Illuminating Malignant Narcissism: The Need to Recognize and Understand How Much Danger We Are In

This is the first excerpt I am sharing and just a small glimpse into the new book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, which I have now completed reading. This has been a painful experience for me, reading this book and looking more and more deeply into the truth of what we are faced with and what brought us to this point. I definitely have learned things I was unaware of. And this experience has been painful because I get so much of our collective crisis in my bones, and also because much of what I will share here was true or similar to what I grew up with and endured for much of my adult life as the child of a severely mentally ill parent. My mother, before the miracle of the successful treatment for her mental illness over the past 4 years, was also, like our current president, a "10." So when I first read the passage I will share in this post, I had to stop and weep. When I hear, for instance, of Trump speaking of wanting to punch someone in the face, I am triggered into the memory of when my own mother did actually punch me in the face... And in this moment, I am again conscious of this profound sadness that I live with. That said, the experiences with my mother have also spurred me to do the deep and difficult and amazing work of awakening, a process which will continue for as long as I live. And this process has also gifted and blessed me with the awareness and wisdom of both how severe the danger is and how great the opportunities are before us. This is about a lot more than Donald Trump alone. Whether we know it or not, we are all impacted by that which has been increasingly causing great harm and suffering in our nation and across our Earth Mother. May we all join together in proclaiming loudly what is happening, shedding light on the great darkness of these times while also breathing new life into the opportunities for profound change, healing, and transformation that are seeking to be embraced by us individually and collectively. Tag, we are all it! - Molly

Excerpted from the Chapter "Donald Trump Is:

A) Bad, B) Mad, C) All of the Above"

By John D. Gartner, Ph.D.

My old boss Paul McHugh, longtime chairman of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, used to say that "a dog can have both ticks and fleas." I will argue that Trump can be both evil and crazy, and that unless we see how these two components work together, we will never truly understand him. Nor will we recognize how much danger we are in. 

Bad: Malignant Narcissism

"The quintessence of evil" was how Erich Fromm (1964) described malignant narcissism, a term he introduced in the 1960s. Fromm, a refugee from Nazi Germany, developed the diagnosis to explain Hitler. While Fromm is most well known as one of the founders of humanistic psychology (whose basic premise, ironically, is that man's basic nature is good), the Holocaust survivor had a lifelong obsession with the psychology of evil. Malignant narcissism was, according to Fromm, "the most severe pathology. The root of the most vicious destructiveness and inhumanity."

The modern figure most associated with the study of malignant narcissism is my former teacher Otto Kernberg (1970), who defined the syndrome as having four components: (1) narcissistic personality disorder, (2) antisocial behavior, (3) paranoid traits, and (4) sadism. Kernberg told the New York Times that malignantly narcissistic leaders such as Hitler and Stalin re "able to take control because their inordinate narcissism is expressed in grandiosity, a confidence in themselves, and the assurance that they know what the world needs" (Goode 2003). At the same time, "they express their aggression in cruel and sadistic behavior against their enemies: whoever does not submit to them or love them." As Pollock (1978) wrote, "the malignant narcissist is pathologically grandiose, lacking in conscience and behavioral regulation, with characteristic demonstrations for joyful cruelty and sadism."

Much has been written in the press about Trump having narcissistic personality disorder. Yet, as critics have pointed out, merely being narcissistic is hardly disqualifying. However, normal narcissism and malignant narcissism have about as much in common as a benign and malignant tumor. The latter is far rarer, more pathological and dangerous, and, more often than not, terminal. It's the difference between life and death. 

Narcissim

Narcissistic personality disorder is described in this book by Craig Malkin ("Pathological Narcissism and Politics: A Lethal Mix"). Trump finds himself to be uniquely superior ("Only I can fix it"), and appears to believe that he knows more than everyone about everything, despite his lack of experience, study, intellectual curiosity, or normal attention span. Since he took office, an amusing video montage has made it's way through social media in which, in the course of three minutes, Trump brags about being the world's greatest expert in twenty different subject areas. "No one knows more about [fill in the blank] than me," he repeats over and over.

Antisocial Personality Disorder

In his piece in this book, Lance Dodes describes antisocial personality disorder, or "Sociopathy." Antisocials lie, exploit, and violate the rights of others and they have neither remorse nor empathy for those they harm.

While we will not give a final diagnosis here, the fact-checking website PolitFact estimated that 76 percent of Trump's statements were false or mostly false (Holan and Qui 2015), and Politico estimated that Trump told a lie every three minutes and fifteen seconds (Cheney 2016).

We have ample evidence of Trump's pervasive pattern of exploiting and violating the rights of others. According to New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Trump University was a "straight up fraud ... a fraud from beginning to end" (Gass 2016). Also, dozens of lawsuits attest to Trump's pattern and practice of not paying his contractors. Finally, there is Trump's pattern of serial sexual assaults, which he bragged about on tape even before a dozen women came forward, whom he then called liars.

Trump is allergic to apology and appears to feel no remorse of any kind. It is as if being Trump means never having to say you're sorry. When political consultant Frank Luntz asked Trump if he had ever asked God for forgiveness, Trump said, "I'm not sure I have... I don't think so" (Scott 2015). His repentance not withstanding, he also boasted that he had "a great relationship with God."

And empathy? Even Trump's former mentor, the notorious Roy Cohn, lawyer for gangsters and Joseph McCarthy, said that when it came to his feelings for his fellow human beings, Trump "pisses ice water" (Lange 2016).

Paranoia

Paranoia is not a diagnosis but, rather, a trait that we see in some conditions. When Donald Trump was asked to document his false claim that "thousands and thousands" of New Jersey Muslims openly celebrated the attacks of 9/11, he cited a link to Infowars, the website of radio talk show host Alex Jones. Jones, nicknames "the king of conspiracies," believes that the American government was behind the September 11 attacks, that FEMA is setting up concentration camps, and that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax. Yet, according to Trump, Jones is one of the few media personalities he trusts. "Your reputation is amazing," Trump told Jones when he appeared as a guest on the Jones's show on December 2, 2015. Trump vowed that if he were elected president, "you will find out who really knocked down the World Trade Center."

In the same week, both the New York Times (Haberman 2016) and the Washington Post (Washington Post Editorial Board 2016) ran front-page stories on Trump as a conspiracy theorist. Before the election, Right Wing Watch (Tashman 2016) accumulated a list of fifty-eight conspiracies that Trump had proclaimed or implied were true. Of course, that list has grown since then. Many are truly bizarre. For example, not only is Obama a Muslim born in Kenya but, according to Trump, he had a Hawaiian government bureaucrat murdered to cover up the truth about his birth certificate ("How amazing, the state health director who verified copies of Obama's birth certificate died in a plane crash today. All others lived," Trump said); Antonin Scalia was murdered ("They say they found a pillow on his face, which is pretty unusual place to find a pillow"); later, fake news websites sponsored by the Russians laid this "murder" at Hillary's feet; and Ted Cruz's father aided the Kennedy assassination, the mother of all conspiracy theories ("What was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting? It's horrible.") 

And still the world was shocked when Trump accused Barack Obama of illegally wiretapping Trump Tower. Why were we surprised?

When you combine these three ingredients, narcissism, antisocial traits, and paranoia, you get a leader who feels omnipotent, omniscient, and entitled to total power; and who rages at being persecuted by imaginary enemies, including vulnerable minority groups who actually represent no threat whatsoever. With such a leader, all who are not part of the in-group or who fail to kiss the leader's ring are enemies who must be destroyed.

Sadism

Because he is a sadist, the malignant narcissist will take a bully's glee in persecuting, terrorizing, and even exterminating his "enemies" and scapegoats. When a protester was escorted out of a Trump rally, Trump famously said, "I'd like to punch him in the face," in a tone that suggested it would genuinely bring him great pleasure. Narcissists often hurt others in the pursuit of their selfish interests:

A notable difference between normal narcissistic personality disorder and malignant narcissism is the feature of sadism, or the gratuitous enjoyment of the pain of others. A narcissist will deliberately damage other people in pursuit of their own selfish desires, but may regret and will in some circumstances show remorse for doing so, while a malignant narcissist will harm others and enjoy doing so, showing little empathy or regret for the damage they have caused.

We often see Trump "punch down," demeaning and humiliating people weaker than he. In fact, a substantial portion of the thirty-four thousand tweets he has sent since he joined Twitter can be described as cyberbullying. Sometimes he will send the same nasty tweet six times across a day's news cycle in order to maximally humiliate his victim.

Erich Fromm saw evil up close, thought about it throughout his life, and applied his genius to boil it down to its psychological essence. A malignant narcissist is a human monster. He may not be as bad as Hitler, but according to Fromm, he is cut from the same cloth. "The Egyptian Pharaohs, the Roman Caesars, the Borgias, Hitler, Stalin, Trujillo - they all show certain similar features," Fromm writes. Malignant narcissism is a psychiatric disorder that makes you evil. What's scary is that's not even the worst of it. 

 

- From The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump:

27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President

http://billmoyers.com/story/dangerous-case-donald-trump-robert-jay-lifton-bill-moyers-duty-warn/ 

http://www.adutytowarn.org/