Trump reportedly couldn’t stop griping about the baby blimp. I can’t find the reference, but I read about his asking his handlers aides if people really saw him as a baby (see addendum). He was supposedly as upset as being thought of this way as he was at having the blimp following him literally and in the media everywhere he went. He hears references to “the adults in the room” trying to keep him from making irrational decisions and it seems fair to assume this leads him to ignore their advice.
Now to my clickbait title. Many main webpage titles are clickbait because every story competes with thousands of other stories for a click. The title on the opening page doesn’t always match the title of the article. If you’re reading these words the title was effective.
So, what’s with “polymorphously perverse?
I was talking to my therapist friend about how there are some terms in psychology, often dating back to Freud which may sound negative but are just a normal part of being human.
One phrase is unconscious homoerotic urges. Just about everyone has them to varying degrees. They may or not admit this to themselves. Sometimes they leak through into awareness through dreams or on the analysts' couch. I used this term in a diary which got me suspended last week.
In talking about my Kos suspension my friend (whose mentor in social work school at Michigan State which we both attended was psychoanalyst Max Bruck) mentioned that psychoanalytic theory is frequently not well understood. She said that another example of misunderstood terminology is polymorphous perversity.
POLYMORPHOUS PERVERSITY : The ability to find erotic pleasure out of any part of the body. According to Freud, a young child is, by nature, "polymorphously perverse" (Introductory Lecturs 15.209), which is to say that, before education in the conventions of civilized society, a child will turn to various bodily parts for sexual gratification and will not obey the rules that in adults determine perverse behavior. Education however quickly suppresses the polymorphous possibilities for sexual gratification in the child, eventually leading, through repression, to an amnesia about such primitive desires. Some adults retain such polymorphous perversity, according to Freud. From Purdue U. reference
I thought immediately of the baby blimp.
Trump, whose ego is inflated and who is full of hot air, deserves being represented in gas-filled vinyl. First came the inflatable chicken and rat. These didn’t get a rise out of him but reports say that the baby blimp really got under his skin.
The third inflatable Trump was a charm. It lampooned him as being a baby.
In the now-famous interview with The Sun he said:
“I used to love London as a city. I haven’t been there in a long time. But when they make you feel unwelcome, why would I stay there?" he said "I guess when they put out blimps to make me feel unwelcome, no reason for me to go to London."
This is how the Washington Post put it:
Talk about political hot air: A 20-foot-tall inflatable baby in President Trump’s likeness made the whole world look up as it flew over London last week during his visit. Now, after a crowdfunding campaign to bring it to the United States met its goal more than three times over, it’s coming to the land of the free.
The baby blimp, clad in a diaper and by all appearances on the verge of a temper tantrum, isn’t subtle. Neither is the Trump rat that single-clawedly infested the streets of Midtown Manhattan last summer, which is scheduled to return later this week, or the Trump chicken that pecked at the president’s ego outside the White House about the same time.
But who needs subtlety? Obviousness is precisely what makes the inflatables work so well.
Trump, of course, takes everything personally — especially insults intended to be personal. The baby blimp’s organizers said they hoped to play to that vulnerability, and it seems they succeeded: “I guess when they put out blimps to make me feel unwelcome, no reason for me to go to London,” a petulant Trump, who helicoptered from place to place on his English stopover, told the Sun.
Of course, the reason Trump is so upset with this is that the baby blimp is raining on his parade ( pee-pee jokes permitted). The chubby Trump-haired diapered in the midst of a terrible-twos tantrum will be on every news broadcast as it becomes a fixture at every protest rally.
Thanks to the search computer algorithms, if anyone wants references for TRUMP and POLYMORPHOUS PERVERSITY they will find an article about the Trump baby blimp.
Don’t dismiss Freud just because some of his concepts are out-of-day.
Although literary giants knew and wrote about the power of the unconscious, Shakespeare being the best example, it was Freud who presented compelling evidence that everyone has a huge part of themselves they aren’t aware of.
Another concept is the Freudian slip. I think Trump made a telling one yesterday. It’s hasn’t gotten any play in the media. In his lame spin to extricate himself from the Putin’s puppet attack, he said he meant to say “I didn’t see any reason I wouldn’t” ( he paused for a split second and then said) “it would be Russia.” The crucial slip is the word “I” which changes the meaning of the sentence and in fact, makes it true. Here it is in a video, about 5:30 minutes in. I cant find it in a transcript and it should be there because this is what he actually said.
ADDENDUM
From exactly a year ago: 'You treat me like a baby!': The 'final straw' that reportedly led Trump to oust his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort Business Insider
When everybody was assembled, Trump reportedly shouted at Manafort, "How can anybody allow an article that says your campaign is all f----- up?"
"You think you've gotta go on TV to talk to me? You treat me like a baby!" Trump added, according to Green's account of the meeting quoted in the Daily Mail.
"Am I like a baby to you? I sit there like a little baby and watch TV and you talk to me? Am I a f------ baby, Paul?" Trump reportedly continued.
The room then "fell silent," the book says, according to the Daily Mail.
There’s debate about whether Trump behaves and thinks like a two, five, or seven year old.
Donald Trump Is a 2-Year-Old. It’s Time for the Press to Treat Him Like One. (2016)
We’ve seen angry candidates before—Richard Nixon was practiced in scowling and the ebullient Ronald Reagan knew how to fire an irate comment in a debate when he needed to—but this is the first time we’ve seen a candidate assume the psychological and reactive profile of a small child. Trump seethed like an irritable 2-year-old instead of exhibiting the kind of restraint and comity we usually associate with a finalist in the presidential sweepstakes. I’m a big baby, the Trump outburst announced to all, and I’ll just act out until my anger is appeased!
Watch Donald Trump respond to being called a 5-year-old by acting like a 5-year-old.
When Anderson Cooper asked Trump about retweeting an unflattering and sexist picture of his opponent Ted Cruz’s wife, Trump responded by brazenly lying, telling Cooper, “I thought it was a nice picture.” When Cooper called him out on it, Trump said, “He started it,” meaning Cruz. When Cooper told him that was how a 5-year-old would respond, Trump responded by saying, again, “He started it.” Like a 5-year-old would.
He’s a 7-year old: When the World Is Led by a Child, By David Brooks, July, 15, 2017
At base, Trump is an infantalist. There are three tasks that most mature adults have sort of figured out by the time they hit 25. Trump has mastered none of them. Immaturity is becoming the dominant note of his presidency, lack of self-control his leitmotif.
First, most adults have learned to sit still. But mentally, Trump is still a 7-year-old boy who is bouncing around the classroom. Trump’s answers in these interviews are not very long — 200 words at the high end — but he will typically flit through four or five topics before ending up with how unfair the press is to him.