Trump, Sociopath

It appears that we have a sociopath sitting in the Oval Office with his hands on the nuclear codes. Of all the reasons to want Trump out of the White House, this is the most compelling.

A sociopath is someone who is unable to relate emotionally to other people, who sees other people as objects, and who lacks a conscience. A sociopath can’t be diagnosed with precision; all designations, including this one, are ultimately guesses, a matter of “he appears to be . . .”

But every action and word from Trump makes perfect sense in the context of sociopathy. He is not [read: appears not to be] motivated by human relationships, empathy, or spiritual concerns. He is motivated by only a very few, clear things: attention, status, power, and pleasure.


What a Sociopath Lacks: The Interior Life 

Imagine your life devoid of your relationships. You have a spouse, perhaps, but he or she has no greater emotional impact on you than a table or vase does. Your friends are bodies in a room. You are walking through the world, but it is empty of feeling and connection. This is your reality, every day.

By all accounts, this is Trump’s reality, every day. Those who have socialized with him long-term tell the same story: He will walk through parties, shaking hands and joking but never talking with anyone in-depth. He will play golf with acquaintances, but doesn’t have friends. His marriages were superficial and he was a philanderer. Even now he appears extremely distant from his wife and young son, who don’t live with him.

This inability to understand or even experience the emotions of others explains some of his most famous faux pas. He was once placed at a table at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner next to the model Vendela, who left the table after an hour in tears because, she said, he talked about nothing but the comparative attractiveness of the breasts of the women at the dinner. This is very strange behavior, so tone deaf it nearly defies belief, but it makes perfect sense for someone who has no feeling for those around him. You can see it, too, in those photos of him striding forward holding the sole umbrella over his own head while the women with him scurry behind; or how, at his inauguration, he exited his limousine to meet the Obamas, leaving his wife Melania behind. He is trapped in his own head, his own concerns, needs, reality.

You might think that his grown children are exceptions to this lack of connection. His children are enmeshed with him and, through family and business ties, are uniquely loyal, the trait that he most values in others. Also, they are extensions of his ego: he takes great offense at any public slights to them. But there is no evidence of true warmth or a personal relationship there. A 2016 meme compared how Trump and Obama talked about their daughters. Obama talked about their character and future; Trump talked about Ivanka’s body.

His lack of an interior life is evident in his mocking of Chuck Schumer for shedding tears over the plight of refugees. Trump proudly announced that he hadn’t cried since he was a baby. Think about that. If all you knew about someone was that they had never cried, it would be enough to raise red flags. Not only do the myriad tragedies of the world have no impact on him, neither do the pains, losses, and sadnesses of his own family. He never felt hurt by a childhood friend or wrestled with difficult emotions as a kid. He didn’t cry when his parents died, when his children went through difficulties, when the Twin Towers came down. We know, in fact, that when the Twin Towers came down, one of his first remarks was this: that now his building was the tallest building in New York.

And you can see it too in the most chilling moment of all of the 2016 presidential season: when, after the election, in a briefing by top government officials, he reportedly asked, “If we have nuclear weapons, why can’t we use them?” It’s a stunning statement, absolutely shocking, an indication of the most harrowing disconnect from human life. His son Donald Jr.’s statement that keeping all Muslims from the US was like refusing to eat a bowl of Skittles was eerily similar: refusing to eat a bowl of Skittles hurts no one; refusing to give refuge to suffering people hurts many. It’s not just the insensitive imagery that worries; it’s the true lack of understanding of human suffering. This is sociopathy at its core: other people are as real as a bowl of hard candies.


What a Sociopath Has: The Limited, Sick Pleasures of the Narcissist

If you are a sociopath without normal feelings toward other people, what is left for you? In a mental world without relationships, what will fill your days, your thoughts? You have the same psychic energy that all people have—the simple buzz of consciousness—but very reduced means of engaging it.

What is left to the sociopath are bodily pleasures, thrills, and the most elemental of mental pleasures—game-playing. It’s hardly worth the time to dwell on the former: Trump’s history of self-indulgence is well-known, from his constant philandering to his gold-festooned residences to his impulse to touch women’s bodies without their consent.

The mental pleasures are just as notable. Sociopaths are obsessed with status and winning, which occupy the mind-space that is taken up with more diverse concerns in normal people. After winning the election, most presidential candidates are eager to start learning everything they need to transition to this most weighty of positions. But Trump decided to go on a “thank you tour” of the states whose electors supported him. He simply didn’t want the pleasures of the campaign—having thousands of people focusing their energies on him in adulation—to end. Now that he is in office, those close to him say he has no attention span, isn’t interested in the job, spends most of his time watching TV or on Twitter. He couldn’t stop tweeting if he wanted to: the constant obsession over his status, the need for attention, the feeling of power and domination—these are the only things that can interest his stunted consciousness. Without the feeling of mass worship, governing is a bore.

The sociopath’s instrumental view of other people and obsession with status explains even his infamous tweets about Kristin Stewart and Robert Pattinson. He urged Pattinson to dump Stewart, who had flirted with another man. Trump said Pattinson could do so much better, inviting him to come to the Miss Universe pageant and take his pick. We know that for Trump, men are valued for their wealth and status, women for their attractiveness. If a woman reduces your status by cheating, go get a different one. The idea that you forgive someone who made a mistake because you love them, because you have a relationship with them, makes no sense in his world.

The same can be said for his interactions with men. He hobnobs with other wealthy and famous men, but if there is the slightest hint of criticism, he dumps them. When Jerry Seinfeld, with whom Trump had socialized and worked, said he was uncomfortable coming to an upcoming Trump event because of Trump’s growing birtherism, Trump immediately turned on him and called him a failure. Just as, for Trump, women are either “10s” or “dogs,” men are either “great guys” (= unqualified support) or “losers” (= anything less).


The Appeal of the Sociopath 

Psychologist Martha Stout points out that it’s very hard for people to recognize sociopaths because most people are normal. They simply can’t imagine that a person would act the way a sociopath seems to be acting. So they make excuses: Trump is just being Trump. He doesn’t really mean it. Take it seriously but not literally.

There’s another angle, though. Although Stout is quick to point out that not all sociopaths are charmers, as is often the stereotype, there is something inherently charming about their lack of conscience—at least from afar. When supporters say they like Trump because he “tells it like it is,” “He’s not afraid to say what he’s thinking,” or “He’s like me—just says it straight,” they are acknowledging that he flouts social propriety. This is something that we all dream about but—rightly—seldom act on. It’s the appeal of the flight attendant who quits his job by opening the emergency hatch and jumping down the slide. It’s the TV detective who goes up to the rich bastard suspected of murder and flicks him on the nose. The fantasy of acting on our instincts without worrying about repercussions dovetails nicely with the thrill-seeking, boredom-avoidant behaviors of the sociopath.

The daring of the sociopath and lack of shame can make him a great storyteller. We can hoot and cheer when Trump says he’s going to lock Hillary Clinton up or build a wall and make the Mexicans pay for it. So bold! What will he say next?! One likely sociopath I know was an extremely popular guy with many, many acquaintances and a bucketload of great stories. There was the one where he gave a ride home to a blind work colleague and started driving erratically on the highway, terrifying the guy. Or the tricks he played on neighborhood kids on Halloween.  They’re hilarious to listen to, but when you start imagining actually doing these things, you realize how unnatural it would be. When this guy died, it turned out he had used his last months on earth spending his wife’s money—the wife who had solely supported him and had falsified paperwork to retroactively add him to her insurance—on prostitutes and other women (including some of his nurses). It was all there on his phone and computer, no effort to hide it. It was bold, no doubt, a big, fat middle finger to propriety and our little social conventions. It was also stone-cold sociopathy.

The Upshot: We Cannot Have a Sociopath in the White House

It’s abnormal to not worry about repercussions. It’s abnormal to flout social convention. It’s abnormal to comment on your daughter’s breasts, to decline to pay people you’ve employed, to install a white nationalist web publisher in the Oval Office, to bring the mistresses of your opponent’s spouse to a debate, to casually consider nuclear strikes.

For many reasons, including his ability to buy his way out of real consequences, Trump has gotten away with sociopathic behavior his entire life, as he himself is eager to tell you. But such a person cannot be allowed to hold the highest, most powerful office in our country. He is immoral and dangerous. He must be removed.


Note: The information about sociopaths in this essay comes from various writers and psychologists. I highly recommend Martha Stout’s The Sociopath Next Door for anyone seeking to learn more.