‘The Strange Case of Donald J.

Trump: A
Psychological Reckoning’
March 09, 2020 | By Hilary Hurd Anyaso
https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2020/03/the-strange-case-of-donald-j-trump-a-psychological-
reckoning/

When Northwestern University psychologist Dan P. McAdams first wrote about

Donald Trump’s psyche for “The Atlantic” in 2016, he knew his subject was not your
average politician. He just couldn’t nail down why. 

His new book, “The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological

Reckoning” (Oxford University Press, March 2020), provides some surprising
answers. Trump, McAdams asserts, may be the rare person who lacks any inner story,
something most people develop to givetheir lives unity, meaning and purpose.

A life story provides a moral frame of reference because it grounds your experiences in
basic values and beliefs, according to McAdams, a narrative psychologist who
pioneered the study of lives. 

Trump, McAdams argues, can’t form a meaningful life story because he is the “episodic
man” who sees life as a series of battles to be won. There is no connection between the
moments, no reflection and no potential for growth when one is compulsively in the
present. 

Donald Trump is a “truly authentic fake,” writes McAdams, professor of human

development and social policy at the School of Education and Social Policy. “Trump is
always acting, always on stage — but that is who he really is, and that is all he really
is. He is not introspective, retrospective or prospective. He does not go deep into his
mind; he does not travel back to the past; he does not project far into the future. He is
always on the surface, always right now.  

“In his own mind, he is more like a persona than a person, more like a primal force or
superhero, rather than a fully realized human being,” McAdams adds.

McAdams’ eighth and latest book, a four-year project, is a collection of stand-alone

essays that each explore a single psychological facet of the president. Taken together,
“The Strange Life of Donald J Trump” connects Trump’s lack of a life story — or what
psychologists call a “narrative identity” — to various personality traits.
“Truth for Donald Trump is whatever works to win in the moment,” McAdams writes. “He
moves through life episode by episode, from one battle to the next, striving in turn, to
win each one. The episodes don’t add up or form a narrative arc.”

Themes of redemption
McAdams, the Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Psychology at Northwestern’s
Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, studies personality and how people change
over time. His narrative approach to studying human lives places stories and storytelling
at the center of human personality.

For more than two decades, McAdams and his students have been coding life-story
interviews, looking for themes of one particular life story — redemption. Their published
work shows that people who tell their life story in redemptive terms — such as
overcoming suffering or adversity — enjoy better mental health and higher levels of
happiness, compared to people whose life stories show fewer themes of redemption. 

Moreover, researchers have found strong associations between redemptive life stories
and an adult’s concern about the well-being of future generations, something that
comes into sharper focus as people age. 

In previous books, McAdams applied his tools of psychological interpretation to the lives
of U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Despite their differences,
both leaders had moving redemptive life stories, atoning for past mistakes, overcoming
obstacles or mounting powerful comebacks. 

But for Trump, McAdams says, there can be no comeback story, because when a hero
wins every scene there is nothing to come back from. “He can’t show any kind of growth
or learning, because to grow you have to have once been small,” he says. 

It may appear that Trump has stories. He can spin a tale about Mexican drug smugglers
and proclaims himself to be the “greatest president ever,” “a stable genius” and the
“smartest man on the face of the earth.”

“But these are proclamations of a generic trait and statements about the self, not stories
about the self,” McAdams writes. “They don’t show how he came to be and where his
life may be going. They do not explain how he has changed over time, how he has
developed and how he was once one thing and is now another. They do not convey any
sense of humanity.”

One of the most shocking and unprecedented features of the Trump presidency is
Trump’s refusal to adopt a moral language for leadership, McAdams says, which stems
directly from his failure to create a moral story for his own life. 
“He sees the U.S. as a force in the world, but not a moral force,” McAdams writes.
“Unlike any U.S. president for the past 100 years, Trump does not even feign interest in
championing such hallowed American values as respect for human rights or opposition
to tyranny. He is purely transactional.

“The features of Trump’s strange personality — his orientation to love, his proclivity for
untruth, his narcissistic goal agenda, his authoritarian sentiments — can be fully
appreciated and understood only if we realize that they revolve around the empty
narrative core, the hollow inner space where the story should be, but never was,”
McAdams says.

I’ve heard psychiatrists say this before—that he has no sense

of time, sequence, or cause and effect. It’s just him, and his
thoughts about himself and things that affect him at a given
moment, and his self-serving reactions to them.
Quote Tweet

Duty To Warn 

@duty2warn
· Mar 15
New book by psychologist about Trump. “He is the “episodic man” who sees life as a series
of battles to be won. There is no connection between the moments, no reflection and no
potential for growth when one is compulsively in the present.
news.northwestern.edu/stories/2020/0
https:// 3/the-strange- case- of-donald- j-trump-a-psychological- reckoning/

https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1239176614472187904

Replying to
@gtconway3d
I’m a shrink. I call it “emotional memory.” The personality disordered - narcissists and
borderlines in particular - have no emotional memory. So every battle is life and death. They
have no sense of proportion or scale. People are 100% good or bad. There are no grey
areas.
6
15
96

Pollyannas
@Beachbumjules

·
Mar 16
What about his undying rage or envy of President Obama?
2
2
15

Life Coach
@LT_Greenwald

·
Mar 16
By “emotional memory” I mean that he doesn’t remember what it felt like at the time. So
when new threats appear he has no way of gauging a proportional response. Every threat —
from Rosie O'Donnell to nuclear holocaust — is treated as an existential crisis.
Eternal Emperor in His Own Mind: The Distorted Reality
of Donald Trump
05/27/2017 01:17 pm ET Updated May 27, 2017

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In this in-depth article, two high profile mental health experts delve further into
the inconsistencies and untruths that underlie much of what this President
says and does.

By Seth Davin Norrholm, Ph.D. & David M. Reiss, M.D.

AAPAt a recent NATO summit, President Trump, in classic narcissistic

fashion, shoved his way to the front of the gathering of international
representatives and assumed a dominant posture.
During his ascent from the business world and reality television to the
Presidency of the United States of America, Donald Trump has consistently
displayed many of the qualities and behaviors associated with narcissism
including:

· grandiose sense of self-importance;

· preoccupation with unlimited fantasies of success, power, and brilliance;

· belief that one is special;

· consistent requirement for excessive admiration;

· sense of entitlement;

· taking advantage of others for one’s own gain;

· lack of empathy for others, and

· hyper-sensitivity to criticism

These behaviors and their potential consequences have been well

documented in the mainstream media and individuals representing different
schools of thought and areas of expertise within the mental health community,
including the two of us, have provided comment and insight to the relationship
between extreme narcissism and Presidential fitness for duty.

One aspect of the narcissistic personality that has been increasingly apparent
to outside observers during the first 120 days of Trump’s term is his noted
penchant for controlling the narrative about him and his performance through
misleading statements, exaggerations, or flat out lying…and he has let out
some real doozies (492 in his first 100 days by some counts) including:

- he had the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan

- his Inauguration crowd was the largest in history

- 3 to 5 million “illegals” voted in the general election and cost him the popular
vote
- the rollout of his travel ban from predominantly Muslim nations was “going
well with very few problems” and that any of those protesting the action were
“paid” “professional anarchists”

- Former President Obama wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower during the
campaign

- “Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated”

- FBI Director James Comey told him that he was not under investigation
three times prior to Comey’s firing

GETTY IMAGESShortly after his Inauguration in January, President Trump

and then FBI Director James Comey greet one another. Trump would later fire
Comey in what has been debated as a self-preservation move and/or
obstruction of justice.
The narcissist is self-serving and will go to great lengths to protect himself
from ego injury, including changing facts to fit his worldview rather than
changing his worldview to fit objective facts. The nexus of repeated lies,
creating an “alternative reality” even in the face of conflicting evidence, is so
deeply rooted and so intricately woven that severe narcissists can display a
quasi-delusional state (separation from reality) similar to that seen in
psychotic disorders. While there is a subtly different quality of the false beliefs
than occurs in primary psychotic disorders (e.g., schizophrenia, bipolar
disorder, delusional disorder, etc.) the distortion of reality by the narcissist can
be equally as irrational.

For the past several weeks, the President has been embroiled in controversy
regarding the apparent interference by Russia in our 2016 election, the ties of
several members of Team Trump with Russia, and accusations levied toward
him suggesting that he is actively obstructing the ongoing Trump-Russia
investigation. For example, Trump’s rationale for firing FBI Director James
Comey has changed numerous times with the most recent explanations
seeming to be more closely related to self-preservation rather than dereliction
of duty on Comey’s part.

All of these observations beg the questions: Why does the President lie to
the extent that he does and why does he appear unconcerned about the
consequences of such substantial “twisting of the facts?”

Based on our combined 50 plus years of experience examining human

behavior and studying psychopathology, we suggest the following cognitive
framework may help explain the contradictory, deceptive, and sometimes
bizarre, statements and actions of this President:

1. The extreme Narcissist will distort reality and tenaciously maintain the
existence of their distorted reality. This type of defense is not unique to
narcissism and is present almost ubiquitously in both psychiatrically healthy
individuals and those who suffer from some form of psychopathology.

Distorting reality serves to protect an individual from distressing, fearful,

painful, or overwhelming emotion. What is unique to those with personality
disorders, including narcissistic subtypes, is the degree to which an individual
will go to maintain and rationalize this defense.

The extreme Narcissist will provide any plausible defense for his behavior in
order to maintain the ego-protecting reality he has created. In other words,
consider that within legal proceedings there exists the concept of
demonstrating that something did or did not happen by meeting the criteria of
being “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The severe narcissist will seek out and
employ a defense, tenaciously, even if it could be characterized as well within
the realm of “unreasonable doubt,” and having only the slightest chance of
plausibility.

It is not distressing to the severe narcissist if a belief is improbable (e.g., the

reported ties between my team and Russia are a hoax created by the
opposition) as long as the belief is even barely theoretically possible. In fact,
being directly challenged that a belief is improbable (for example, by the
press) may actually embolden the extreme narcissist by confirming a sense of
“specialness” – the conviction that one is so smart or so important that he
sees what others do not. He might respond to such a challenge “That just
proves how special I am, how unique my situation is, and that my abilities are
so superior!”
TWITTERTwo representative tweets in response to President Trump’s recent
claims that his recent overseas trip to the Middle East and Europe has been
“very successful” despite conflicting evidence and controversy along the way.
2. The extreme Narcissist lives in the moment with little regard for linear
time, cause and effect, or behavioral consequences. Our clinical
observations suggest that the severe narcissist lives in a protective (and
expanding) bubble within which life events all occur “in the present.” There is
no emotional conception of time in the narcissist as perceived by most
individuals. In general, people are able to conceptualize their life history as a
linear, logically flowing, autobiographical narrative. While the narcissist may
be able to tell you factually that events occurred on a certain date at a specific
time, their perception is that it is all encompassed in terms of an immediate
“now.”

This phenomenon can be described as a “collapse of time” or an ever-

enlarging array of interconnected events as opposed to a directional,
sequential passage of time and experiences. Dr. Reiss has used Kurt
Vonnegut’s metaphor from Slaughterhouse 5 to explain this type of life
perception. Normal perception of time can be thought of as riding in a train
traveling in a linear direction with “events” coming up to you and then passing
behind you. You have the sense of where you are, you can try to peek at what
is coming up, and you can recall what has passed by – yet you are fixed in
that position traveling in that direction and you can report how far you have
travelled (by using a clock or calendar, for example).

The “collapse of time” is perceived as more of being within an expanding

balloon in which neither the events that you experience nor the sense of self
that you develop are fixed or anchored. Events that occurred in the past are
recalled and re-experienced without a definitive emotional sense of how long
ago they occurred.

The relationship between events is dynamic and changeable. In addition, all of

the events that an individual experienced are all “there” at the same time and
accessible to recall. Events that occurred years ago carry the same emotional
power (and impact upon decision making and behavior) as events of perhaps
the current month.
The extreme Narcissist lives in the “now” such that:

· gratification (e.g., praise, reward, accolades, adoration) is sought within the

moment,

· explanations for misdeeds are presented in present tense terms,

· boastful statements are made because they feel good right now –

TWITTERIn posting boastful tweets like this, which also includes a false
statement, Trump is able to “lean on” his Electoral College victory to feel good
“in the now.”
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In other words, the severe narcissist does not stop to consider future
challenges to his statements or actions, the relevance or consistency of
present behaviors with previous events, or the potential negative
consequences that “now” actions could have later. The extreme narcissist’s
perception of time impairs the ability to function effectively in a society that is
based on an implied linear progression of time.

For the narcissist, the sense of the “future” may have a similar “immediate”
quality. While narcissists may “plan” for the future, at times even for a legacy
after death, when closely exploring the accompanying emotional sense, there
is often a hidden child-like belief that even if deceased, one will still be present
to experience the “glory” of their own legacy – and in fact, one is already
reveling in that anticipated adulation at the present moment. Emotionally, a
magical immortality is embraced.

It is our belief that until a Narcissist is directly confronted “head on” with
irrefutable evidence of his misdeeds or the clear impossibility of the scenario
that has been created, he will devise a narrative to fit the gratification of his
ego within the present “now.”

This may, at least in part, explain why there have been so many examples of
this President contradicting his previous statements, speaking
extemporaneously without substance to back his claims, or “flip-flopping”
between positions, all without any indication that he is aware of or
experiencing a sense of conflict or inconsistency, or any need to offer an
explanation for the objectively illogical presentation.

In our proposed schema, he doesn’t conceive of time in the sense that most
people do and, as such, there is no linear relationship between events. That is
not to say he cannot engage in more cognitive types planning and thought
(i.e., Today I will attend several meetings and tomorrow I will play golf) but
that this lack of linearity exists at an emotional level.
WH.GOVLiving in the now, the severe narcissist does not weigh the long term
impact of his actions - such as removing environmental restrictions by
Executive Order - which may have devastating effects.
It is also worth noting that the “collapse of time” phenomenon previously
described coupled with the lack of empathy associated with extreme
narcissism may also help to explain the apparent lack of concern by this
President for those who would be harmed (including even his own younger
wife, children, and grandchildren) by the long-term detrimental effects of his
actions, legislation, and positions on such issues as climate change, nuclear
arms proliferation, healthcare cutbacks, the defunding of biomedical research,
and an overall isolationist approach to global politics.

3. How does the extreme Narcissist develop a fantastical reality within

“collapsed time?”

While there may be complex neuro-psychological factors that contribute to the

perception of time, from a psychological point of view, there are two inter-
related factors related to early-life experience that appear to contribute to the
“collapse of time.”

During childhood, it is universally important for a child to learn how to cope

with frustration and discomfort. Frustrations and discomforts may range from
normal, inescapable circumstances (e.g., experiencing hunger, hot or cold,
physical pain, normal anxiety, fear or worry) to situations that are overtly
traumatic or abusive. It is well known that sufficient fear or discomfort triggers
a “fight or flight” response involves emotional, physical and cognitive
reactions. One of the reactions that commonly occurs during the “flight or fight
response” is the sensation of time “elongating” or “standing still.” Thus, for a
child who experiences an environment that is perceived as particularly
stressful, there may be a significant number of episodes (or in severe cases,
an almost constant state) during which there is an experience of time
distortion or “timeless”, which likely interferes with development of a healthy
and normal perception of the passage of time.

At the same time, a second factor derives from the fact that in a “normal”
situation of “stress” or discomfort, a child perceives that within a reasonable
period of time, their caretaker (parents, parental figures, etc.) will take action
to restore a state of comfort. When that occurs regularly, the uncomfortable
child learns to “look forward” to the arrival of comforting – and the act of
learning to “look forward” supports the perception that events proceed in a
linear, progressive passage of time. However, if a child does not experience
an expectation of comfort (whether due to comfort not being available or due
to an impairment of perception), there then does not exist a motivation to “look
forward” for relief. Rather, there develops an attempt to do the best possible to
find some manner of “defense” to at least relieve the sense of the distress in
the immediate moment. Thus, time is not a factor and there is no “looking
forward” or linearization of time – there is only a need to seek immediate
relief/gratification in the “ever-present now.” In fact, in unfortunate situations of
abuse or overt neglect, the child may learn to fear that the passage of time will
only lead to increased distress, leading to a disruptive motivation to avoid
“looking forward” and to remain fixed in the present.
FACEBOOK: DONALD J. TRUMPDuring his upbringing with a “stern,
demanding, and ultimately rejecting father (left)” and as a military school cadet
(right), Trump developed “a life is war” mentality.
Without attempting to analyze or evaluate Trump’s developmental years in
depth, it is notable that his father has been described as, “stern, demanding,
and ultimately rejecting”, leaving young Trump with “a life is war mentality.”
That experience could well repetitively trigger a subtle “fight or flight” state that
then engenders a “collapse of the perception of time.”
4. What happens when the extreme Narcissist is confronted with
“irrefutable evidence” against the fantasy life he has created?

At times, and for many, inevitably, the narcissistic individual will be

inescapably confronted with the fact that the fantastical world they have
invented and in which they “live emotionally” is not reality-based. This may
occur when practical circumstances (e.g., arrest, conviction, incarceration, or
financial ruin) prevent even a modicum of the desired fantasy state)

Typically, the first response to this type of confrontation is the emergence of

anxiety and an attempt to restructure the narcissistic defenses/fantasies to
rationalize the new situation, often at the cost of creating even more of an
irrational distance from reality. If those attempts fail, anxiety leads into having
to face inner emptiness and despair, with emergence of significant and at
times malignantly severe depression.

Depending upon the practical circumstances and environment as well as other

personality traits (and possibly, biochemical vulnerabilities), depression may
slowly or precipitously lead to a suicidal level of despair or a total “escape”
from realty into a “full-blown” paranoid state. The latter statement underscores
the need for experts to highlight these behaviors in the current President due
to the danger it presents to the millions upon whom his actions have
consequences.

5. Concluding Remarks

This phenomenon is, in fact, an aspect of the entrancing power of the severe
narcissist. Even while cognitively aware that he is spinning a false tale – i.e.,
lying – emotionally, in the moment, the story being told is both experienced as
reality and conveyed with a tone of conviction and “sincerity” (albeit often
bombastically so) such that the listener is forced into the position of taking the
significant risk of questioning the sanity a powerful, apparently self-assured
person; or adopting the safer, more passive role of relinquishing their own
cognitively analytic processes and deferring to the intoxicating, intense and
grandiose thought processes of the narcissistic. Thus, the interpersonal
interaction commonly referred to as “gaslighting” in fact represents the
projection onto the public of the powerful, illogical, and timeless fantastical
world of lies in which narcissist (emotionally) lives.

About the Authors:

Seth Davin Norrholm, PhD is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and

Behavioral Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine, a full-time
faculty member in the Emory Neuroscience Graduate Program, and a
member of the Emory Clinical Psychology Graduate Program. Dr. Norrholm
has spent 20 years studying trauma-, stressor-, anxiety-, depressive-, and
substance use-related disorders and have published over 80 peer-reviewed
research articles and book chapters. The primary objective of his work is to
develop “bench-to-bedside” clinical research methods to inform therapeutic
interventions for fear and anxiety-related disorders and how they relate to
human factors such as personality, genetics, and environmental influences.
Dr. Norrholm has been featured on NBC, ABC, CNN.com, USA Today,
WebMD, Scientific American, and is a regular Contributor to The Huffington
Post.

David M. Reiss, M.D. has been a practicing psychiatrist for more than 30
years, specializing in “front-line” adult and adolescent psychiatry. He has
evaluated and treated over 12,000 persons of diverse social and cultural
backgrounds, from every occupational field. Dr. Reiss has been recognized
internationally for expertise in character and personality dynamics. He is often
interviewed and quoted in the print, Internet and radio/TV media, nationally
and internationally, to help the public understand the psychological aspects of
current events. He is an authority on issues regarding social and political
phenomena, medical and mental health treatment, PTSD, violence in society,
and the functioning of the current mental health system.