Donald Trump is fixated on keeping secret documents "outside the parameters of adult thinking"
What Makes Trump Act That Way? A Psychiatrist and a Psychologist Weigh In. Two professional echo opinion letters published in The New York Times:
Donald Trump never apologizes, acknowledges a mistake or appears to reflect on his role in the creation of his recurrent difficulties.
As a practicing mental health professional for over 40 years, I believe that people can change, but I also know it is often difficult and painful work, sometimes requiring a therapist to help illuminate why one keeps finding oneself in the same kind of quandary.
This is the central problem that other mental health experts and I addressed in our 2017 book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” and is what makes him unfit to hold high office. He has to be right, never needs to learn from his mistakes, and must protect his inflated and fragile self-image above all else, including the nation’s security.
He is always the victim, never having had a hand in the creation of his own dilemmas.
Leonard L. Glass, Newton, Massachusetts
The writer is an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
To the Editor: Efforts to find a “logical” or even minimally reasonable explanation for human behavior tend to run into a stone wall, especially when the behavior clearly defies ordinary logic. Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents and his response to government efforts to reclaim them arguably fall within this category.
I would suggest a different approach: a consideration of what might be going on deeper inside Trump psychologically, below the realm of logic and conscious reason.
Think of a child’s beloved stuffed animals, commonly known in psychoanalytic terminology as “transitional objects.” In theory, the transitional object provides a child with a fantasied connection to the safety provided by the “mother” that is increasingly threatened as normal development and separation occur.
However, transitional objects may also serve perverse or negative functions, such as maintaining the fantasy of unlimited, grandiose power. And the need for that imagined power may be seen as an attempt to counter deep feelings of weakness and vulnerability.
Mr. Trump’s behavior in protecting his transitional objects (in this case the documents) shows all the characteristics of a child’s response when the beloved stuffed animal is lost or taken away. Anxiety and rage are almost instantaneous.
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| New York Times bestseller. More than two dozen psychiatrists and psychologists offer their consensus view that Trump's mental state presents a clear and present danger to our nation and individual well-being. This is not normal. Since the start of Donald Trump's presidential run, one question has quietly but urgently permeated the observations of concerned citizens: What is wrong with him? |
Donald Trump never apologizes, acknowledges a mistake or appears to reflect on his role in the creation of his recurrent difficulties.
As a practicing mental health professional for over 40 years, I believe that people can change, but I also know it is often difficult and painful work, sometimes requiring a therapist to help illuminate why one keeps finding oneself in the same kind of quandary.
This is the central problem that other mental health experts and I addressed in our 2017 book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” and is what makes him unfit to hold high office. He has to be right, never needs to learn from his mistakes, and must protect his inflated and fragile self-image above all else, including the nation’s security.
He is always the victim, never having had a hand in the creation of his own dilemmas.
Leonard L. Glass, Newton, Massachusetts
The writer is an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
 |
| Donald Trump has a "transitional objects" disorder |
To the Editor: Efforts to find a “logical” or even minimally reasonable explanation for human behavior tend to run into a stone wall, especially when the behavior clearly defies ordinary logic. Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents and his response to government efforts to reclaim them arguably fall within this category.
I would suggest a different approach: a consideration of what might be going on deeper inside Trump psychologically, below the realm of logic and conscious reason.
Think of a child’s beloved stuffed animals, commonly known in psychoanalytic terminology as “transitional objects.” In theory, the transitional object provides a child with a fantasied connection to the safety provided by the “mother” that is increasingly threatened as normal development and separation occur.
However, transitional objects may also serve perverse or negative functions, such as maintaining the fantasy of unlimited, grandiose power. And the need for that imagined power may be seen as an attempt to counter deep feelings of weakness and vulnerability.
Mr. Trump’s behavior in protecting his transitional objects (in this case the documents) shows all the characteristics of a child’s response when the beloved stuffed animal is lost or taken away. Anxiety and rage are almost instantaneous.
Desperate attempts to retain or restore the transitional objects follow. It may be helpful to reconsider Trump’s behavior as primitive, regressive and best understood outside the parameters of adult thinking.
Priscilla F. Kauff, New York
The writer is a clinical professor of psychology in psychiatry at Weill Medical College.
The writer is a clinical professor of psychology in psychiatry at Weill Medical College.
Labels: Harvard Medical School, Leonard L. Glass, New York The New York Times, Newton Massachusetts, Priscilla F. Kauff, psychiatry
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