Search Jekyll Hyde Trump and you’ll find many articles, for good reason. The Mr. Hyde part of Trump is a sadistic malignant narcissist.
I wrote about Trump having a Jekyll and Hyde personality split just after the election. Back then just about everyone in the media — and in politics — was engaging in wishful thinking, ignoring Trump’s manifest malignant narcissism, and trying to normalize Trump in their own minds. Today Trumpers who know he is dangerously unbalanced still normalize him in public.
Looking back a year
Another “ oldie but goodie” — This was published 11 months ago.
The point about him (Trump) getting worse in the future also cannot be overstated. An increasing paranoia combined with growing sadistic vindictiveness is pretty much a given. We have seen it consistently in other leaders, past and present, with this character defect.
And being so impulsive and without a conscience, he won’t stop for a moment before putting his primitive impulses into action. Those who believe that they can somehow “control” him, or that our democratic “checks and balances” can withstand the collusion between his personal pathology and that of his willing sycophants, are deluded, I’m afraid.
The man is unfit to run a lemonade stand, much less a country. That so many have decided to ignore his profound character defect, or turn it into an asset in their eyes, is horrific, but, sadly, not surprising”
Today
In the past year, Trump hasn't changed for better, and there’s a good case to be made that he’s changed for the worse as far as his pathological personality goes. Most Duty to Warn therapists like me have refined his diagnosis to malignant narcissism instead of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). This is because not only does he exhibit all the personality indications of NPD including significantly a lack of empathy — but he has characteristics of sociopathy, sadism, impulse control disorder, and paranoia. Trump either lacks the ability to engage in dispassionate reality testing (which would suggest a delusional disorder) or chooses not to believe anything he is told that contradicts beliefs that suit him.
Putting aside all his narcissism, consider his paranoia and lack of impulse control. If you don’t think this is dangerous consider whom or what he believes: Fox News and certain hosts like Jeanne Piro and Sean Hannity; Alex Jones, Brietbart and Bannon, Steve Miller and presumably any White House advisers who only tell him what he wants to hear, various alt-right Tweeters, the conspiracy theory of the day, and most of all what Vladimir Putin want him to believe.
Almost a year ago HuffPost published this article about what three psychiatrists had to say about Trump’s mental condition. Their conclusion was that Trump did have NPD and that this alone made him unfit, and too dangerous in fact, to wield the power of the presidency. The psychiatrist authors didn’t even go into malignant narcissism, perhaps because it would muddy the waters since it never made it into a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM).
Consider Trump today in lieu of all the behaviors below, which we’ve observed since this was written a year ago:
… someone afflicted with this incurable and progressive “Narcissistic Personality Disorder” simply can’t help himself.
Here’s why:
1. People with NPD are extremely sensitive and insecure. They psychologically require constant compliments and acknowledgement because they do not have their own internal self-esteem. They need to get it from others.
2. If someone does criticize them, even in a Tweet or on a television comedy show, it triggers this deep and painful lack of self-esteem and they MUST lash out to relieve the pain of the criticism.
3. They have only two modes: They are either fully your friend and love you or you are their enemy and they will do everything to discredit you or humiliate you. They can’t help it. The pain of having someone in their circle who does not approve of them or acknowledge them, (almost constantly), is too great.
4. There are only two ways to deal with someone with NPD, and they are both dangerous. There is no healthy way of interacting with someone with this affliction. If you criticize them they will lash out at you and if they have a great deal of power, that can be consequential. If you compliment them it only acts to increase the delusional and grandiose reality the sufferer has created, causing him to be even more reliant on constant and endless compliments and unwavering support.
5. Because they crave the attention and approval of others they develop great capacity to engage and entertain and can be quite charismatic, even to the point of developing a cult-like following.
6. Someone with NPD will NEVER get along with any member of the press, or any media outlet that criticizes him.
7. Someone with NPD will NEVER hire (and will fire) anyone who criticizes him. Therefore, and because they believe they know better than almost everyone else, they have a very hard time listening and taking any advice.
I don’t know what they’re saying on Fox or even CNN; but on MSNBC and in the New York Times and Washington Post opinion sections it has become normal to describe Trump as narcissistic and use other terms to describe the actual symptoms of NPD and malignant narcissism. But what Duty to Warn has been trying to educate the media about is that Trump has an incurable and dangerous personality disorder.
Trump can be accurately be described using words like these synonyms for unhinged: volitile,
deranged, demented, unbalanced, unstable, unglued, crazed, mad, insane, disturbed, out of one's mind, out of one's tree; mental, nutso, bonkers, batty, loopy, loco, postal, bananas, touched; vulgar slang batshit, unpredictable, changeable, variable, inconstant, inconsistent, erratic, irregular, unstable, turbulent, blowing hot and cold, varying, shifting, fluctuating, fluid, mutable; mercurial, capricious, whimsical, fickle, flighty, impulsive, temperamental, high-strung, excitable, emotional, fiery, moody, tempestuous.
Rational Republicans and Democrats in the public eye are noting that Trump is not normal whether they use psychological terms or not. What more of them have to do is explain to their audience that the opposite of normal is abnormal. Abnormal, as in what is psychology majors studied in their undergraduate abnormal psychology courses.
A Year From Now
As I see it, there are only three scenarios:
Trump resigns because his defense mechanisms fall into total disarray, he can no longer cope with persistent narcissistic insult, his supporters abandon him in droves, and he constructs a defeat he can define for himself as a victory.
He’s forced out through the 25th Amendment of impeachment.
Then we’ll be writing about President Pence…..