Trump is a stereotype. A caricature of a man. All surface. But beneath all that is the little boy who was so, so terribly wounded by his distant, disapproving parents and the yawning gulf, the abyss, of the despair he doubtless felt back then. Who he is today is the scab over those depths. He dares not pick at it, dares not stare into that gulf again. Too, too painful. Thus the absolutism and the neediness, his name writ BIGLY on everything, TRUMP TOWER, TRUMP UNIVERSITY, TRUMP STEAKS, the turning of every conversation (wounded veterans? grieving parents? natural disasters?) back to himself, the inability to reflect, the defense mechanism of the pathological liar, who, caught in the lie, must repeat it, only bigger this time. The Sharpie on the weather map. The perfect phone call. This is why everything has to be simple for him. Winners and losers. This is why, in his seventies, he still dyes and poof his hair to look like Mommie. “See, I look just like you, Mommie! Love me. Please.” But he can’t look at that. He has to remain at the surface, however awful that is, for reflection would be even more painful.
For his whole life he has been screaming, “Me, me, me. I am worth something. I am. Look at me, Mommie. I am. Believe me. OK?”
When I was a kid, I thought that people grew up.
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Copyright 2020. Robert D. Shepherd. All rights reserved. This post may be freely copied and redistributed, but please make an attribution to its author. Thanks.
Thank you, Jean Sanders, for pointing me to https://www.facebook.com/notes/oj-modjeska/relational-bargains-and-the-family-origins-of-personality-disorder/1083282931750136/?hc_location=ufi, which so clearly articulates the clinical characterization of the personality disorder that I described above.
For more by Bob Shepherd on Don the Con and his misadministration, go here: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/category/trump-don-the-con/
Bob Shepherd | Praxis 