Breaking News necessitated a new illustration - A member of Vice President Pence’s staff has just tested positive.
Much can be made of one of Trump’s responses to being asked about his reaction to learning that his valet tested positive for Covid-19:
“Know who he is, good person, but I’ve had very little contact, Mike has had very little contact with him. Mike tested, and I was tested, we were both tested,” Trump said, referring to Pence.
(Washington Post)
In this statement alone Trump demonstrates wishful thinking at best and clinically significant magical thinking unmoored from the reality at worst that very little contact isn't the same as no contact, let alone no contact with someone the valet infected. More important, by saying he is a good person he suggests that he believes personality has something to do with whether someone becomes infected.
Trump, about whom an entire psychology textbook can be written just to describe his unique personality, fits to a T what is called The Dark Triad. I wrote about that here.
All three Dark Triad traits are conceptually distinct although empirical evidence shows them to be overlapping. They are associated with a callous-manipulative interpersonal style.
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Trump has among his many other symptoms grandiose self-delusions. The Brittanica defines Magical thinking as the belief that one's ideas, thoughts, actions, words, or use of symbols can influence the course of events in the material world. Magical thinking presumes a causal link between one's inner, personal experience and the external physical world.
Young children use magical thinking all the time. Sometimes they outgrow it and sometimes it persists into adulthood. In many ways Trump’s psychological development stalled at the age of about five. An infant is all instinct, or in Freudian terms, Id. The Ego, or conscious sense of self develops as the baby discovers the outside world. Between the ages of 3-5 the Superego which operates as a moral conscience develops.
In a psychologically healthy person the Ego, the conscious self, moderates between the Id (“I want what I when want it and right and wrong be damned” self) and the Superego (but “taking it would be wrong” self).
Back to Trump’s personality.
Trump has an intense need to believe the reality that feeds his narcissism and his prior pronouncements which always need to be right.
Add to everything in the Dark Triad Trump’s magical thinking. This sometimes seem to cross the border between the X-Files Mulder’s “I want to believe” and the symptoms of a delusional disorder:
“Delusional disorder, previously called paranoid disorder, is a type of serious mental illness — called a “psychosis”— in which a person cannot tell what is real from what is imagined. The main feature of this disorder is the presence of delusions, which are unshakable beliefs in something untrue.” (Cleveland Clinic)
We all know that Trump thinks he has legal immunity for breaking any law let alone, acting in violation of the Constitution. Now we see that in his delusional thinking he also thinks he is immune to one of the most highly contagious viruses ever identified.
He thinks he is both above the law and above the virus. Why wouldn’t he think this? After all look at what he’s gotten away with all of his life.
I was a practicing psychotherapist for 40 years. Then I retired and shelved my copy of the DSM-5 (figuratively — I didn't have a real copy since DSM-3). When Trump came along I dusted it off (again figuratively) and have been posting stories on Trump’s psychopathology since my first one in April of 2016.
