Diagnosing Donald Trump

hey deserving listeners a lot of you over the years have asked me about donald trump's personality is he narcissistic is he a psychopath that sort of thing and i've talked a lot about him over the years over my 12 years as a podcaster but whenever i talked about him i would often say especially at the beginning as a caveat that i don't really have much to go on because i only have what's available to me on the internet so i don't really have the ability to assess his personality when i assess someone's personality they're sitting on my couch we're working collaboratively together i might administer tests i can interview them for many many weeks months years even and so i haven't really had much to go on but then mary trump his niece just wrote a book about his childhood and it has has just a ton of details about donald trump's childhood and the family in which he grew up in and mary trump is a psychologist and she actually diagnoses him in the book it's like a really long psychological assessment so that's what i'm going to review in this episode today i'm going to talk about the book i'm going to talk about what she says i'm gonna provide some commentary so just some caveats i'm gonna try to make this as friendly as i can to both democrats and republicans also i'm not endorsing mary trump's statements because i haven't assessed donald trump and i have no idea as to the validity or the reliability of mary trump's assessment of him okay so who is mary trump the author of this book well she is donald trump's niece she is donald's older brother's daughter so donald trump has an older brother who died a number of years ago fred jr and mary trump is fred junior's daughter she seemed to have some interaction with donald throughout the years but not a lot and donald trump did hire her to write a biography about him i think in the 90s so she didn't have some access to his life what are her credentials well she has a phd in psychology and in the book she writes that she has performed psychological assessments on people before she's provided therapy in the past she has taught graduate courses and she's also a ceo of trump coaching group which i'm not sure what they do maybe coaching she said her assessment of donald trump is based on her memory because she does have a lot of memories about him and she also interviewed family members and recorded those interviews and then based her conclusions on in the book on that she also seems to be in the book assessing his public behavior and his actions as a politician and in inferring personality traits based on his actions as a politician so before moving moving forward i want to point out that it is considered unethical to diagnose from afar in the way that mary trump is doing i'll discuss that later but first let's get to her assessment so the first thing that she diagnoses him with is narcissistic personality disorder she says quote i have no problem calling donald a narcissist he meets all nine criteria in the dsm she goes on to say that's not the whole picture but she comes out strong and says he definitely has narcissistic personality disorder well what is narcissistic personality disorder let's look in the dsm 5 here has a grandiose sense of self-importance is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited power and success believes that he or she is special requires excessive admiration has a sense of entitlement is interpersonally exploitative meaning takes advantages takes you know takes advantage of other people lacks empathy is often envious of others who have more power and is arrogant and has haughty behaviors and attitudes so i'll let you decide whether or not you think that donald trump would qualify for the label and fit the criteria i as a clinician who has never assessed donald trump i can neither confirm nor deny that he has narcissistic personality disorder mary trump says that he definitely does meet all the criteria now she has inside knowledge she has observed him she can talk with other people she definitely comes out strong and says i have no problem calling donald a narcissist he meets all nine criteria then she goes to suggest some other possible diagnoses as well she mentions anti-social personality disorder she says that a case could be made that he meets the criteria so let's look at anti-social personality so again in the dsm anti-social personality is in a nutshell failure to conform to social norms deceitfulness lying impulsive or failure to plan ahead irritability and aggressiveness reckless disregard for the safety of self for others consistent irresponsibility lack of remorse so again it's up to you to decide if you believe that donald trump suffers from antisocial personality disorder but for me as a clinician ethically i can't diagnose from afar and i wouldn't have enough information to say she also says that he might be a sociopath she kind of suggests that he might be a sociopath meaning that in her words that he exhibits chronic criminality arrogance and disregard for the rights of others i think she meant to use the term psychopath a lot of people tend to use the word sociopath instead of psychopath especially on the internet so i was a little surprised that she used the word sociopath without giving a little bit more context as to why she would use that specific term she also said something about dependent personality disorder we're onto our fourth personality disorder by the way narcissism anti-social sociopathy and now dependent she says donald may also meet some criteria for dependent personality disorder and she says the hallmarks of which include an inability to make decisions or take responsibility discomfort with being alone and going to excessive lengths to obtain support from others unquote so that's her summarizing dependent personality again inability to make decisions on their own discomfort with being alone and going to excessive lengths to obtain support from other people i'll say that in the book she did not make a convincing case for this diagnosis essentially in the book she lays out her diagnoses and then she discusses his childhood and her observed behaviors of him to i think kind of make a case for what she's saying uh in term at the beginning of the book and i didn't see evidence in what she laid out for dependent personality disorder it could be but she didn't make a case for it not even close really people with dependent personality disorder tend to be anxious they have a hard time making decisions they are very wishy-washy and they're super pessimistic in general and that's a very simplistic summary of dependent personality sort of a really complex condition but in my observation of what was in the book and from my observations from what i have absorbed from the internet and tv he doesn't really come across as as dependent personality disorder now i will say that you could make a potential case for narcissistic personality disorder given what she lays out in the book she makes a pretty good case for that again i'm not agreeing with the diagnosis but i'm just saying that her book does provide data that backs up that claim she also says quote he may have a long undiagnosed learning disability that for decades has interfered with his ability to process information so she saying he may have a learning disability she didn't really go into detail on that as well i don't know she also wonders if he suffers from caffeine induced sleep disorder at this point in the diagnosis section if you will of the book it seemed like she was just trying to pile on dsm labels because it seems a little odd to start talking about caffeine-induced sleep disorder but you know maybe it is relevant a lot of people say he tweets at four in the morning so maybe that's a thing so she wondered if he suffers from caffeine-induced sleep disorder citing that he drinks 12 diet cokes per day that's a lot of caffeine and that he sleep apparently sleeps very little and then she talks about other possible disorders due to a horrible diet and that he doesn't exercise so she's leaving it open i'm just like there's probably a whole bunch of other disorders that are possible here mainly she's coming out strong on narcissistic personality she says a case could be made for anti-social and sociopathy says some criteria of dependent which i don't agree with learning disability caffeine induced sleep disorder and other possible disorders all right so let's briefly talk about the ethics of diagnosing from afar the fact that mary trump diagnosed donald trump without assessing him properly the way that we will do professionally as a service for people and the the broader context here is that people on the internet love to diagnose donald trump particularly with narcissistic personality disorder not just lay people but also many clinicians have actually gone on the record as diagnosing him with narcissistic personality disorder to put it in an even broader context clinicians have been publicly diagnosing politicians with narcissistic personality disorder for a while now jimmy carter ronald reagan bill clinton george w bush obama was diagnosed extensively by actual clinicians on the record with narcissistic personality disorder so this is where the goldwater rule comes into play so the history of the goldwater rule is it started in 1964 with republican barry goldwater was running for president at the time against lbj over a thousand psychiatrists came forward on record and diagnosed barry goldwater with various different mental disorders they were trying to make a case that he was unfit to be president goldwater sued the psychiatrists it went all the way to the supreme court and goldwater won the case afterwards the american psychological association or maybe the american psychiatric association established the so-called goldwater rule stating that it is absolutely unethical to diagnose someone without one having conducted a proper examination and two without having authorization to disclose the findings to the public and this makes sense to me so in this book we have mary trump and in many interviews she is diagnosing her uncle imagine if i had done that if i had without any formal assessment decided to diagnose my uncle and write a book about him would that be ethical or unethical it would be unethical because i hadn't done a proper assessment and i don't have authorization to share that assessment let's personalize it to you let's say that your niece who is a psychologist or some other mental health clinician she decides to write a book about you and she diagnoses you publicly with seven different dsm diagnoses how would you feel about that now the next thing that a lot of people will say is that donald trump is a public figure and so thus he doesn't deserve the same kind of privacy that other people do i don't know the answer that question but that's what people say the other thing that people say is that he is president of the united states and has a lot of power and us as the voters need to have more information about this person and that the laws of confidentiality don't really apply to him that we have a right to this information in a similar way that we might have a right to as medical records or at least congress might have the right to his medical records because they might need to make a choice as to whether or not they need to remove him from office or something so you know you could make a case for that too i don't know the answer though another thing that some of you might be saying is that this was all the way back in 1964 times were different back then well recently after trump was being diagnosed from afar by many different clinicians the american psychological association doubled down on the goldwater rule stating that it is unethical to diagnose from afar it's an ethical violation to diagnose from afar the next thing that i will hear from a lot of people when i talk about this sort of thing is they'll say that well wait a second i think donald trump is crazy and he is he is destroying our country okay there's two there's two issues here there's two wrong-headed issue here two wrong-headed issues here one is that if someone suffers from a personality disorder that doesn't necessarily mean that they are a bad politician i know colleagues of mine who are therapists who suffer from personality disorders according to them and their therapist my colleague will tell me i have borderline personality disorder and i'm also a therapist so you can have a personality disorder and be a wonderful politician i'm guessing there's a pretty good percentage of politicians who have personality disorders and i'm guessing many of them you might actually agree with so having a personality disorder doesn't mean that you're a destructive element in our country the second wrong-headed thing here is that when people view other human beings and they don't like their behavior particularly public figures there's this compulsion from lay people and some clinicians to diagnose that person here's the thing you can exhibit strange behavior destructive behavior that you see as unusual and that doesn't necessarily mean it's it's coming from a label in the dsm there's a lot of behaviors out there that don't qualify for a dsm diagnosis so if you don't like donald trump one that doesn't mean that he has a personality disorder and two even if he did that doesn't mean that's what's causing him to do things that you don't like the other thing that some people will say is that i'm defending donald trump when i'm pointing out this goldwater rule and then i'm saying it's unethical to diagnose from afar i'm not defending him i'm defending my profession if people are going to respect us we have to follow at least our own ethical codes the last thing i'll say about this is that personality disorders and maybe particularly narcissistic personality disorder these things are extremely complex constructs they are very difficult to understand i specialize in treating personality disorders and have for 20 plus years and it still is hard to comprehend there's so many different things to consider and they're very complex conditions you can't just meet someone once or look at someone online and be able to know if they suffer from a personality disorder it's way more complex than that also research research shows that lay people and many clinicians erroneously believe that they understand personality disorders when they really don't because because it is so complex okay so now i'm going to talk about more details as to the data that she gave that bolstered the assessment that he has narcissistic personality disorder and maybe anti-social sociopathy psychopathy so let's talk about what she wrote about about donald trump's father fred senior so this is mary trump's grandfather so she says that fred senior donald trump's father is a high functioning sociopath in that he's cold pathologically independent controlling and sexist so she's making a case throughout the book that fred senior donald's donald trump's father is someone who doesn't have empathy for people doesn't it doesn't you know have warmth for his kids or really anyone and is very self-centered she writes that the family was ruled by him and that he had very particular rules and lessons for his five children that you win at any cost that lying is acceptable as long as you're trying to get what you want to bully people is to be strong that there is no truth and that money is everything so she makes the case that donald trump is turning our country into the family environment that fred senior created for him you know that that's her big thesis is that fred senior created this sick version of a family and donald trump is now creating our country in a sick version of of her family uh she writes that fred senior donald trump's father bullied other people even his own kids so donald trump has an older brother this is mary trump's father fred junior so you have fred senior you have fred jr and fred senior would bully fred jr a lot and donald would watch this as a very much younger brother i think donald may have been like 10 years younger than fred then fred jr also as as donald trump grew up and started to bully other kids fred senior would reward donald for bullying other people she also writes that fred senior worked all the time and money was everything so he wasn't home very often he was not a good father to young donald or any of the kids in that he didn't give it much attention to the children he mostly ignored his children including donald and children learned how not to need anything so this is a case being made for narcissistic personality disorder people with narcissistic personality disorder typically were treated like this when they were young they were neglected when you're emotionally neglected as a child you have this choice that you have to make you say well it's either my fault or it's their fault this is a simplistic explanation but for people who decide you know what it's their fault it's not my fault i'm i'm being neglected it's their fault those people are crazy the benefit to this point of view the the pro is that you that you still retain some level of self-esteem or at least a three-year-old's version of self-esteem but the con is that now everyone's an idiot to you everyone's stupid and you can't depend on other people you can't go to them because one they're stupid and terrible but also they're just never gonna love you and so you gotta be independent so you have to depend on yourself and again i'm talking about two years old three years old four years old and when you develop that defense you are very scared because you're like well i can't depend on anyone else when i really need to developmentally well how am i going to salvage the situation well i have to create a fantasy that i am so perfect that i don't need help that i don't have needs that i don't need anyone to take care of me and so there's this constant defense mechanism that kicks in again very early in life that is a distortion of reality that i'm entitled i'm the best i'm amazing i don't need help i don't have emotions i don't have needs i'm above it all i'm independent i can make decisions on my own again we're seeing a very sharp contrast between dependency right here right when you create that for yourself it saves you when you're three or four years old but when you become an adult you retain that personality and proceed to treat everyone badly as if you are entitled to everything as if you're better than everyone else and you you envy people that are more important than you because you worry that if there are more important people then that must mean you're not very good so you always have to get yourself on top of other people because okay now i can relax i'm safe because that was an early defense mechanism that you needed when you were two years old just to survive getting through the day so she's making a case for that i think pretty well in the book of just emotional distance and bullying and so that's another lesson that a narcissistic person might learn of just like from a father of self-centeredness of to to be safe and to be loved and to be given attention you have to establish power over other people and if young donald trump saw well in order for me to get a little bit of attention from my father that i'm desperate for i will bully other people and then my you know my father will give me some attention okay then that locks that behavior in as well i am safe when i'm bullying other people and if someone else is bullying me i am unsafe not only because i'm being bullied but also because i'm i'm going to be denied the little bit of positive attention that i might get from my father so some other details that she lays out in the book is that donald was basically ignored according to mary trump and mary wasn't around during these years but mary interviewed other people and recorded those interviews and then you know wrote on those notes but she says in this book that donald was basically ignored he was a young child and fred jr mary's father was the golden child because he was the eldest boy and fred senior really invested a lot in fred jr but fred jr wasn't he didn't want to play along with fred senior's game plan for him and instead of working in the business he actually became a pilot he wanted to fly commercial airlines and fred fred senior did not like that he he would call fred jr a glorified bus driver because it wasn't very prestigious to be an air an airline pilot back then apparently fred senior would put him down and that eventually fred senior kind of disowned fred jr and then fred senior turned to the next son in line which was donald and suddenly donald was getting attention he was getting attention because donald was acting like like fred uh senior he was acting aggressive and arrogant money was everything and classism was everything and so young donald learned and from experience of looking at his older brother like well if i'm going to get dad's attention and if i'm going to be in the family business and i'm going to get any kind of love and attention i need to not do what my older brother did and my older brother asserted himself and tried to live his own life so i'm not going to do that and my older brother also tried to be nice to people i don't want to do that i got to do exactly what my father wants me to do and mary trump makes the case that fred senior suffered from psychopathy that he didn't have empathy he wanted to exploit other people and so donald trump learned okay i'm gonna i'm gonna emulate that so let's go on to mary who is donald trump's mother donald's mother was the youngest of 10 children now who knows but sometimes this indicates neglect for you parents out there it's hard enough to take care of one child or two children or three children imagine having 10 children like it would be hard to give each one of those children enough love and attention it's hard so who knows but sometimes when you have that many kids particularly if you're the youngest you are emotionally neglected in a family now i guess i should point out that maybe i should know this at the beginning that many people including donald trump has come out against this book and said that there's lies but anyway so donald's mother according to mary trump was inconsistent as a mother to her children including with donald quote she says the mother attended to them when it was convenient for her so donald's mother was cold and self-centered as well according to mary trump and donald's mother put herself first that's what she says in the book she says that donald trump's mother used her children to comfort herself rather than comforting them that she came across as needy and dependent so she was already having a difficult time parenting to begin with maybe because of her own family of origin issues but then when donald trump was about one or two years old i think two years old donald's mother had a medical complication after the birth of donald trump's younger brother robert the fifth child donald's mother almost died in childbirth and she went into the hospital for a year or longer so when donald was two years old he has a father that works all the time and according to mary trump is psychopathic and lacks empathy and donald trump's only security is an inconsistent not very warm mother and so that's his one life link to attachment and if you want to hear my full deep dive on attachment theory you have to become a patron of the podcast i talk for attachment theory i don't know 17 hours or something that theory has changed my life by the way doing a deep dive on that has changed has made my life better made all my relationships better made but in a nutshell when we're young we need to be attached we need to feel secure we need to feel like someone loves us that they care for us that they're there for us they understand us when we're upset we can go to them so according to mary trump donald couldn't go to his dad because his dad was physically not even there and when he was he wasn't warm but he had a little bit of love and attention from his mom and then boom when he's two years old his mom gets really sick and goes into the hospital and is out of donald's life for a year now extended family was there but apparently they were also just as rejecting and unloving as fred senior was marianne the eldest child she's she's older than fred junior and she would have been about 11 years old at the time she was parentified because she was now the woman of the house and she was supposed to take care of donald and she did physically but according to accounts she didn't nurture donald and even after the mom returned home she still wasn't able to parent well because she was still quite ill and for example in the books mary trump writes that the kids would find the mother unconscious and they would have to take her to the hospital and that fred senior donald trump's father would basically ignore the whole thing he was never there to take care of his wife the impression that was given was that it was unseemly that his wife had illnesses which further bolsters mary trump's assertion that fred senior was a psychopath and didn't have any empathy so in this book mary trump makes a pretty compelling case that donald trump grew up with a classic emotionally distant and neglectful environment one in which narcissism can develop in because remember i said that when you're when you're being neglected and you have all these needs and you're you're signaling crying reaching out wanting hugs and no one is there they're just absent they're they're because dad is at work and mom's in the hospital and everyone else is doing their own thing then you're at a crossroads what do i do here well one defense is is to say i don't need other people i don't have needs myself i'm perfect i can i can depend on my own i'm gonna have to do everything on my own because if i don't i'm going to be in constant distress by reaching out and getting rejected and just having no one there for me the other consequence to this environment for a lot of people is they will what we call lack a sense of self they have a self but they lack a sense of it they lack a connection with it what do i mean by that well for you parents out there you know what it's like to parent a kid your kid is upset your kid is happy your kid is angry your kid is jealous or envious you're there to mirror what your child is going through you'll say oh you're very angry or oh i see that you don't want to go down for a nap right now and you're very upset about that and through that experience of child having emotions and doing things and the parent verbalizing that and containing it and contextualizing that you rinse and repeat that over and over and over again the child develops this sense of who they are because they see who they are in their parents face in their parents words they're like oh that's what joy feels like that's what anger feels like well when you're neglected you don't get that experience and so you don't know your emotions very well you're having emotions but you don't know them you don't know who you are you don't know what you want in order to know who you are and what you want you have to be in connection with your emotions and who and the core of your human your humanness the analogy i give is you're walking up to a door you open up the door and it's it's just black and it looks like an abyss and you're and that's yourself and you're looking at in through the door and you're like i don't see anything it must be empty the room must be empty but through therapy and through uh you know corrective experiences we hope to turn up the dimmer switch you're turning up the light a little bit and you start to see well i think i see a bed in there i think i see a desk and a chair well that's you discovering who you are there's a self in there but when people first open the door it looks like nothing is in there and when people are faced with that knowledge it is extremely disregulating to people to look into that abyss is very very scary for people it it's described in a lot of different ways people will feel like they're empty like they're nothing like they not only have low self-worth but they don't have any self-worth you'll hear these kinds of statements empty broken some people say i feel broken on the inside because when you have a connection with who you are when you're properly attuned to and praised as a child you have a sense of your worth because you're in connection with that you're like i'm a good person because i'm nice to people well if if you look down there and you don't see anything then it is terrifying and so one of the solutions that a lot of people will turn to not this isn't the only solution but one of them one of them is drug and alcohol abuse but which maybe fred jr resorted to who knows total speculation for someone in donald's position it's pos given his profile again i have no idea but given what mary trump lays out in the book it's possible for people like that when they don't see anything what they do is they create this false self on the outside if i prove to everyone else that i do have a self if other people believe i have a self then i can kind of believe that i have a self but i need to constantly make sure everyone understands that i am awesome and that i have a self because that that's the only way to distract me from the fact that when i look inward i don't see anything and so narcissistic people will do that they'll be in a constant just rat race of like okay okay i established i got some narcissistic supply people are praising me okay that praise is starting to go okay now i need to do the next thing and point out that i'm doing all these a brag about this you know a little bit more praise okay it's starting to go down okay i need just a it's just a constant treadmill of running this you know ever increasing fast-paced race because if you stop and you look inward it's terrifying i'm broken i'm meaningless i'm empty there's there's nothing there you'll you'll hear and it is rough if you hear accounts of l ron hubbard actually who some would speculate had narcissistic personality disorder he would fall into those abysses apparently and cry in his room for three days so you'll hear that in people who suffer from narcissistic personality disorder and take it from me who has treated people with narcissistic personality disorder there is a ton of suffering that they are running from constantly and the way that they run from it is by propping up this false sense of i'm awesome not only in the eyes of others but in the eyes of themselves they want to be convinced i'm good enough i'm awesome right it's always trying to counter balance that deep weight on one side of the scale if you're worthless so mary trump in this book she actually refers to this i think in the following passage she says his deep-seated insecurities have created in him a black hole of need that constantly requires the light of compliments that disappears as soon as he's soaked in it she goes on to say nothing is ever enough this is far beyond garden variety narcissism donald is not simply weak his ego is as is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be he knows he has never been loved i don't know if this is true as you know have been saying that throughout this episode but she makes a good case in the day that she lays out and i think she eloquently writes this out donald is not simply weak i don't know i don't like the word weak by the way because that implies like if you were just stronger you wouldn't have this personality disorder that is not the case his ego is a fragile thing so that's kind of what's talking about is of just like that emptiness that you need that narcissistic supply to convince yourself that you're good enough to be loved his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he has nothing of what he claims to be he knows he has never been loved again i don't know if this is accurate but i like the way she writes about what she believes to be someone with narcissism a lot of people on the internet when they write about narcissism they will make it out to be like it's some sort of choice that people make and certainly it can be but when we're talking about narcissistic personality disorder that is not a choice it is a condition that was a solution to a to a big problem that was imposed on them when they were young they were mistreated and they had to come up with some solution and there are many different personality disorders of which to choose from choose from if you will one of them is narcissistic personality disorder they had to resort to that to survive of course when they grow up then the disorder shoots themselves in the foot she also has an interesting passage about black lives matter here she writes an effective response would have entailed a call for unity but donald requires division it is the only way he knows how to survive my grandfather ensured that decades ago when he turned his children against each other so she makes an interesting case right there that in his childhood fred senior donald trump's father created strife and division between his between the children particularly between freddie junior and donald and by doing that donald would win so that so the way that donald got love was through that division process that adversarial process the only way he got a little bit of love and attention from his father and maybe even his mother was to ridicule and win over his older brother to to get over his older brother win the day and get all the little bit of love and attention that might be coming from the parents and so when donald trump approaches a situation in which you have say the right and the left that are fighting he he sees that in a similar way that his father sought you know freddie senior side is okay i i have two i have two boys who are competing against each other let's see who wins and i'm gonna pit them against each other and encourage them to fight and then one will win and then i will praise the winner one could argue that donald trump approaches a lot of situations like this that he will see division and instead of unifying and trying to find common ground and providing leadership in that way he actually will encourage more distance and like to see fighting in the way that his father liked seeing fighting amongst his his two boys now again i don't know if these are accurate or not but that's you know mary trump makes a compelling argument in the book another passage here that was interesting that i want to read here is donald's monstrosity is the manifestation of the very weakness within him that he's been running from his entire life so she's saying that according to her his monstrosity meaning his bad behavior in life and as a politician is a manifestation of the very weakness within him that he's been running from his entire life so that's in line with what i was saying earlier for him there has never been any option but to be positive to protect strength no matter how illusory because doing anything else carries a death sentence my father's short life is evidence of that so in this passage she's talking about how donald saw freddy fail in his father's eyes and be wishy-washy and not bully other people and kind of try to build a good life for him and his family and not try to exploit other people you know be an airline pilot don't try to exploit uh renters and this kind of thing and so donald saw the way that freddie junior was treated by uh freddie senior fred senior but also he saw his older brother turn to alcohol and eventually become a disgrace in the family and then die at a young age i think he was in his 40s or maybe 40 years old so donald learned a lot of lessons watching that in order to avoid that terrible terrible fate not only of death but also disapproval from the father he learned he had to do everything in his power to be to be strong in you know as according to society or or the father going on here the country is now suffering from the same toxic positivity that my grandfather deployed specifically to drown out his ailing ailing wife torment his dying son and damage past healing the psyche of his favorite child donald j trump so this is i think her her final what what she what she wrote in the book she calls this toxic positivity which i think is an interesting concept and she makes a pretty good case of it throughout the book that like fred senior had this toxic positivity everything's gonna be fine and anything negative you just you get it you get rid of you just you don't worry about it or you put it down and you you reject it including if you know your wife is suffering in the hospital that's a negative thing i don't know what to do about it so i'm just going to deny it and ignore it and that donald trump watched that in his father and adopted that way himself and that if you watch donald trump he certainly has a lot of positivity in the way he talks the country's doing great everything's fine don't worry about it i've got it under control you people that are pointing out negative things are just being nasty you know that kind of thing and i i think she makes a good case for that again i i don't know like i said earlier it could be that mary trump the author of this book is biased because she's upset by the way she does actually dedicate a fair amount of this book to pointing out how the family treated her badly especially when it came to money like you know her father died and then her grandfather died and she felt she was entitled to a lot of the money and maybe she was and she felt that the extended family ripped her off essentially and she she writes you know a lot about that so maybe she's motivated by that i don't know there's just there's just no way to know at this point and then another sentence here that she writes this final quote that i'll say is she writes he can never escape the fact that he is and always will be a terrified little boy he can never escape the fact that he is and always will be a terrified little boy unquote so what she's referring to there i think is again what i was talking about when you're terrified and you're left alone your father's at work and he doesn't pay any attention to you your mother is in the hospital the your older sister who is maybe giving you food is not giving you any love and attention and you're terrified and you're alone you can't escape that when you have those traumas early in life but the way he tries to escape it is by being toxically positive and bullying other people and always trying to establish himself as superior to other people which is the defense mechanism of people suffering from narcissistic personality disorder so at the end here i want to talk about schema therapy it's it's something developed by young and in in 2003 also in the 90s anyway it's a wonderful theory and if you want to learn more about that again you have to be a patron of the podcast you get access to a bunch of episodes on schema therapy actually interview people about their schemas to kind of flesh it out okay so let's let's talk about the schemas that mary trump lays out about donald trump in this book well there are 18 main schemas in schema therapy but i think she late she makes a case for three in this book so the first one that she makes a case for for donald trump is that he might have the schema of people don't care about me so in this schema people would if they're answering honestly would agree with the statements of i haven't gotten enough love and nurturance from others they might also agree with the statement no one has ever really been there for me some of you might actually agree with those statements i haven't gotten enough love and nurturance from others no one has ever really been there for me so if you agree with those statements and a whole bunch of others and again listen to those deep dives or go to a therapist obviously and that understands chemotherapy if you agree with those items it's possible that you would be characterized as someone who has this schema this maladaptive schema essentially it's this it's this conclusion you come to early in life because of repeated experience that people do not care about me for one reason another or another so when you have that schema it's a maladaptive schema this this belief system that is not going to be good for you you have to have a way to cope with it and there are various different ways to cope with it and we we call them surrender avoidance or you know young young calls them surrender avoidance and overcompensation well i won't go into detail on that but one way of coping with this people don't care about me schema is to avoid it's just to avoid relationships and so mary trump makes a case that donald trump might have this people don't care about me schema and his way of coping with it is to just kind of avoid relationships she makes a case that melania trump is just kind of blank and not really there and doesn't talk a lot and so even though he's in a marriage he might not have a lot of intimacy and that donald trump with everyone in his life might not have real intimacy he might have people around him but not you know close relationships where you're actually like talking about your experience and crying in each other's arms and being vulnerable with each other and so if you believe that people don't care about you one way to deal with that is to just avoid relationships and that that mary trump makes the case for that she doesn't talk about schema therapy but this is the way i was interpreting that another schema that she makes a case for in my eyes in my interpretation of the book is i am defective this is a defectiveness schema and the following statements are indicative of this there's something wrong with me and no one could really love me once they saw the real me so if people agree with these statements there's something wrong with me and no one could really love me once they saw the real me if they agree with those statements and other statements like that then they might be characterized as someone who has the defectiveness shame schema or the i am defective schema and again we have surrender avoidance and overcompensation well she makes a case for donald trump in this book resorting to overcompensation so again you have this schema of like i'm defective there's something wrong with me you need some way to deal with that and one of the ways is to overcompensate by criticizing other people saying you're defective i'm not defective you're defective essentially you're walking around in this constant state of feeling like you're defective and the only way you can really emotionally cope with that is if you distract yourself by pointing out how everyone else is defective and trying to appear superior to other people because if you look superior then maybe you can convince yourself that you're not defective the third schema and last schema that i think mary trump lays out in this book is the entitlement grandiosity schema or the i must get what i want or else i'll never get what i want so this is what i call the schema so items that people will agree with here are i have a lot of trouble accepting no for an answer i usually prioritize my needs ahead of others i hate it when people prevent me from doing what i want to do i feel like i shouldn't have to follow society's rules i often feel as though other people don't have as much to offer as i do people sometimes tell me that i'm selfish about my needs so if someone agrees with some or all of those items then they might be characterized as having an entitlement grandiosity schema the reason why they developed that was because they were mistreated growing up and they developed this this the way that i like to describe it the the central condition is i must assert myself or else i'm not going to get anything if i just sit here and act normal i won't get any love and attention so i must assert myself constantly and put my needs a front in front of everyone else's because if i don't if i just wait for people to meet my needs it'll never happen again you have surrender avoidance and overcompensation well she makes a case in this book that donald trump resorts to the surrender style of coping with this schema which is to surrender to the idea meaning that it's like yep in order for me to get what i need i need to just assert it in front of everyone else constantly and so behaviors from the outside watching this individual well they will be they will be a bully and they will brag all the time so she makes a case in this book for that all right what's the final word well i will say that it's an interesting interesting book it's it's a it's a quick read it's easy to read there's a lot of interesting details in there we finally got some insight into his childhood and on the one hand according to the american psychological association she has committed an ethical violation by diagnosing from afar on the other hand she makes a compelling case for her claim of narcissistic personality disorder particularly given the details of his childhood that she provided but back on the one hand she clearly has an axe to grind due to her belief that she was ripped off and denied millions of dollars of inheritance money the last thing i'll say the final final word i'll say is this raises a very interesting question for me which is what if every leader had a confidential compassionate relationship with a therapist someone who understands them and their condition what if donald trump at the beginning of his presidency were treated by someone like me who specializes in that disorder someone who has compassion someone who knows how to navigate their relationship with that particular individual would the world be a better place it's a very interesting question because it sounds absurd right that we would mandate every world leader every you know governor every congress person to have their own therapist that is totally confidential meaning that you know special laws protect everything that goes on in that relationship so that that leader can be as healthy as possible heal from their past traumas as much as possible see things in an unbiased way as much as possible and thus be able to listen to the people better and lead a country better it sounds absurd that we would ever do that but when i think about it that would solve i'm guessing a lot of problems now i'm a therapist so of course i'm going to see it that way but i don't know it really is is something i wonder if a hundred years from now 200 years from now it'll just be like of course every politician has to have a therapist how would they function otherwise in the same way that every politician needs to have a physician to give them medical exams every politician needs to have mental health as well they need to be able to heal from their traumas and be able to relax and have some perspective and know how to sift through their own reactivity to things i wonder if that'll be the next stage of our societal development you know there was us before industrialization there was uh us after industrialization there was us before every every politician at a therapist and there was us after every politician has a therapist you know it just makes you wonder what would happen all right everyone by the way if you're going to comment below on youtube for the love of god please be nice let's be cool to each other you know other places feel free to you know be mean to each other on my channel i really ask you really really ask you to be nice really be nice to each other we're all human beings we're all trying our best if something triggers you you know just take a deep breath you know let's not add to the negativity let's try to have understanding let's try to listen let's try to understand let's try to love one another and please take care of yourself and other people because we all deserve it we really really do

Channel: Psychology In Seattle

Views: 143,540

Rating: 4.6964965 out of 5

Keywords: Mary Trump, Donald Trump, Mary Trump book, Too Much and Never Enough, book review, therapist reviews Trump book, Dr. Kirk Honda, narcissism, personality disorder

Id: QUT44QJpCoE

Length: 50min 6sec (3006 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 03 2020