I don’t believe Trump is capable of the kind of love that comes from the heart. His love, such as it is, comes from the head.
I think Trump is incapable of empathy. I believe love is based on feelings that mean you accept the beloved unconditionally, and that this requires empathy.
To love someone I believe you have to know them and to know others you need empathy. You love your spouse and children, your best friends, your acquaintances, and pets all in different ways. If you have empathy you are not only capable of love, you do love.
By this definition, Trump who has no empathy cannot love himself because he does not know himself.
There is another kind of love. I call it narcissistic love. It is contrasted it with conditional love. This is how blogger Caroline Van Kiimendade defines unconditional love:
Healthy unconditional love requires a bonding beyond the surface appearance and behaviour of someone. It’s a love that connects you from core to core. You could say it’s soul based. It’s a love that goes beyond appearances. This is not to say that there are no limits to what you will tolerate. You might come to a point where the relationship no longer works, yet, on some level, you continue to love the person, despite their behaviour.
Conditional love doesn’t deserve to be referred to as love. It is all about “me” and doesn’t require further definition. We know it when we see it. We know it when we experience it. If all parents provided unconditional love the psychotherapists would probably lose half their clients.
Here’s how therapist Sheryl Paul describes conditional love.
We have a redundant phrase in our lexicon: unconditional love. To say “unconditional” love indicates that real love can be anything other than unconditional. It’s like what I learned in high school English that it’s redundant to say “close proximity” because the very definition of proximity is to be close. But the truth is that if it’s conditional, it’s not love, and, sadly, much of what we call “love” isn’t love at all, but approval.
This is my Trump Narcissistic Love Rating chart. These ratings are based on today’s news. They are subject to change any moment. You will notice the high ratings given to so-called enemies. This is because there is a fine, perhaps non-existent, line between love and hate when a narcissist like Trump unconsciously envies his enemy.
I think there was a time Melania and Ivanka would have been rated 10. Melania is now 0 because she no longer feeds his narcissism. Ivanka’s rating is slipping because she no longer appears to worship him.
Michael Avenati and Bob Mueller get 10’s because Trump identifies with them and in his warped mind he loves them and wishes he had the genuine self-confidence they possess.
Vlad a 10, well, of course he has a man crush on him.
And then there's Stormy. She gets a 15 because deep down inside Trump is madly in love with her. She is the unobtainable love object. In Trump’s warped way of thinking she was and still is his soulmate, the perfect mother he never had.
Trump narcissistic Love Ratings (10 Great love, 0 No love)
Donald himself |
15 |
melania |
0 |
Baron |
0 |
Ivanka |
5 |
Tiffany |
0 |
donald jr. |
5 |
eric |
3 |
sarah sanders |
4 |
stormy daniels |
15 |
hope hicks |
10 |
sean Hannity |
10 |
michael cohen |
0 |
Jeannine Pirro |
10 |
fox and friends |
8 |
correy Lewandoski |
10 |
steve bannon |
9 |
gen.john kelly |
0 |
rudy Guiliani |
10 |
bob mueller |
10 |
vlad putin |
10 |
devin nunes |
10 |
michael avenati |
10 |
Hillary Clinton |
5 |
Barack obama
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10 |
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.Full disclosure: I found the Freud quote in a New Yorker movie review of Infinity Wars. Kudos to Anthony Lane the author who really knows his Freud. Then I found a PDF of the entire paper. This is from The New Yorker: The person who prophesied this film, more than a century ago, is Freud. In 1914, he wrote, “Even dire criminals and comic heroes captivate us within the context of the arts by dint of the narcissistic rigor with which they keep at bay anything tending to diminish their ego.” Exactly. Iron Man in a nutshell. Or Thanos. And don’t even get me started on Doctor Strange, whose rigor extends to the curve described by his cowlick. I was as pumped as the next fan when I read the cast list of the film, and yet, in the event, it suffers from the same uneasy bonhomie that infects every supergroup. All-star spectacle it may be, but it’s still like listening to two and a half hours of Tin Machine. http://www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit/freud1925.pdf |