Our impotence to put Trump in his place

Here is my recent comment to a Slate.com article* on Trump:

Possibly with an ornate ruse, an undercover shrink could slip Trump the highly reliable and validated Psychopathy Checklist (Hare). He would likely score high on it. The problem would remain that people still see psychiatric diagnoses as ad hominem attacks or as effete touchy-feely whining. “He’s a narcissist” sounds like an insult instead of a rock-solid and condemning diagnosis. “He lacks empathy” sounds like hippie talk. I don’t know what else reporters and pundits could say to cause Trump any damage, other than to constantly, day after day, call him a worthless piece of * * * * in bold headlines.

This is a main difference between psychology and the hard sciences. A chemist who promoted the theory that electrons are made of Crisco would be obsoleted from the profession. It seems only slightly less fluffy that a bevy of psychiatrists and psychologists will debate whether Trump has Narcissistic Personality Disorder or no personality disorder, or just has narcissistic “traits”; has Antisocial Personality Disorder or is a sociopath or a psychopath; lacks empathy or is simply a Republican; is intellectually defective or merely uninterested in the details. The subjective, nonmeasurable nature of psychological phenomena gives the profession a core stigma.

There is another reason psychology is respectable when people need it in the privacy of a therapy session, but fodder for eye-rolling in society at large. It is that people do not like their soul, their inner self, to be publicly observed, catego­rized and judged.

If in a better world there had been no Trump “base,” the legion of delusion-prone followers with similar deficits in human compassion; had ninety-eight percent of the country perceived the man accurately, I believe it would still be felt distasteful to name his mental and emotional flaws in headlines and in the news. Even I, who consider psychic dysfunction to be a matter of life and death of the spirit or body, have the gut feeling that there needs to be something more solid than mental differences to classify or indict a person. That feeling, which undermines our ability to condemn ruthlessly, is difficult to source. I think it comes from the common belief that our psycho­logical defects, with the exception of florid insanity, do not equal the person, that there is some deeper core of self, of positivity or will to thrive that is perpetually regenerating and redeeming, allowing us to overcome what may seem to be mere “inner demons.”

The problem is that the opposite is true: Unhealed psychological injuries are the ultimate saboteur. They color one’s entire sense of self and life and they warp us to their gravity. We push the gravity, we try to walk a straight line when “under the influence.” But we are not some Platonic ideal, secure and right beneath our soul injuries.

In the case of Trump, a deeper problem is the ego-syntonic nature of personality disorder, maybe especially Narcissistic disorder. He does not struggle to thrive against it: He thrives with it. He does not strive to grow a conscience. He couldn’t conceive of a reason to be humble. There is in him the redoubled power of sickness profited from and sanctioned.

When we are rid of Trump, there will be no joy in the proof of our ideas. Psychology will not have won a victory, because it will never be given center stage where it belongs. This error will allow us to have some later president infested with all the same diseases, stark delusionality, mendacity, psychopathy not merely sociopathy, and in our ignorance we will think: Yes, he has some personality quirks, but who doesn’t?

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* https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/05/trump-emperor-no-clothes.html.