Malignant Narcissism: Does the President Really Have It?
March 19,
2019
©2019 Bill
Eddy, LCSW, Esq.
Recently,
public figures have said President Trump was a “con man,” “had malignant
narcissism” and George Conway tweeted the cover of the DSM-5 and told people to
look at “narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality
disorder.”
When
Massachusetts governor, William Weld, was exploring running against the
president as a Republican, in part because of Trump’s “malignant
narcissism”1 I wanted to educate the
public on what EXACTLY that means. And
really look at how one can determine whether President Trump suffers from this
disorder.
This brought
about the idea for my article posted on Psychology Today, and is also discussed
in depth in my new book Why We Elect Narcissists and Sociopaths -And How Can We
Stop! :
Malignant
Narcissism: Does the President Really Have It?*
What does
“Malignant” Mean?
Erich Fromm
was a psychiatrist in the United States who immigrated from Hitler’s Germany in
the 1930s. He was a world leader in many aspects of mental health and
diagnosis. In his 1964 book, The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil,
Fromm used this term for the first time when he identified the pathology of
narcissism as having two types: “benign narcissism” and “malignant
narcissism.”2
Fromm said
that benign narcissism focuses on pride in one’s work, one’s effort. In the
process of achieving something, the person has to stay in touch with the
reality around the task in order to accomplish it. “The energy which propels
the work is, to a large extent, of a narcissisticnature, but the very fact that
the work itself makes it necessary to be related to reality, constantly curbs
the narcissism and keeps it within bounds. This mechanism may explain why we
find so many narcissistic people who are at the same time highly creative.”3
On the other
hand, there is a malignant narcissism. This is not about achievement, but
rather something the person thinks they inherently have that’s special: “for
instance, his body, his looks, his health, his wealth, etc…. Malignant
narcissism, thus, is not self-limiting.”4 Fromm gives examples of many
historical figures who had this type:
“The
Egyptian Pharaohs, the Roman Caesars, the Borgias, Hitler, Stalin,
Trujillo—they all show certain similar features. They have attained absolute
power; their word is the ultimate judgment of everything, including life and
death; there seems to be no limit to their capacity to do what they want. . . .
They try to pretend that there is no limit to their lust and to their power, so
they sleep with countless women, they kill numberless men, they build castles
everywhere, they ‘want the moon,’ they ‘want the impossible.’”5
Malignant
Narcissism Grows
The essence
– and biggest danger – of malignant narcissism is that it keeps growing, like
malignant cancer. Fromm wrote: “It is a madness that tends to grow in the
lifetime of the afflicted person. The more he tries to be a god, the more he
isolates himself from the human race; this isolation makes him more frightened,
everybody becomes his enemy, and in order to stand the resulting fright he has
to increase his power, his ruthlessness, and his narcissism.”6
Does This
Fit President Trump?
Some mental
health experts say “Yes;” some say “No;” and many say they can’t say because
they have never done a clinical interview with him and so it would be
unprofessional to state an opinion about his mental health. As a Licensed
Clinical Social Worker, I am in the third group, so I will not be saying
whether he meets this diagnosis or not. But I am clear that he has a
high-conflictpersonality, which is a description of conflict behavior—extremely
concerning conflict behavior—but not a mental health diagnosis. (See my other
posts here for more on high-conflict personalities.)
Some Say Yes
John
Gartner, Ph.D., is a psychologist who taught at Johns Hopkins University
Medical School for 28 years. He says yes, the president has malignant
narcissism, as follows in his chapter in the book Rocket Man: Nuclear Madness
and the Mind of Donald Trump (2018):
“Trump
suffers from malignant narcissism, a diagnosis [that is] far more toxic and
dangerous than mere narcissistic personality disorderbecause it combines
narcissism with three other severely pathological components: paranoia,
sociopathy, and sadism. When combined, this perfect storm of psychopathology
defines the ‘quintessence of evil,’ according to Fromm, the closest thing
psychiatry has to describing a true human monster.”7
Gartner goes
on to describe Trump’s narcissism (he knows “more about everything than anyone”
and “has empathy for no one but himself”); paranoia (“his demonization of the
press, minorities, immigrants, and anyone who disagrees with him, are all signs
of paranoia”); sociopathy (“a diagnosis that describes people who constantly
lie, violate norms and laws, exploits other people, and show no remorse”); and
sadism (“He takes gleeful pleasure in harming and humiliating other people. He
is undoubtedly the most prolific cyberbully in history.”)8
Some Say No
On the other
hand, in February 2017, soon after Trump began his presidency, the psychiatrist
who wrote the diagnostic criteria for personality disorders in the DSM-5 manual
for mental health professionals, Allen Frances, said “No.” He points out that
there are two threshold criteria (significant distress and/or impairment) for
the diagnosis of all personality disorders, and that the president does not
meet either one, so he does not even have narcissistic personality disorder
itself, let alone the disorder of malignant narcissism.
“I wrote the
criteria that define this disorder, and Mr. Trump doesn’t meet them. He may be
a world-class narcissist, but this doesn’t make him mentally ill, because he
does not suffer from the distress and impairment required to diagnose a mental
disorder.”9 He went on to explain that he does not show the distress one
typically has with this disorder and that he has been quite successful at
making money and getting elected President so that you can’t say that he’s
socially “impaired.”
This does
not mean that he finds the president’s behavior to be okay. “Psychiatric
name-calling is a misguided way of countering Mr. Trump’s attack on democracy.
He can, and should, be appropriately denounced for his ignorance, incompetence,
impulsivity, and pursuit of dictatorial powers.”10 In other words, his behavior
may be bad, but that does not mean that he’s mentally ill.
What Can We
Expect?
The benefit
of seeing personality patterns of behavior is the ability to predict future
behavior and make decisions about what we should do individually or jointly.
This ability to understand personalities and predict their future behavior is
important in all relationships, from romantic, to a workplace, to electing
leaders. I call this personality awareness.
If the
president has malignant narcissism, then we can expect that he will become more
and more isolated, his behavior will become more and more paranoid, and
therefore more and more dangerous. If he does not have malignant narcissism and
doesn’t even have a personality disorder of any type, as Dr. Frances has
explained, it is still possible that he will pursue dictatorial powers but may
be more stable and less dangerous.
A Wannabe
King?
In my new
book, Why We Elect Narcissists and Sociopaths—And How We Can Stop! I suggest
that we should watch out for high-conflict politicians with a drive for
unlimited power (“HCP Wannabe Kings”). It may be that this president does share
a desire to have king-like control over the country that some of these earlier
malignant narcissists had and other authoritarian leaders around the world seem
to have today. In the end, he may not be fundamentally different from these
others–but our nation may be different, because of our built-in culture of
democracy, our free press, and our legal restraints on power.
If he has a
set of behaviors that grows in its dangerousness, then it would appear that it
is malignant and that he needs to be reined in. If he accepts the limitations
on his power imposed by the congress and the judiciary, and keeps an even keel
psychologically without showing signs of distress, then perhaps he has no
disorder and will not be dangerous. In either case, he has reached a point
after two years in office that his behavior and personality has attracted the
attention of many mental health experts and the public. This suggests that we
should be concerned, regardless of whether he fits any particular mental health
diagnosis.
References
1. Michael
Isikoff, “Maverick Republican William Weld looks to run against Trump’s
‘malignant narcissism,'”Yahoo News, March 8, 2019.
2. Eric
Fromm, The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil (Riverdale, NY: American
Mental Health Foundation; First published by Harper and Row, Publishers, New
York, 1964), loc. 989 of 2243, Kindle.
3. Fromm,
Heart of Man, 998.
4. Fromm,
Heart of Man, 998-999.
5. Fromm,
Heart of Man, 816.
6. Fromm,
Heart of Man, 816-17.
7. John
Gartner, “DEFCON 2: Nuclear Risk Is Rising as Donald Trump Goes Downhill,” in
Rocket Man: Nuclear Madness and the Mind of Donald Trump, ed. John Gartner,
Steven Buser, and Leonard Cruz (Asheville, NC: Chiron Publications, 2018), 29.
8. Gartner,
DEFCON 2, 29-30.
9. Allen
Frances, “An Eminent Psychiatrist Demurs on Trump’s Mental State,” Letters to
the Editor, The New York Times, February 14, 2017.
10. Frances,
Trump’s Mental State.
Original
article posted March 12th, 2019 on Psychology Today
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