impatience is then a reflection of wanting to do things quickly. That may be directly related to a deep personal need that requires immediate expression, but ordinarily isn’t. Often impatience has more ordinary origins, like the desire to accomplish one’s personal and professional ambitions, especially, as in Trump’s case, when there are a lot of them. Given that fact, it is easy to draw the wrong conclusions about Trump’s impulses and impatience, and many do.
Trump’s Business World: Action, Patience, and Results
Mr. Trump’s singular position at the top of the empire he created required the need for numerous fast paced decisions given the number and range of his projects. Trump is, and has been all his life, highly oriented toward getting results. However, as noted, and echoing a point made by Lincoln, Trump wrote in The Art of the Deal28:
you can’t fool the people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotions, and get all kinds of press and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.
Delivering the goods is of course the basis of Trump’s promise keeper’s strategy (Chapter 5). Delivering the goods is exactly what Trump kept his eye on doing, as a real estate developer and empire builder, even when it took decades for a deal to reach fruition. Examining Trump’s business career, it is clear that he has been able to bide his time and control his impulses, and even his impatience.
In a detailed interview with the Washington Post, Trump recalled the property he owns in Aberdeen, Scotland that became one of his signature golf courses. He said: “Okay. I got it zoned. Nobody believed it. It took me four years, I got it zoned. I then built a golf course.”29 That interview then continued:
But I also got housing, and I have other things. It’s a major development, but I haven’t chosen to do the development because I don’t have time to do it. But if I wanted to do it, or if I wanted to sell the land, or I wanted to do something I could. I’m in no rush. I don’t need to do the housing because I don’t need the money.
There are other examples. One of Trump’s first big projects in Manhattan was a very large complex of apartment buildings and stores on the Upper West Side named Trump City. It was a 150-acre parcel of abandoned Penn Central rail yards, fourteen city blocks long, on which Trump wanted to build the world’s tallest building and largest shopping center, plus 7600 luxury condos. That plan ran into intense opposition from city politicians, community leaders, and activists.30 In a 1989 interview on his plans and the opposition, Trump had this to say31:
No problem. Believe me, if I don’t get the zoning now, I’ll sit back and wait until things get bad in the city, until construction stops and interest rates go up. And then I’ll build it. But I will build it.
He did wait, decades in this case. Eventually, he did build it.32 The final design for the project that was built differed substantially from the original design. However, in thirty years many battles had been fought, lost, and won. Zoning, economics, politics, and administrations had changed. Of course, the design of the project developed and changed. The fact that this gigantic project was built at all remains an accomplishment. The fact that the project changed over thirty years it is not a reflection of what one serial critic alleged, that Trump had “failed.”33
The Trump Presidency: Impatience, Action, Mistakes, Grudging Patience, and the Search for Results
The incremental nature of the American political system is ordinarily guaranteed to stymie exactly the kind of major changes that Mr. Trump envisions for his presidency. Recall the eight policy pillars of American Restoration, Trump’s presidential ambitions: the courts, economic growth and opportunity (including jobs and energy development), de-regulation, health care, immigration, foreign policy, trade, and lifting the fear of discussing many political debate topics (aka “political correctness”). Then further consider the very many policy initiatives that Trump has undertaken within each of those major areas, and one gains some perspective on the enormity of his presidential ambitions.
There is as well the issue of time, or more specifically the reality of the pace of policy change, the limits that imposes, and the lessons of Trump’s experience with getting things done. Looking back on his life in another interview, he wistfully noted, “When I was 38, it was all going to last forever.”34 In the near collapse of his business empire, he apparently learned a basic but searing life lesson. That is one reason why time matters so much to him and he is so impatient.
One early analysis of his presidency noted, “An impatient New Yorker by nature, Mr. Trump has been unable in his first months in office to bend Washington to his ‘you’re fired!’ ways.”35 He is well aware that he has limited time to move his vast agenda forward. As the New York Times headline correctly put it about just one of Mr. Trump’s major areas of presidential initiatives: “Trade Deals Take Years. Trump Wants to Remake Them in Months.”36
Trump is, and has been all his life highly oriented toward getting results and his presidency is no exception. It took time to plan and carry out the Syrian strike.37 It will take months, if not years to work through the recently signed peace accord in Afghanistan.38 The same is true for North Korea.39 Adding to the passage of time is that Mr. Trump’s eight policy pillars strike out in new directions and do not simply repeat what has been repeatedly tried many times in the past. In his view, NATO’s mission does need to evolve, the WTO does need to be reformed, a more skills based immigration policy does need to be enacted, and so on though that list.
There are a number of examples of Trump’s political patience. Consider the president’s attempt to revise or repeal “Obamacare.” After the repeated failures of a Republican Congress to overturn it,40 Trump has patiently and persistently chipped away at its underpinning.41 He signaled his intent to revisit that issue in 2018,42 and has done so,43 but also showed some adjustment on his part to the varied rhythms of the presidency—an adjustment that other presidents have had to make as well.44 When a lower federal court ruled that Obamacare might be wholly unconstitutional without its tax on non-compliance intact, Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to send the case back to the Texas court for further review, and they agreed,45 thus avoiding a high stakes election year fight over the issue. Trump wants to repeal Obamacare, but is capable of biding his political time.
He did, as well, stop short several times of imposing sanctions on Iran to give them, and our allies time to move toward revising the nuclear agreement.46 Regarding North Korea a New York Times analysis concluded that, “So far, Mr. Trump has played his hand militarily, at least as cautiously as his predecessors.”47 On the question of whether or not to declare Mexican drug cartels terrorist organizations (he decided to delay doing so48), Trump said49:
I’ve been working on that for the last 90 days. You know, designation is not that easy. You have to go through a process and we’re well into that process.
Observing Trump’s approach to foreign policy more generally, one analysis was titled,50 “Trump’s ‘no rush’ foreign policy,” and noted that “The president is affording himself ample room for protracted negotiations.” And finally, given all the dire speculations about Trump’s dangerousness as a reason for him to be removed from office (see Chapter 7) because he will get the country into a war to deflect attention from his own failings and political troubles, there is this analysis from the Wall Street Journal—“Trump Steers Clear of War Footing Toward Iran.”51
Trump’s strategy is clearly to set many policy initiatives into motion at one time and deal with each as they develop. Many, like his initiative to North Korea come to the fore, are addressed, and recede to make further progress, if possible later. Others, like the China trade deal continue on in dramatic form until they are at least partially resolved. Other initiatives like immigration policy are essentially holding actions, important as they are, in preparation for major legislative changes that may, or may not, happen.
Trump’s presidential strategy is think big, act decisively across many of the domains of the eight policy pillars, continue to apply varying degrees of pressure to maintain some momentum, reach agreements where possible, and keep moving. It is a considered not an impulsive strategy since it recognizes the elements of policy progress unfolding, if and when they happen, over time.
Trump’s expressed impatience in these circumstances may be strategic as well as real. Trump clearly feels the desire to get things done, but is restrained to some degree by the system he must work within. Trump has learned from his time as president, and it might be said of him that he has graduated from whatever impulsiveness he began his presidency with to impatience.
The Disrupter’s Dilemma
There is no doubt that Mr. Trump’s desire for results has caused problems for him, his presidency, and the public. Unexpected or rapidly made decisions, as a way of insuring that things get done, without preparing staff or the general public are a recipe for dysfunction and stress.52 Trump’s removal of many American troops from northern Syria is one example.53 The botched roll out of the first travel ban is another.54 Yet, he is patiently pursuing a determined legal strategy through the many twists and turns of the various courts to prevail,55 as he must if he is to succeed, within the American constitutional system.
President Trump may wish to move at “Trump speed,” but his government can’t. So there is an inherent trade off, even in the best of political circumstances, which do not describe his realizing reconstructive policy ambitions in Skowronek’s terms,56 and the real time available to such presidential ambitions in one four-year term.
This might be called Trump’s “disruptor’s dilemma.” Policy at Trump speed is necessary given the limited time of a four year term and the number and range of Trump’s restoration ambitions. Yet, acceptance of change requires public explanation and understanding. Restoration at Trump speed attempts to simultaneously serve both those functions. Yet it is unclear it can do so successfully. Public understanding takes time. Solidifying real policy support takes time as well. Yet time is no friend to ambitious presidents, especially those who wish to be “transformative.”
Trump’s presidency is a race against time. The inherently conservative nature of the American political system does not, in ordinary circumstances, lend itself to speed. In these circumstances, political patience is both a necessity and a luxury.
On President Trump’s Narcissism
Trump critics treat the relationship between his narcissism and his psychological unfitness for office as essentially synonymous. They present their psychological/political diagnosis as a syllogism. Trump is narcissistic—therefore he is unfit. That is a logical non sequitur.
Is Donald Trump a “narcissist”? One report says he has been put forward as a “textbook case” since 1988.57 More recently an article entitled “Therapists weigh in” agreed that he is.58 Notice however the way the question is phrased and the way that critics answer. Those weighing in assume that the term accurately describes the whole of Mr. Trump’s psychology, or all that it is necessary to know about it, rather than one element of it.
Moreover, for Trump critics that term is merely the starting point for more serious psychiatric characterizations. Does Trump suffer from a “narcissistic personality disorder”? Yes.59 Worse, “President Trump exhibits classic signs of mental illness, including ‘malignant narcissism,’ shrinks say.”60
Consider further this question and answer: “Is it wrong to say he’s [Trump] mentally ill?” No, it is not because “from a psychiatric point of view the absolute worst-case scenario … if I were to take the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and try to create a Frankenstein’s monster of the most dangerous and destructive leader and had freedom to create any combination of diagnosis and symptoms,” Trump would be the result.61 That is not how diagnosis works. One does not simply search through the DSM and create a fictional diagnosis that fits your assumptions. This is not serious analysis, and the person who put it forward, trained in psychology, should know better.
The “Trump narcissism equals unfitness” syllogism falters on a number of grounds. There is the issue of conceptualizing his psychology as including only this one singular element. There is the issue of the range and weighing of the evidence used to support that single characterization of his psychology. And very importantly, there is the issue of considering alternative explanations and evidence.
Some time ago, Fred Greenstein cautioned political scientists reaching into other, less familiar disciplines, to resolve their own disciplinary conceptual and substantive puzzles. He said that rather than finding ready-made concepts and answers they would actually find unresolved debates about the nature and meaning of the terms they wish to borrow.62 That is certainly true of psychiatric terms and syndromes.
On Clinical and Psychiatric Based Assessments of President Trump
Clinical and psychiatric assessments of individuals are enormously complicated. They involve much debated, highly complex clinical and definitional issues.63 These complexities are not taken into account by those whose personal and political animus against the president has overwhelmed their professional training and judgment.64 Nor are they taken into account by untrained pundits. For example, Richard Greene, a “communication specialist,” writes, “Virtually every mental health professional I interviewed told me that they believed, with 100% certainty, that Mr. Trump satisfied the DSM criteria of this incurable illness and that, as a result, he is a serious danger to the country and the world.” Thus, in the mind of the author and the selective unspecified sample he reports, the matter is settled.65
It would be fair to say that among Trump critics there is widespread agreement that he is a “narcissist.” Yet it would be fair to ask: Just what does that term actually mean? There is no doubt that the trait of narcissism is an important part of Mr. Trump’s psychology. However, that hardly controversial fact raises two more difficult issues.
First, what is the level and nature of Trump’s narcissism? Is it so pervasive as to essentially define his psychology? Former acting CIA director Michael Morell, a Trump opponent and Hillary Clinton supporter put forward his own specific public measurement of Trump’s level of narcissism in an interview. It is tied to no known clinical measure except his own subjective assertion66:
Morell:
What I would say is—you know, I worked for 33 years at CIA. I watched a lot of foreign leaders. There’s a spectrum of narcissism among human beings. Right?
Glasser:
Foreign leaders often—leaders have a lot of it.
Morell:
Leaders of any country, right? They have a lot of it. Right? They are one or two standard deviations to the right of the mean. President Trump is no different from that, and in fact, he might be three or four standard deviations out. Right?
Wrong. Or, at least unknowable without some more firmly grounded metric other than Mr. Morrell’s blatant anti-Trump animus, and equally blatant public political support of his opponent. A second related question is this: what is the relationship between Trump’s narcissism and his capacity for successful presidential performance? Does the existence or level of his narcissism preclude political success, or even disqualify him from continuing in office?
Varieties of Narcissism: Normal and Pathological
The answer to these questions turns on the difference that psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and clinicians draw between “healthy”67 and “pathological”68 narcissism. As the Harvard historian of narcissism, Elizabeth Lunbeck, points out69:
The fact is that narcissism is actually a remarkably protean concept. In clinicians’ hands, it refers to a broad range of behaviors and dispositions, encompassing traits both desirable and supportive of worldly success (ambition, self-confidence) on the one hand and despicable and undermining of that success (ruthlessness, a lack of empathy) on the other.
Along similar lines, Elsa F. Ronningstam points out that70:
the importance of normal narcissist functioning for individual mental health and capacity to live an optimal life has mostly been taken for granted. Healthy narcissism functions as the sense of the right to one’s life, striving for the best in life, appreciation of health and beauty, an ability to compete as well as to protect and defend oneself … to manage challenges, successes and changes; to overcome defeat, illness, trauma, and losses; to love and be productive and creative; and to experience happiness, satisfaction and the course of one’s life.
The psychiatrist Heinz Kohut summarizes the crux of this understanding as follows: “The establishment of the narcissistic self must be evaluated both as a maturationally pre-determined step and as a developmental accomplishment.”71 In his view, narcissism is a necessary ingredient for the capacity to live a well realized life of meaning and accomplishment. It has its own developmental trajectory in each person’s life history that helps to determine whether or not they are able to overcome obstacles on the way to achieving this “accomplishment.”
The obvious question here is: how do you tell “ordinary”72 “healthy”73 narcissism, from its pathological counterpart? This is a difficult and complex question. Otto Kernberg, one of the most important psychiatric thinkers of his generation, writing on that differential diagnosis question points out that “within each culture there are norms for the degree to which the goals of beauty, power and wealth are legitimately and rightfully pursued.”74 He continues, “to exceed cultural limits is to enter the territory of Criterion 2 in the DSM-IV definition of NPD [narcissistic personality disorder] with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love.”
Or consider Criterion1 of the NPD. That reads: “has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievement”).75 It does not seem to be particularly difficult in many cases to distinguish actual accomplishments from what might be called “pseudo-achievements.” Would building, losing, and rebuilding a multi-billion dollar worldwide business empire or winning a literally astounding election to the presidency of the United States against monumental odds, qualify as real and not “pseudo” achievements. It would seem so.
Adding to the complexity of assessing the consequences of narcissism is the empirical evidence that even a substantial level of narcissism that might be considered “pathological,” for example, so-called “grandiose narcissism” is not necessarily positively related to presidential unfitness. Watts et al. calculated objective measures of presidential success of forty-two presidents and the ratings of presidential experts using a clinically developed and empirically validated measure of narcissism. Among their major findings: “grandiose narcissism is tied to independently rated and objective indicators of presidential success.”76 Keep in mind that whatever else “grandiose narcissism,” might mean it is ordinarily in the clinical range quite a degree higher than “ordinary narcissism.”
Trump opponents have no interest in examining questions or research studies like the ones above. They simply add an adjective (“pathological”77 or “malignant”78) before the noun narcissism to characterize Trump and presto, they believe they have an instant psychiatric diagnosis of “mental illness.” No further analysis or evidence needed. Nor are they at all interested in alternative explanations or evidence to the conclusions with which they begin .
Trump’s Narcissism: Weighing the Evidence, Considering Alternative Formulations
The hallmark of someone with a “narcissistic personality disorder” is “an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others.”79 Again, this seems on a first superficial glance, like a definition tailor made to fit Mr. Trump, and many, without much further reflection, have used it that way.
Don’t Mr. Trump’s repetitive superlatives—“huge,” “great,” “biggest,” “wonderful,” “historic,” all reflect his inflated self-importance?80 Doesn’t his branding of everything from steaks to towers reflect his need, indeed his entitled demand for name recognition? Maybe. However, Ronningstam writes: “Due to its association with pathological narcissism, that is to, unrealistic and exaggerated overbearing interpersonal demandingness, entitlement as a fundamental healthy aspect of normal narcissism and normal life functioning tends to be easily disregarded.” She continues, “normal entitlement refers to an inner experience of oneself as an agent of one’s own intentions and actions and to expectations of predicable and reasonable responses.”81 In other words, at some basic level an ordinary sense of “entitlement,” to be treated fairly for example, is not a reflection of pathology, but of (healthy) self-concern and self-respect.
Doesn’t Trump’s insistence on using his own family name for the branding of his buildings and products reflect a demand for recognition and admiration? One Trump critic notes82:
There’s the compulsive promotion of the Trump name. Other giants of commerce and industry use their own names sparingly—even when they’re businesspeople who have the opportunity to turn themselves from a person into a brand … But the Trump name is everywhere in the Trump world, and there’s a reason for that. You can look at something you’ve built with quiet pride and know it’s yours, or you can look at it worriedly, insecurely, fretting that someone, somewhere may not know that you created it—diminishing you in the process. And so you stamp what you build with two-story letters identifying who you are—like a child writing his name on a baseball glove—just to make sure there’s no misunderstanding.
This critic conflates a branding strategy with a pathological psychological trait suggesting that a very accomplished adult acts like a five year old child.
Don’t Trump’s repeated and often personal attacks on his rivals and opponents show a lack of empathy? Perhaps, to some degree, but one can also ask whether unrelenting attacks merit or sometimes require a response. There are as well the psychological issues of being attacked and not fighting back that we have already touched upon.
The general answers to all three of these questions is generally no. Many presidents have their own favorite superlatives.83 Trump’s branding is less a reflection of his narcissism than a business tool that he is able to discard when not needed.84 Fighting back against those who attack you, sometimes savagely as in Trump’s case, pits empathy for those who are doing it against your own self-respect and integrity.
Fighting back when you are repeatedly attacked, often on factually flimsy grounds, is a matter of self-preservation as well as self-respect.85 The psychiatrist Michael Stone writes, “There will be occasions in the lives of most people when the ability to be assertive and if survival is seriously threatened aggressive are vital.” Question: Does the all out, by any means necessary opposition-inspired war against Mr. Trump’s candidacy and presidency,86 including violent national anti-Trump protests after he won election87 strenuous efforts to keep him from taking office,88 efforts to then remove him from office,89 and all those other efforts already detailed (see Chapter 3) constitute a serious survival threat to his presidency? Do they require, if Trump is to have any chance of achieving his Restoration purposes, an “assertive,” even “aggressive” response?
The Trump Brand as Narcissism
It’s understandable that many Trump opponents think they have found indisputable evidence of his narcissism in his superlative descriptions of his many business initiatives and successes. What they have done however is conflate the by-products of Mr. Trump’s branding strategy with his character. That turns out to be an illustration not so much of rampant, out of control narcissism, but of Trump’s capacity for innovation.
After running into severe liquidity troubles with some of his businesses, Mr. Trump engineered a successful repositioning of his highly leveraged building empire to one increasingly built primarily on his brand name. It was an innovative corporate strategy at the time that Trump developed it. No one else had ever thought of marketing real estate that way. It was another career illustration of Trump’s capacity for creativity and his resilience. Big, bold, brash, and successful were its sales themes. Mr. Trump’s cascade of superlative descriptions is consistent with the strategy of building that brand’s cachet. And he carried that strategy into the 2016 presidential campaign and on into the White House.
It is also understandable that Trump’s psychology would be conflated with his persona. Several Washington Post reporters who spent over twenty hours interviewing Trump for their biography of him had this to say: “Even after all those hours of interviews, Trump seemed not quite real, a character he had built to enhance his business empire, a construct designed to be at once an everyman and an impossibly high-flying king of Manhattan, an avatar of American riches.”90
Candidate Trump: Seeking Adulation or Something Else?
In a typical use of psychiatric jargon to attack Mr. Trump and his followers, one psychologist writes, “Demagogues and fascists require an admiring mob, and Trump thrives in co-dependence with an undereducated, aggrieved crowd who will never call him out.”91 There are many conceptual and logical problems with applying this idea to Mr. Trump. One immediate issue is that many presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama being two among many, understandably drew emotional support when their efforts are favorably responded to in public or private settings. This is ordinarily a matter of validation, not a necessary reflection of “pathological narcissism.” In any event, that dynamic is by no means President Trump’s alone.
Moreover, the desire to be recognized for what you have accomplished, to “leave one’s mark” is, according to the psychiatrist Michael Stone,92 “an almost universal human desire, whether this takes the form of a graffiti’s artist’s wall signature or a mural by Diego Rivera.” Karen Horney pointed out early in clinical discussions of narcissism that, “it is not narcissistic for a person to value a quality in himself which he actually possesses or to like to be valued by others.”93 The question that arises here is whether Trump has any actual accomplishments for which he might legitimately ask to be validated. The critics answer to this question is: few if any. A more reasoned and reasonable assessment is that Trump has many notable successes in his business and political ventures as well as some substantial setbacks.
It’s possible of course that Mr. Trump’s run for office was a reflection of the narcissist’s need to find an admiring audience. During the presidential campaign, one observer building on this idea made the startling prediction that, “Given his personality type, I think he is exhibiting signs of intense frustration that comes from the diminishing amounts of undeserved adulation he received during his primary run. And that may very well lead him to simply take his ball and go home.”94 That obviously didn’t happen, raising doubts regarding the premise responsible for the prediction.
The suggestion that Mr. Trump was so much in need of adoration that he was willing to leave a very comfortable and successful business and entertainment career has a number of conceptual and factual difficulties. It would have required Trump to take a gigantic risk with the odds substantially against him in order to win an election and have access to the cheering multitudes. This is the most basic flaw in this formulation—aside from the enormous risk of the very public failure of an unsuccessful presidential campaign.
There were more risks if he won. He would then immediately have to produce very real results to a highly expectant audience of supporters. Otherwise, he would alienate the very people who elected him. Support, much less adoration, would then be in short supply.
Why take the chance and leave a successful nation-wide television show that comes complete with celebrity status and its accompanying adulation and huge financial rewards, for the harsh uncertainties of political life for which you have no experience? This doesn’t sound like a good percentage play. It wasn’t unless something else besides Mr. Trump’s supposed narcissism and need for adulation was in play. There was.
Considering Alternatives to “Pathological Narcissism”: Respect and Validation
It is not love that President Trump wants, a common but mistaken assumption,95 but respect. The “needy narcissist” formulation completely ignores an alternative formulation that fits the facts of Mr. Trump’s developmental history and psychology much better. That alternative theory can be summed up in the title of Aretha Franklin’s iconic song R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
Trump traces his childhood roots from the out-borough of Queens into the sophisticated heights of Manhattan. When Trump was trying to acquire the land on which he built Trump Tower,
he first proposed buying the site, occupied by Bonwit Teller and owned by the Equitable Life Assurance Company, and found that there are 29 more years on the lease. He called Genesco Inc., owner of Bonwit’s, for eight years, asking to buy the lease. “They literally laughed at me,” Mr. Trump recalls. Learning through a major stockholder that the conglomerate was cash-hungry, Mr. Trump called again and was sold the lease.
Mr. Trump proved his critics wrong. He relentlessly pursued the land on which Trump Tower now sits. He also went after and acquired the Plaza Hotel because it added tradition and class to his holdings, and to his efforts to be a major political player,96 again a quest for respect.
Years later, President Obama mocked97 Mr. Trump’s political efforts and he wasn’t the only one. Others like Mitt Romney, tried to gain Mr. Trump’s financial support, but never took him seriously.98 Others called Mr. Trump a “clown candidate.”99 As Mr. Trump noted before the New Hampshire primary, “A lot of people have laughed at me over the years. Now they’re not laughing so much, I’ll tell you.”100
Mr. Trump, like many of us, has been seeking recognition, not admiration like the narcissist, for his accomplishments .
Why Trump Ran for President: Considering Several Explanations
Why did Trump run for president? Like almost all recent presidential candidates, Trump ran for a combination of reasons that included his views of the country’s state and his own more personal motivations. The specifics of Mr. Trump’s presidential motivations reveal some surprises.
Like many other aspects of the Trump presidency, his motives for wanting to be president are seen by his opponents as obviously base and suspect. Some said he really didn’t want the role.101 Some speculated he really wanted to build a media empire.102 Others speculated that he didn’t expect to get very far and was now stuck with the office.103 Still others thought it was payback for a lifetime of being mocked from various establishment elites in the business and political world.104 Many, as noted, saw it as a chance for him to gain public adulation.
For a number of major news commentators it was about making more money. According to Fareed Zakaria, “The Republican Party has given itself up to a single family and its business interests.”105 Asked about Trump’s business interests while he’s president, Trump biographer and critic Timothy O’Brien said, “Oh my god, it’ll be the first thing on his mind when he wakes up in the morning.”106
David Frum wrote107:
Trump’s goal is not to be a “successful president” in the usual sense of that term. It’s obvious by now that he doesn’t have much of a policy agenda. He has a personal agenda, and that agenda is going rather well. The Trump brand is thriving.
In short, Trump ran for the presidency for the most squalid reasons, either for the money or his own narcissism, and the country be dammed. Those characterizations, however, are inconsistent with Trump’s decades of complaints about a number of American policies and his concern that they were hurting the country and many of its citizens.
Mr. Trump has said, “I don’t need to do this, I have a wonderful life. I have a great, great company … I wanted to do it, because somebody has to do it … Our country is in trouble.”108 The first part of that statement seems objectively true from the outside. Yet, one can credit Trump’s sincerity about love of country and wanting to help it in its time of trouble, without necessarily taking all his stated reasons fully at face value. Trump’s motives are complex and not wholly devoid of self-interest, although that self- interest is not financial.
Trump’s Presidential Motivations Reconsidered: Trump’s Counter Narrative Policy Views
At a January 2016 political rally Trump admitted, “My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy.”109 That sounds like O’Brien, Frum, and Zakaria might be right.
Yet, in the very next sentence of that speech Mr. Trump said, “But now I want to be greedy for the United States. I want to grab all that money. I’m going to be greedy for the United States.” That is certainly not the most uplifting or inspirational presidential rhetoric, but it makes the point about Mr. Trump that “he’s in for you … for us,” as opposed to himself.
Mr. Trump “made his first political speech in New Hampshire in 1987. In Portsmouth he attacked American trading partners and allies in ways that sound familiar today.”110 In a 1988 interview with a Japanese TV anchor he said, “I’m not interested now in presidency but if I see the leaders still being stupid I might.”111 In a 1990 interview Mr. Trump said, “I don’t want to be President. I’m 100 percent sure. I’d change my mind only if I saw this country continue to go down the tubes.”112
That is apparently exactly what he saw. Interestingly, in early 1990 when he gave that interview, Gallup found that 55% of its survey respondents were “satisfied with the way things are going in this county at this time.” By January 2015, when Mr. Trump announced his candidacy for the presidency,113 that number stood at 32%.114 Apparently by the time he had decided to run, Mr. Trump had concluded both that the country was headed in the wrong direction and was sinking, and many Americans agreed with him.
Never one to miss an opportunity to offer some hyperbole in order to inflate a basic insight, Mr. Trump put it this way in an early interview with Megyn Kelly before his official announcement: “I want to make this country great again. This country is a hellhole, and we’re going down fast.”115 Donald Trump is not the first presidential candidate to believe the country is going in the wrong direction, needs help righting its course, while believing they would be the president who could accomplish that. That is a basic staple of almost every presidential candidacy. Still, Trump’s skeptical views on American foreign and domestic policy have been a consistent, reoccurring theme over the last two decades. In reality, the political handwriting of his presidential run has been on the wall for many years.
A Shift in the Meaning of Trump’s Life
It seems clear that on the personal motivation level, Mr. Trump was running partially for respect. It’s also clear that his disagreements with long standing policy premises were also instrumental in fueling his run. Yet, in that 2016 speech admitting to greed, Mr. Trump also revealed something else that has escaped notice. The purpose of his life had changed.
In a very revealing interview with the New York Times, Mr. Trump was pressed about giving up his large empire so that he would be able to spend more time with his children116:
Unknown Times Reporter:
You could sell your company though, right? With all due respect, you could sell your company and then …
Trump:
Well …
Unknown Times Reporter:
And then you could see them [his children] all the time.
Trump:
That’s a very hard thing to do, you know what, because I have real estate. I have real estate all over the world, which now people are understanding … I’d say this, and I mean this and I said it on “60 Minutes” the other night: My company is so unimportant to me relative to what I’m doing, ’cause I don’t need money, I don’t need anything …
Unknown Times Reporter:
Mr. President-elect …
Trump:
Just a minute, because it’s an important question … But I just want to say that I am given the right to do something so important in terms of so many of the issues we discussed, in terms of health care, in terms of so many different things. I don’t care about my company. It doesn’t matter. My kids run it …
And then this:
[Thomas] Friedman:
I came here thinking you’d be awed and overwhelmed by this job, but I feel like you are getting very comfortable with it.
Trump:
I feel comfortable. I feel comfortable. I am awed by the job, as anybody would be, but I honestly, Tom, I feel so comfortable and you know it would be, to me, a great achievement if I could come back here in a year or two years and say — and have a lot of the folks here say, “You’ve done a great job.” And I don’t mean just a conservative job, ’cause I’m not talking conservative. I mean just, we’ve done a good job.
To summarize: a man who has spent his life building a successful business empire and chasing financial success says in this New York Times interview (and previously in a Sixty Minutes interview117) that he no longer cares about his company or chasing financial success. Rather he cares about the issues he can have an impact on as president, and wants the New York Times to recognize that. Respect and validation indeed!
In many of his speeches and rallies Trump expresses the view that the country is going in the wrong direction with its basic policies and their assumptions, and that his new life’s purpose is doing something about that. Mr. Trump comes across as an American nationalist with an observable, if bombastic, love of his country. Obviously, a love of country is inconsistent with real “pathological narcissism,” where there is no room for love of anybody or anything else but yourself. Mr. Trump is unlikely to ever make the pivot to a quieter more conventional political persona. However, at the level of his life’s fundamental purpose he had apparently changed, and very dramatically. There was, as well, something else.
Trump’s Decision to Run for President: The Lure of a New Personal Challenge
Why did Mr. Trump seek the presidency? The most obvious answer is contained in his many critical commentaries and broadsides, made over decades, against the policies and political direction of the country. On trade, on immigration, on regulations and the economy, and on American foreign policies and our allies, Mr. Trump has been a consistent, though not deeply informed critic.
At the same time, looking back over two decades, it seems clear that Mr. Trump has been slowly but consistently testing the waters for a major political leadership role. His dissatisfaction with the way the country was being run is clearly one long-standing theme underlying that interest.
Yet there is more to Mr. Trump’s motivation for seeking the presidency than his long-standing and apparently genuine distress at the direction of American politics and policies. There is even more to it than his desire to be respected and validated for what he sees as his skills and accomplishments. Mr. Trump has always liked, indeed needed, a large challenge to match his large ambitions and talents.
That manifested itself first in his move out of Queens into Manhattan and the building of the Trump real-estate empire there. It then extended outward to his numerous acquisitions—airlines, casinos, football teams, and so on. Building his business empire was his first greatest challenge and success.
He then almost totally destroyed that empire through a loss of focus and what he characterizes as his “complacency.”118 Yet he fought back and in so doing demonstrated the skill, perseverance, and resilience necessary to rebuild an even greater business empire. That was Mr. Trump’s second, and to that point, greatest challenge and ultimate success.
Yet, for a restless, talented, ambitious man who had scaled, tumbled, and regained his footing at the Mt. Everest level of business success, one more hotel licensing agreement no longer held the satisfaction or the challenge that it had before. There was a hint of this restless ambition in an interview with Mr. Trump in 2004. Asked by Larry King why he had decided to do the TV show The Apprentice, this exchange took place119:
King:
Your reason for doing it was?
Trump:
Fun. Hey, I’m building buildings all over the place. Let’s do something different. It’s fun. I’m having fun doing it.
And what greater challenge could one imagine than putting oneself forward as a presidential candidate, with no political experience or standing? What greater challenge could there be than running against a crowded primary field containing many political heavyweights? What bigger personal and political challenge could there then be than to run against an enormously experienced, well connected Democratic candidate—potentially the first woman president—for the purpose of helping to restore a country being pulled apart by tendentious politics, failed policies and premises, and rampant public distrust of government and its leaders? It was a very high risk, high nerve, high courage move in which the chances of success were small and the likelihood of devastating public failure almost a certainty—a Trump-sized challenge, if you will.
Notes
1.
Harold D. Lasswell. 1948. Power and Personality. New York: Norton.
2.
Roger Cohen. 2017. “The Abnormal Presidency of Donald Trump,” New York Times, January 31.
3.
James Hamblin. 2016. “Donald Trump: Sociopath?” Atlantic, July 20.
4.
Democratic Representative Steve Cohen quoted in Brandon Carter. 2018. “Dem: Trump ‘Most Despicable Human Being’ to Serve as President,” The Hill, January 1.
5.
Stephen F. Hayes. 2016. “Donald Trump Is Crazy, and So Is the GOP for Embracing Him,” Weekly Standard, July 22.
6.
Jennifer Rubin. 2016. “Trump Spews Crazy Talk—And He’s Not Alone,” Washington Post, October 14.
7.
Erin C. Cassese. 2016. “Here Are 3 Insights into Why Some People Think Trump Is a ‘Monster’,” Washington Post, October 31.
8.
Gabriel Schoenfeld. 2017. “What If Trump Loses His Mind?” USA TODAY, January 29.
9.
Michael Gerson. 2016. “Trump Spirals into Ideological Psychosis,” Washington Post, October 17.
10.
Jerome A. Frank MD. 2018. Trump on the Couch. Inside the Mind of the President New York: Avery.
11.
http://www.obamaonthecouch.com/blog. March 5, 2018.
12.
https://www.change.org/p/trump-is-mentally-ill-and-must-be-removed.
13.
https://www.facebook.com/aduty2warn/posts/1478289152340448?__xts__[0]=68.ARBNJNhZdPq8h1Y-FEA9fdcYAVbqBdUs4L-ohhDJo09jd8Q_xTPNytLPtwD4we0dcOMVh5fygbvpuPMYnSSfaezgYme-3HH4lrwO0DSmaeRZ4mAxxUp1pUJspO-Z3RtTtF0HVi5DIPmb6PUEPMcKyB8yBhHRIcDz8aJCoKfcDhk31QWT6rvTBzuFZAhIQlvuVQ41qAuq-43L0h46hOjhhKpwO4V2Bwp1qtMXIpR7cLBN50Fokl3BL5oquCu39HgRSmFZPU3UMtyPN3NKUiTNfKfWVUDNrAQWOnU7DBksx1uJR5IapOzMsDIxmnp_fA9WEtV9X-jVXRpROnjLB9Pdog&__tn__=-R.
14.
Seth D. Norrholm. 2016. “Diagnosing the Trump Phenomenon,” USA TODAY, March 23, November 24.
15.
One clear distinction is between those presidents who wish to be “good” and those who aspire to be “great.” See Stanley A. Renshon. 2017. “Doing Well vs. Being Great: Comparing the Bush and Obama Doctrines,” in Meenekshi Bose (ed.), The Constitution, Politics, and Policy Making in the George W. Bush Presidency, Volume I, pp. 101–118. Washington, DC: Nova Press.
16.
Press Briefing. 2018. “Press Briefing by Press Secretary Sarah Sanders and Dr. Ronny Jackson,” The White House, January 16, p. 60.
17.
Trump quoted in Abby Lange. 2016. “Donald Trump’s 4-Hour Sleep Habit Could Explain His Personality,” The Daily Beast, April 2.
18.
David Jackson. 2016. “Trump Conducts Election Eve Campaign Marathon,” USA TODAY, November 7.
19.
Stanley Renshon. 1996a [1998]. High Hopes: The Clinton Presidency and the Politics of Ambition. New York: New York University Press [Routledge Press]; Stanley Renshon. 1996. The Psychological Assessment of Presidential Candidates. New York: New York University Press, Chapter 8.
20.
An extensive conceptual and empirical analysis of the various psychological, political, and temperamental aspects of “fitness” is beyond the scope of this chapter.
21.
Renshon 1996 [1998], chapters 1 and 2.
22.
Emily Joffe. 2017. “Is Donald Trump a TV Addict?” Politico, July 7.
23.
Ramesh Ponnuru. 2016. “How Clinton Can Demolish Trump,” Bloomberg, May 26.
24.
Editorial. 2017. “Trump’s Next 200 Days,” Wall Street Journal, April 27.
25.
One recent Kagan op-ed though is titled: “Trump is the GOP’s Frankenstein monster. Now he’s strong enough to destroy the party.” See Robert Kagan. 2016. “Trump Is the GOP’s Frankenstein Monster: Now He’s Strong Enough to Destroy the Party,” Washington Post, February 25.
26.
Robert Kagan. 2016. “There Is Something Very Wrong with Donald Trump,” Washington Post, August 1.
27.
World Mental Health Coalition. 2019. Petition to the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives,” December 5.
28.
Donald J. Trump [with Tony Schwartz]. 1987. Trump: The Art of the Deal. New York: Random House, p. 60.
29.
Washington Post. 2016. “Interview with Donald Trump,” Washington Post, May 13, emphasis added.
30.
Eliot Brown. 2018. “Remember Trump City?” New York Observer, August 5.
31.
Trump quoted in Glenn Plaskin. 1989. “Trump: ‘The People’s Billionaire’,” Chicago Tribune, March 12.
32.
33.
Michael Kruse. 2018. “The Lost City of Trump,” Politico, July–August.
34.
Trump quoted in Mark Bowden. 1977. “Trumpster Stages the Comeback of a Lifetime,” Playboy, May.
35.
Michael D. Shear, Charlie Savage, and Maggie Haberman. 2017. “Trump Attacks Rosenstein in Latest Rebuke of Justice Department,” New York Times, June 16.
36.
Keith Bradsher. 2018. “Trade Deals Take Years: Trump Wants to Remake Them in Months,” New York Times, March 28.
37.
Peter Nicholas, Gordon Lubold, and Dion Nissenbaum. 2018. “For Trump, a Hectic Week of Planning to Organize Syria Strike,” Wall Street Journal, April 13.
38.
Mujib Mashal. 2020. “Taliban and U.S. Strike Deal to Withdraw American Troops from Afghanistan,” New York Times, February 29; see also Dan De Luce, Courtney Kube, and Mushtaq Yusufzai. 2018. “Impatient Trump Drives U.S. Push for Peace Talks in Afghanistan,” NBC News, July 30.
39.
John Hudson, Josh Dawsey, and Carol D. Leonnig. 2018. “In Private, Trump Vents Frustration over Lack of Progress on North Korea,” Washington Post, July 22.
40.
Rachael Roubein. 2017. “TIMELINE: The GOP’s Failed Effort to Repeal ObamaCare,” The Hill, September 26.
41.
Robert Pear and Reed Abelson. 2017. “Foiled in Congress, Trump Moves on His Own to Undermine Obamacare,” New York Times, October 11.
42.
David Jackson and Deirdre Shesgreen. 2018. “President Trump’s Ambitious Agenda: 7 Things to Watch in 2018,” USA TODAY, January 1.
43.
Tami Luhby. 2018. “Trump Officials Roll Out New Rule for Small Business Health Insurance Plans,” CNN, June 19.
44.
Gerald Seib. 2017. “What Trump’s Early Days Tell Us About His Path Forward,” Wall Street Journal, April 27.
45.
Susannah Luthi. 2020. “Supreme Court Will Hear Major Challenge to Obamacare,” Politico, March 2.
46.
Mark Lander. 2018. “On Foreign Policy, President Trump Reverts to Candidate Trump,” New York Times, April 3.
47.
David E. Sanger and William J. Broad. 2017. “A Cuban Missile Crisis in Slow Motion in North Korea,” New York Times, April 16.
48.
Christopher Mele and Kirk Semple. 2019. “Trump Says He Will Delay Terrorist Designation for Mexican Cartels,” New York Times, December 6.
49.
Jessica Donati and José de Córdoba. 2019. “Trump Says U.S. to Designate Mexican Drug Cartels as Terrorists,” Wall Street Journal, November 27.
50.
Andrew Restuccia. 2019. “Trump’s ‘No Rush’ Foreign Policy,” Politico, June 22.
51.
Michael C. Bender, Jessica Donati, and Lindsay Wise. 2019. “Trump Steers Clear of War Footing Toward Iran,” Wall Street Journal, September 18.
52.
Vivian Salama and Nancy A. Youssef. 2018. “Trump’s Order on Migrant Families Sends Administration Scrambling,” Wall Street Journal, June 22.
53.
Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Eric Schmidt. 2018. “Pentagon Considers Using Special Operations Forces to Continue Mission in Syria,” New York Times, December 21.
54.
Aaron Blake. 2017. “Trump’s Travel Ban Is Causing Chaos—And Putting His Unflinching Nationalism to the Test,” Washington Post, January 29; see also Ron Nixon. 2018. “Travel Ban Caught Homeland Security by Surprise, Report Concludes,” New York Times, January 19.
55.
Adam Liptak. 2018. “Supreme Court to Consider Challenge to Trump’s Latest Travel Ban,” New York Times, January 19.
56.
Stephen Skowronek. 1977. The Politics that Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton, revised ed. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
57.
Jeva Lange. 2015. “Psychologists Having Been Using Donald Trump as an Example of Narcissism Since 1988,” This Week, September 25.
58.
Henry Alford. 2015. “Is Donald Trump Actually a Narcissist? Therapists Weigh in!” Vanity Fair, November 11.
59.
Nigel Barber. 2016. “Does Trump Suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder?” Psychology Today, August 10, 2016.
60.
Gersh Kuntzman. 2107. “President Trump Exhibits Classic Signs of Mental Illness, Including ‘Malignant Narcissism,’ Shrinks Say,” New York Daily News, January 29. See also Jerrold M. Post and Stephanie Doucette. 2019. Dangerous Charisma: The Political Psychology of Donald Trump and His Followers. New York: Pegasus Books, p. 7.
61.
John Gardner, a psychologist, and founder of “Duty to Warn” an organization dedicated to having President Trump removed from office because of his unfitness, quoted in Emily Willingham. 2107. “The Trump Psych Debate: Is It Wrong to Say He’s Mentally Ill?” Forbes, February 19.
62.
Fred I. Greenstein. 1969. Personality and Politics: Problems of Evidence, Inference, and Conceptualization. Chicago: Markham, 1969, pp. 12–13.
63.
Two recent articles on the major issues surrounding the American Psychiatric Associations Revision (DSM-5) of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) were recently published on line in which twenty-four psychiatrists with diverse views engaged each other in trying to answer the following six most essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis including the nature and definition of a mental disorder and the validation of evidence used to support these formulations. See James Phillips, Allen Frances, Michael A. Cerullo, John Chardavoyne, Hannah S. Decker, Michael B. First, Nassir Ghaemi, Gary Greenberg, Andrew C. Hinderlighter, Warren A. Kinghorn, Stephen G. LoBello, Elliot B. Martin, Aaron L. Mishara, Joel Paris, Joesph M. Pierre, Ronald W. Pies, Harold A. Pincus, Douglas Porter, Clair Pouncey, Michael A. Schwartz, Thomas Szasz, Jerome C. Wakefield, G. Scott Waterman, Owen Whooley, and Peter Zacher. 2012. “The Six Most Essential Questions in Psychiatric Diagnosis: A Pluralogue Part 2: Issues of Conservatism and Pragmatism in Psychiatric Diagnosis,” Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine: PEHM, 7, 8.
64.
Cf., Matthew Lee. 2017. “AP FACT CHECK: Overlooking Doubts on Syria Chemical Weapons,” ABC News, April 10.
65.
Richard Greene. 2017. “Is Donald Trump Mentally Ill? 3 Professors of Psychiatry Ask President Obama to Conduct ‘a Full Medical and Neuropsychiatric Evaluation’,” Huffington Post, December 18.
66.
Morell quoted in Susan B. Glasser. 2017. “Ex-Spy Chief: Russia’s election hacking was an ‘intelligence failure’,” Politico, September 11, emphasis added.
67.
Heinz Kohut MD. 1971. The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic Approach to the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders. New York: International University Press; see also Heinz Kohut MD. 1977. The Restoration of the Self. New York: International University Press.
68.
Otto Kernberg MD. 1975. Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism. New York: Jason Aronson; see also Otto Kernberg MD. 1980. Internal World and External Reality: Object Relations Theory Applied. New York: Jason Aronson, p. 14.
69.
Elizabeth Lunbeck. 2017. “The Allure of Trump’s Narcissism,” Los Angeles Review of Books, August 1, emphasis added; see also Elizabeth Lunbeck. 2014. The Americanization of Narcissism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
70.
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81.
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98.
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99.
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100.
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102.
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108.
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116.
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