Liar, manipulator, con-man. Racist, misogynist. Angry, reckless, corrupt. Immoral, amoral, demoralizing. Anyone come to mind? It’s an appalling picture and it’s broadcast whenever Trump is in the news. As accurate as this portrayal is, it misses the point because it fails to identify the underlying problem: Trump is insane.
As has been endlessly said, Trump is a narcissist. This leaves out a lot. All human traits are embedded in a personality type as well as its level of disturbance. The Odd Couple’s Felix Unger and Saddam Hussein were both famously obsessive-compulsive. But here we have another odd couple because Felix was an endearing neurotic and Saddam was … not. Trump is a narcissist, but, as with the circus people who objected to his hostile debate performance being called a “circus,” narcissists might take offense. Trump is no regular narcissist, his type is the most disturbed, “malignant.”
First identified by the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, the malignant narcissist is a mega-aggressive megalomaniac: grandiose, sadistic, destructive, abusive, often violent. The so-called presidential debate could have been more accurately billed as a new PDA designation, a public display of abuse. Trump’s hostility was preternatural, his brutality palpable. Viewers were traumatized as though they had found themselves in a theater unexpectedly watching a slasher film and wanting to flee. The malignant narcissist is the picture of evil. Think demagogue, despot, cult leader. Trump has been called all three.