What if the dangerous Narcissist has stopped caring?

My substitute for socializing is to toss an occasional dart or lima bean (healthy but bland) into Comment sections of different online magazines. Here is a recent mini-series at MotherJones.com:

The president, we learn, has “doubled down” on his claim that millions of people illegally voted for his opponent, even though the claim has been officially debunked and had no sense or evidence behind it in the first place. I see this kind of doubling down in therapy with the occasional Delusional Disorder client. (Delusional Disorder is a discrete psychosis, where the person is insane in a limited area – a wrong and irrational or impossible belief – but mostly has his senses intact.) For example, one man was absolutely certain that the government sent submicroscopic “nano’s” through the air, to infiltrate everyone’s mind to read us and influence us. He was contemptuous that I didn’t have the courage to accept his evidence, which nonsense he cited from session to session. A psychotic delusion is a cognitive defense mechanism that – cumbersome or painful as it may be – protects the person from an even more devastating feeling. This is D. Trump.

There is a pathological zone where the two – liar and delusional – meet in the Narcissist. If he were simply lying, then he’d be capable of saying or at least thinking to himself – Yes, I didn’t win the popular vote; I’m not uniquely special; I’m not a competent president; I have gutter morals. But he, I submit, is totally incapable of going there even in his own mind. His belief in the superiority of his Self is the entirety of his ego which, as with all solid Narcissists, malformed at the starting gate of his life. Without such a belief, Trump’s sense of self would disintegrate and he would have the breakdown of breakdowns.

I’d like to know everything about Narcissism and Trump, but it wasn’t meant to be. Fact is, Trump baffled me when, speaking to his beloved base rally a couple weeks ago, he wondered aloud if maybe he isn’t as good at being president as he is at business. “Theory” would suggest he couldn’t possibly admit he wasn’t the best. But actually, a Narcissist needs to be perfect only in those areas he convinces himself are meaningful to him. For example, if a Narcissist isn’t the best at tennis, he drops the sport and convinces himself that it’s not what matters to him; that if he actually wanted to be the best, he would be. So Trump’s rally statement likely means that he has now convinced himself that the presidency isn’t his pride, isn’t highly important to him.

If there are psychological thinkers interested in extrapolating from the Trump known to the likely, I’d invite them to accept the validity of my logic – that Donald Trump has psychically demoted the presidency to a failed supply,* probably mixed with bitterness – and speculate on what might follow this disenchantment. Two possibilities, one ominous and the other terrifying, come to mind. Turning his gaze back to his glory days of business predation and gold-plated things, he would abandon to Congress and Cabinet the nuts-and-bolts work, such as the recent tax code revision, then grouse in victim-speak about the crying shame of it. Or, he would give his betrayed soul undiapered license. A first strike against North Korea. A nihilistic trade war. Immigrants, hopefuls and Dreamers the target of his full racism. Stumping for the killing of drug dealers. Increasing his intercourse with Putin for the sake of future business and the narcissistic supply of power reflected. His juggernaut of undermining the integrity and reputation of our country, insulting his betters, spitting on democratic and humanistic ideals.

What if, having lost his fantasy of a presidency that didn’t cave to his narcissism, he has given up? Will we be in less danger, or beyond danger to disaster?

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* “Narcissistic supply is a concept introduced into psychoanalytic theory by Otto Fenichel in 1938, to describe a type of admiration, interpersonal support or sustenance drawn by an individual from his or her environment and essential to their self-esteem.” “Psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg considered the malignant narcissistic criminal to be coldly characterized by a disregard of others unless they could be idealized as sources of narcissistic supply. Self psychologist Heinz Kohut saw those with narcissistic personality disorder as disintegrating mentally when cut off from a regular source of narcissistic supply.” – Wikipedia