This story is in response to another recently posted: Donald Trump ---The True Definition of a Psychopath which, while claiming to provide evidence of Trump’s psychopathy is actually providing evidence that he isn’t.
In his story, Kevin1957 quoted from How to Tell a Sociopath from a Psychopath by Scott A Bonn PhD in Psychology Today. This is an excellent source but the passages chosen either fail to describe what we know of Donald Trump or they discuss an area we can know nothing about.
An example of the latter is in the first paragraph quoted which mostly concerns the inability of psychopaths to form emotional attachments, a subject upon which most of us can only speculate as amateurs. This would be very unfair to anyone, including Donald Trump.
However, there are other areas about which we do know something, certainly enough to know the description doesn’t fit Trump.
This is where Trump deviates from Dr Scott A Bonn’s description of a psychopath.
- Psychopaths are often well educated
Trump is barely above average in intelligence and likely just scraped pass marks all the way through school. His lack of understanding of Civics, for instance, does not indicate a well educated person, in spite of all the schooling he has had.
- When committing crimes, psychopaths carefully plan out every detail in advance and often have contingency plans in place.
Trump is impulsive and disorganized. There is no sign of careful planning in his speeches or in any aspect of his campaigning. There is, however, plenty of evidence that he is winging it. Indeed it is his failure to stay on message, to flip flop alarmingly, that moved Mitch McConnell to strongly advise him to use a TelePrompTer.
Nor does he have any contingency plans. Filing for bankruptcy is not a contingency plan. Flip flopping is not a contingency plan. Psychopaths do not consider actions which undermine their status to be a contingency plan. Trump, however, is constantly damaging his brand in one way or another.
- Unlike their sociopathic counterparts, psychopathic criminals are cool, calm, and meticulous.
Whenever anyone throws a criticism in Trump’s direction, he is emphatically not cool, calm, and meticulous! Instead he instantly reverts to retaliating with schoolyard epithets like “Lying Ted” or “Crooked Hillary” or “Goofy Elizabeth Warren”. When crossed, he all but stomps his feet while yelling (see Republican debates) and/or threatening to sue.
- Their crimes, whether violent or non-violent, will be highly organized and generally offer few clues for authorities to pursue.
Trump trails evidence behind him like a puppy with a toilet roll! The “Trump University” scam was not highly organised, and evidence of fraudulent practices is blatant and bountiful. Similarly, his campaign’s illicit soliciting of non American citizens for donations was also littered with evidence (that formed the basis of the complaints filed with the FEC). Rather than canny and clever, Trump appears to be completely oblivious to the crimes he commits.
- Intelligent psychopaths make excellent white-collar criminals and "con artists" due to their calm and charismatic natures.
Trump isn’t the con artist of the intelligent, white-collar variety. He’s more in the way of a circus barker, a scam artist with a pocketful of get-rich-quick schemes. There’s nothing white-collar or sophisticated about Trump steaks or Trump vodka or Trump ties made in China.
We’ve already discussed his lack of calm; let’s now put this claim of “charismatic” to rest. What Trump has is celebrity. It’s often mistaken for charisma but it is not the same. Charisma is about charm (“exercising a compelling charm” according to the dictionary) and Trump is charmless.
What he does have is celebrity and money. Those two are a potent combination for reality tv fans and wannabes.
He also appeals to racists, bigots and xenophobes but that has nothing to do with charm either.
- Psychopathy is related to a physiological defect that results in the underdevelopment of the part of the brain responsible for impulse control and emotions. Sociopathy, on the other hand, is more likely the product of childhood trauma and physical/emotional abuse. Because sociopathy appears to be learned rather than innate, sociopaths are capable of empathy in certain limited circumstances but not in others, and with a few individuals but not others.
and this:
- Psychopathic killers view their innocent victims as inhuman objects to be tormented and violated for their amusement.
We do not know about Trump’s physiology nor any intimate details of his childhood that could possibly support this kind of serious speculation. Nor is a lack of expertise any kind of excuse for placing someone in the same category as a psychopathic killer. This must be, at the very least, bordering on libelous.
Then if not a psychopath or a sociopath, what do we know about Trump?
We know he was born into wealth and never had to struggle to get where he is. (In fact, many people who know about these things, tell us that Trump would be richer today if he’d just invested wisely and left business well alone.) We know he was the second son who inherited when the first son died (and didn’t share his inheritance with his brother’s family).
From the language he uses (fourth grade) and his behavior (a need to be loved and admired offset by vanity, pettiness and boastfulness), we can see that he behaves like a spoilt brat who physically developed into an adult but never grew out of being a spoilt brat. He’s also needy (a characteristic which psychopaths do not possess) which is why he’s constantly blowing his own trumpet about being smart, rich and good looking in ways a confident person doesn’t feel the need to do.
While Trump is smart in the sense of being a good self-promoter who loves an audience (just like any flim flam man), he is breathtakingly ignorant on a wide range of subjects which include every aspect of Civics like the US Constitution; the powers, duties and limitations of the Executive Branch; political policies (specifically GOP policies), unity (as opposed to being above everyone else) and the everyday life issues of the non wealthy among us. Every day, in so many ways, he demonstrates how not smart he is.
Nor, it appears, is he as rich as he claims, neither in terms of overall assets or liquid assets. As for looks, I would tactfully suggest that he is less than humble on the subject while exhibiting a profound superficiality when it comes to the appearance of others.
In conclusion — Trump is not a psychopath or a sociopath. But he is a spoilt, vain, bullying and boastful brat who is not fit to be a major party nominee let alone POTUS.