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Salvador Harguindey MD., PhD., Institute for Clinical Biology and Metabolism, Medical Oncology, Neurodegenerative Diseases and Endocrinology. Former Member of ATP (Association for Transpersonal Psychology), USA and Honorary Professor of Medicine, Madrid University, Spain. blog: salvadorharguindey.blogspot.com (Books and novels in Amazon published under the name of Salvador Harguindey)

Donald Trump's psychopathy

Salvador Harguindey

In his essay “Wotan”, psychologist Carl Jung defined the personality of Adolf Hitler as “malignant narcissism”, adding that his election by a overwhelming majority was not by chance but secondary to the fact that he was the worst of the German people at the time. A worrisome parallelism is taking place with the current president of the United States. The reason for his election seems to rest in what American film director Robert Altman said: that the United States is sinking towards total stupidity, something that it was probably demonstrated by the double election of George W. Bush.

Modern psychology accepts that at the bottom of the psychopathic phenomenon lays a particularly aggressive pathological narcissism. A form of narcissism that intermingles with the, so called, “Peter Pan Syndrome”, a twin brother of the “Donald Trump Syndrome”. Its main characteristics are haughtiness, chauvinism, hatred and contempt for the different, whether regarding race, culture, social and/or economic situation, a complete lack of empathy—a key characteristic of every psychopath—, absence of compassion and respect for others, and even a great deal of aggressiveness towards the weaker and poorer. The latter are not seen as human beings equal in dignity but as victims of megalomaniac and sadomasochistic destructive measures, something that this president shares with classical Nazism. His extraordinarily inflated and sick ego, shown by his haughty and stiff-upper-lip facial expression force him to present himself to the world with an exhibitionistic, besides frivolous and fictitious, anti-natural attitude, as if he were the center of the universe. His need to feel continually admired and blindly obeyed, apart from a restless effort to create dependencies and submissions, makes him value the opinions of only those that agree with him and praise, exalt him and follow without complaining his conflictive and sometimes wrathful belligerence.

“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue, shoot
somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters.”

This kind of extreme narcissistic personality absolutely needs to dominate and exert a complete and totalitarian control of both his close environment and outer relational world. This gives him a sense of omnipotence while he tries to convince others that all external reality is and should be exactly as he wants it to be. To achieve this, he has no qualms about endangering humanity with nuclear extinction through sentences as childish and stupid as “my nuclear button is bigger than yours”, a message to that other kid of North Korea in a bilateral dialectic war between both countries.

Such structure of delirious thinking is known in psychology as “pseudologia fantastica”. It belongs to certain beings that, after years of practice, end up believing in their own lies at the same time that, like envisioning a desert mirage, they confuse external reality with the contents of their dangerously diseased consciousness. They also are most skilled in bending people to their own will, while they find it impossible to accept that others, even members of their own family, do not completely agree with their opinions and dictates, many times becoming domineering husbands and totalitarian fathers. In this context, they can react most aggressively and violently to a slight annoyance, thus becoming dangerous even to their closest relatives. In the social-political area, violence can go from dialectic to physical (trying to censor the press, insulting and despising journalists, threatening any enemy, real or a paranoid invention, etc.). In all these cases, many attitudes are expressed with a rage and hatred foreign to any healthy mind and personality.

The next stage of a man with a psychopathic-narcissistic personality disorder and megalomaniac tendencies is to consider that the world is a stage where he and his deformed and inflated ego are the stars of every show and the rest of humankind nothing more than his audience. In this kind of person any disapproval of their actions induces a persecutory mania. Sensing any kind of possible danger, be it real or imagined, he will always try to be one step ahead, pursuing anybody that gets in his way with utmost fury, accepting only those who serve and gratify his ego. The systematic deformation of reality leads to illusions plus mirages (delusions), where he disguises what is unreal and non-existent as geniality while fills himself with the feeling that he is highly intelligent and priceless. This creates a world that only oozes superficiality, materialism and a profound lack of any kind of culture, much less a refined cultural background and education.

The man is accompanied by feelings of an infantilized and Peter Panesque self-awarded grandiosity and continuous presumptuous behavior. This, together with irrational, thoughtless and immature impetuosity, leads to a permanent need for ostentation. Furthermore, he believes that he rises above everyone else by lowering others, the strong to avoid competition and the weak to bring them down and humiliate them as much as possible (the shitty countries or the “shitholes”, in Trump's own words). He finally appears as a compulsive liar capable of altering any data in order to fit everything within his neurotic whims and wishes. Regarding medical prognosis and treatment, these patients are difficult to cure, as they represent the psychic version of a galloping cancer.

Albert Einstein said that the destiny of nations should not be inevitably left in the hands of the irresponsible owners of political power. In this line, even the current wife of the president of the United States, Melania, could give humankind a hand to save it from her unstable and ignorant husband. The right answer could be in her hands. Her gestures and behaviors make it cristal clear that she is not happy at all. The question is: how long will she be able to stand her husband and cope with the situation? It must be very hard to live and share with somebody that despises all kinds of compassion, empathy, culture, science, spirituality, modesty and wisdom. At least, it seems that she has won the battle of not sleeping in his bed. One step further would be to file for divorce before he presses the nuclear button in a furious attack of jealousy or rage. At least, that could also end his ego-centrism, ego-tism and ego-mania. Besides, she could probably save his overtly saddened and stunned, however wonderful, son Barron, from following his father's chaotic and mischievous example. Unless one of these new “enlightened” kids who can buy all kinds of crazy weapons in that violent society gets ahead of him. We hope not. America first! But the rest of humankind much sooner, please.