Donald Trump is a narcissist. Much has been made of that fact. From his perch atop the social media food chain, Trump has successfully drawn half the voting population of the United States into the mythology of his great unlimited power. He was at it again this week with rantings on China and NATO.
He does meet many of the criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder as laid out in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association: self-centredness, excessive attempts to be the focus of attention and the belief that one is better than others.
From a professional point of view, it is impossible to make a definitive diagnosis without an in-person interview. But having watched Trump dominate the media for the better part of the last year, it is possible to identify many of the traits of Anti-Social Personality Disorder in the president-elect. In particular, lack of remorse after mistreating another, dishonesty and fraudulence, and revenge in response to even minor slights.
If we amalgamate all the traits that Trump meets in these two diagnoses, we come up with two dominant male archetypes: the warrior and the king.
Although these archetypes are often romanticized, in historical reality the warrior king was often grandiose, ruthless and above all murderous, whether in war or with their rivals.
He has called the U.S. military a “disaster,” has said he would bring back torture and “destroy” ISIS. Militarily, Trump says he is prepared to do whatever it takes to “make America great again.”
All American presidents except for Jimmy Carter have presided over wars. President Barack Obama has presided over three on-going wars throughout his eight-year presidency. Many of the wars these presidents have fought have been to exploit American imperialist interests. All are responsible for the suffering and murders of untold numbers of people.
The difference between Trump and other presidents is that with Trump we see no effort to disguise his violent nature. What makes Trump scarier is that there is no veneer. There is only naked patriarchal aggression. The reality is that it is not only Mr. Trump and these past American presidents who are capable of killing other human beings. From an evolutionary perspective, the human male brain is instinctually wired to kill other humans.
The human brain resembles a cauliflower in appearance. At its base, is the oldest part, the brain stem. The cauliflower’s outer leaves represent the most recently evolved part of the brain structure, the cortex.
The brain stem keeps our hearts beating and our lungs breathing. The cortex is involved with, among many other things, thought, reasoning and the capacity to restrain our behaviour. In between, both anatomically and in terms of evolutionary age, is the mid-brain. Here our emotions and instincts for evolutionary survival (hunting and killing) reside. War is the result of the failure of the cortical brain to restrain the murderous instincts of the mid-brain.
The human brain has the capacity to evolve beyond the barbaric practice of war. But in order to do that we can no longer allow, as a global community, the dangerous games of boys and psychopaths.
Mark Leith is a psychiatrist and member of Physicians for Global Survival Canada. He taught psychotherapy at the University of Toronto and is the author of the play Dinner With Goebbels.
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