I think Trump is consumed by hate. I do not think he is capable of love for anyone, and even the love for himself is so pathologically narcissistic it doesn’t deserve to be called love. I see Trump’s character as being enmeshed with his personality, and his personality being both psychologically pathological and amounting to a sickness of the soul. I think he is a man who has never loved another human being or even an animal. I see him as an empty vessel, a hollow man in an ill fitting suit.
But this is just what I see. Consider what one of the most esteemed thinkers of the 20th century might say.
By what seems like an amazing coincidence the esteemed psychoanalyst and social philosopher Erich Fromm not only wrote “The Art of Loving” but he also formulated the concept of malignant narcissism which defines Donald Trump to a T. It is a psychological syndrome which is an extreme mix of narcissism, sociopathy, aggression, grandiosity, and sadism where people raise hostility levels when they get defensive, they are toxic to families and organizations and they dehumanize people on a whim. Malignant narcissists are incapable of empathy. Some, like Donald Trump, are so unfamiliar with what it means to feel empathy that they can’t come close to convincingly faking it as his response to the carnage in El Paso and Dayton demonstrates.
Wikipedia offers a good a summary of Fromm’s thesis about love. I suggest reading the following and asking yourself whether you think Trump is capable of the kind of love Fromm describes. The following is summarized from Wikipedia.
Put very brieflyThe Art of Loving argues that the active character of true love involves four basic elements. He believes that love and loving, at least the love he considers the most profound love, is hard but ultimately rewarding, work. It takes a commitment to care, to taking responsibility, to respecting the loved one, and to striving for knowledge of the self and the other.
Fromm makes the case that striving to love is the most rewarding kind of work.
Fromm observes that real love "is not a sentiment which can be easily indulged in by anyone." It is only through developing one's total personality to the capacity of loving one's neighbor with "true humility, courage, faith and discipline" that one attains the capacity to experience real love.
Pause: Do you thinking reading this far, Trump is capable of real love?
Fromm said that “one cannot fall in love, really; one has to be in love. And that means that loving becomes, and the ability to love, becomes one of the most important things in life."
The Art of Loving argues that the active character of true love involves four basic elements: care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge Each of these is difficult to define and can differ markedly depending on the people involved and their circumstances. Seen in these terms, love is hard work, but it is also the most rewarding kind of work.
Pause again: Is Trump capable of this?
You can not only plug in Trump’s personality to assess him from Fromm’s exposition in The Art of Loving but you can also evaluate Trump’s personality from how Fromm described malignant narcissism.
Fromm first coined the term "malignant narcissism" in 1964, in The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil he described it as a "severe mental sickness" representing "the quintessence of evil". He characterized the condition as "the most severe pathology and the root of the most vicious destructiveness and inhumanity". Wikipedia
Donald Trump’s personality has in the past two years been described by more and more mental health experts as malignant narcissism. Better late than never thanks to Trump and Duty to Warn therapists like Dr. John Gartner this previously rather obscure syndrome has become familiar to many people not well versed in psychology.
According to Fromm, loving oneself is quite different from arrogance, conceit or egocentrism. Loving oneself means caring about oneself, taking responsibility for oneself, respecting oneself, and knowing oneself (e.g. being realistic and honest about one's strengths and weaknesses). In order to be able to truly love another person, one needs first to love oneself in this way.
Fromm calls the general idea of love in contemporary Western society égoïsme à deux – a relationship in which each person is entirely focused on the other, to the detriment of other people around them. The current belief is that a couple should be a well-assorted team, sexually and functionally, working towards a common aim. This is in contrast with Fromm's description of true love and intimacy, which involves willful commitment directed toward a single unique individual. One cannot truly love another person if one does not love all of mankind including oneself.