Is Trump a malignant narcissist?
On Monday [several months ago], the president contradicted himself no fewer than five times regarding his plans in Iran, after weeks of simultaneously insisting that the United States had won the war and that much remained to be done. Hours later, he posted several incomprehensible messages on his Truth Social platform, retweeting flattering news stories about himself published months earlier. And not too long ago, there was the letter to the prime minister of Norway criticizing him for not awarding him the Nobel Prize, even though it wasn’t within the monarch’s power to do so; there was also the speech full of insults directed at his allies in Davos; and that news conference in which he launched into a monologue about a mental institution in Queens and his mother’s belief that he would one day be a baseball star.
For his supporters and for members of his Administration, all this only proves the unorthodox personality of the president, as well as the unpredictable and approachable style of someone who has no regard for the conventions of traditional politics and who has created around his own figure an almost cult-like movement that is unprecedented in the recent history of the United States.
Yeah well to the extent that’s true, they’re all deranged. Trump is indeed “unorthodox” but that’s not the salient thing about him. Not within a million miles.
[Johns Hopkins University psychologist John] Gartner has been warning about Trump’s “mental disorders” for a decade, and he has no doubt about them. “He is a malignant narcissist,” the psychologist explained in a video conference with EL PAÍS. He explained that this is an illness described by Holocaust survivor Erich Fromm to diagnose Hitler, and that, according to the doctor, it has these components: “Narcissism, of course—many politicians have it—antisocial personality disorder (psychopathy) —they lie, deceive, harm others, violate the rules, and feel no remorse—paranoia—they constantly feel attacked and, therefore, seek revenge—grandiosity—their desire is to dominate and be above everyone else; ‘I am the best president in history,’ ‘nobody knows more than me about tariffs,’ etc.—and sadism: they enjoy chaos, destruction, and humiliation.”
To put it another way: is he a narcissist? Well duh. Is he malignant? Duh again.
Vince Greenwood, founder of the Washington Center for Cognitive Therapy—who since 2020 has focused on studying Trump’s psychopathy, on which he plans to publish a book in August—says via videoconference that for that specific disorder, “one of the best-defined in the American psychiatric manual,” an interview is not necessary “if a large amount of data on the patient’s life history is available.” “It is, fundamentally, a disorder of long-standing behavioral patterns and traits, manifested over decades,” explains Greenwood.
What I’m saying. He’s obviously narcissistic and obviously malignant. You do the math.
That “danger” has only worsened, according to Frank George, a psychologist, neuroscientist, and author of the popular substack Gaslight Report, in which he writes about Trump’s mental health. In a video conference interview, he explained that narcissism is a disorder that accompanies people from birth, and that it is “influenced by the patient’s circumstances, environment, or upbringing.” “It’s like heart disease; eating hamburgers every day doesn’t help. If you manage your narcissism, you may not end up being the most generous and empathetic person, but at least you’ll have it under control. That’s not the case with Trump: his parents didn’t help, nor did his time at military school, where he learned that being a bully worked for him. Becoming the most powerful person in the world did the rest, transforming him from a pathological narcissist into a malignant narcissist,” George explains.
He sure as hell doesn’t have it under control.
He also shows symptoms of frontotemporal dementia.
“When people hear the word dementia, they usually think of Alzheimer’s, but that’s not what’s happening to him,” he explains. “FTD affects the frontal and temporal lobes. The frontal lobes are where what makes us most human resides; thanks to that part of the brain, we can plan, make rational decisions, and think things through. With this type of dementia, it’s as if the neurological guardrails disappear.”
Among the symptoms of FTD is confabulation, which goes beyond simply making up stories. It’s not lying; it’s believing what one says, however implausible it may seem. Another symptom, George explains, is paraphasia: “making mistakes with words, mispronouncing them, or not knowing how to finish them.” “A third symptom is insistence: how many times has he listed the wars he’s won?” George asks, adding that FTD “makes his narcissism manifest itself more starkly.”
Worrying at all?
