I write about Trump’s psychopathology because I believe understanding the malignant narcissism that drives Trump to make many decisions can help to defeat him. To paraphrase Sun Tzu, we must know our enemy as well as possible.
In this morning’s New York Times opnion columnist Charles Blow addresses the mind-boggling characteristics of the lie machine Donald Trump in “An Oder to “Desperate Don’.” (It doesn’t seem to be behind the NYT paywall)
He writes:
Trump lies about everything and for every reason. He lies to brag. He lies to deflect. He lies to inflate. He lies to defame. He lies to praise. He sometimes seems to lie just for the sport of it.
Then he adds other very different reasons he sees as underlying why Trump lies:
he lies out of desperation, out of the fear of being found out, blamed, reprimanded, possibly even abandoned...
In these paragraphs he covers the reasons he lies. They is worth parsing from a psychological standpoint. (I am a Duty to Warn psychotherapist who considers Trump to be a malignant narcissist, the combinaion of narcissistic personality disorder and sociopathy.)
- He lies to brag. This is a demonstraton of Trump’s narcissism, he feels a visceral thrill of finding something he can aggrandise himself about and it sending it out in a tweet — which in anybody else would be a sign of sad solitary self-gratification, or inperson whether to his worshipping crowds or his sycophantic cabinet. This is like having a public orgasm and should get him arrested for exibitionism.
- He lies to deflect. This is a more thought out kind of lying because it is strategic. Thankfully it doesn’t always work because there are so many matters that make him look bad (or guilty of crimes) or just take the spotlight away from him that even the master liar can’t always keep up with them.
- He lies to inflate. This is more narcissism.
- He lies to defame. This is the sadistic bully part of his personality.
- He lies to praise. The is narcissism becvause he lavishes praise on people who praise him.
- He sometimes seems to lie just for the sport of it. This is an interesting mix which demonstrates his being a maligant narcissist because lying for sport mixes the braggadocio of extreme narcissism with the sociopathic delight in conning people into believing his lies.
- He lies out of desperation, out of the fear of being found out, blamed, reprimanded, possibly even abandoned… of this Charles Blow writes:
In all those moments, he simply reeks of dread and trepidation. In those moments, we are reminded that Trump knows what other thinking people know: In a world not blinded and numbed by racial tribalism, demographic fears and cultural panic, these issues that barely nick him would cut him smooth and deep.
It is in those moments that we are reminded of what normal felt like, when an apology or explanation was compelled, and politicians confronted their foibles with some degree of contrition.
Trump knows nothing of contrition, but take his moments of desperation as proof that the world has not completely gone mad, that sin still has the ability to convict.
I am not in agreement with Blow’s first paragraph above. I think he gives Trump more credit for self-awareness than he has ever demonstrated. I think Blow is desribing deeply repressed, i.e. unconscious, reasons Trump lies. I think that aside from when he deliberately lies to deflect, he lies because he is a deeply insecure person.
I just don’t see Trump reeking of dread and trepidation. I doubt Trump has the self-knowledge Blow attributes to him. I don’t think that he is aware of what rational people are thinking and if he is that it ever remains in his conscious mind for more than a fleeting moment before he lapses into one of several primative defense mechanisms, most frequently denial.
Blow sees physical manifestations of defensiveness or anxiety which I don’t. He desribes them here:
But, to me, it is when Trump lies out of desperation, out of the fear of being found out, blamed, reprimanded, possibly even abandoned, that most people can relish it. It is in those moments that Trump is most human and our ire toward this liar is most vindicated and validated.
In those moments, at least when he makes a public appearance in conjunction, his eyes are stretched wide and his face flush. He looks defensive and nervous.
I’d like Blow to be right. However Trump suffers from a combination of two of the personality disorders which are rarely if ever amenable to change. If his world falls apart and he ends up though one means or another as a disgraced former president I don’t see him handling it in any psychologically healthy ways. While he could have a psychotic break with reality, or beocme clinically depressed, I think it is more likely he will continue to utilize the defense of denial.
Blow is trying to attribute a semblance of being normal to Trump.
Trump is not normal in any way, shape, or form.