Shouldn't We Treat Every President Like a Real Person?:
Why psychoanalyses of politicians often miss the mark
One of the necessary but infrequently enlightening responsibilities of attempting to write a fair-minded, substantive analysis of a controversial president like Donald Trump is that one feels obligated to read and assess the enormous amount of what is presented as analysis but isn’t. It is tedious, frustrating work for one trained in the social sciences and psychoanalysis. There, validating theories with a range of carefully weighed evidence while considering and honestly investigating alternative explanations is at least the gold standard. Simply cherry-picking and interpreting facts to fit one’s beginning premises is the definition of confirmation bias and results in explanatory drivel.
The occasion of these observations is two recent entries in the long line of psychologically framed attacks on Mr. Trump that consist of putting this president on the analytic couch and politically assaulting him with Freud. The first article simply states as a fact: “Trump Is Losing His Mind.” It buttresses its identical starting premises and conclusions with highly speculative and misinformed assertions, presented as fact, from anonymously sourced news stories.
As evidence, we are told, “The president is discussing martial law in the Oval Office.” Why? As a strategy to nullify the results of the election and stay in office.
The anonymously sourced reporting of that story was that a White House meeting was held that included Sidney Powell, her client Lt. General Michael T. Flynn, two senior aides (White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, and the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows) and a number of other presidential aides filtering in and out of the meeting. The Times story contains no direct quotes. Rather, it links specific characterizations as being based on “one” or “two people,” “who were briefed on the meeting,” though not, importantly, physically present.
The Times report is wholly taken up with Miss Powell’s suggestion that a special counsel be appointed to look into the election, a suggestion opposed by all of the president’s aides according to the anonymous sources “briefed on the meeting.” The martial law “discussion” is mentioned only once in the whole 1,300-word article. There, it is pointed out that Mr. Flynn in another interview had said, correctly it turns out, only that a president “could” declare martial law and that it “had happened.” The Times then reported, as if it were a fact, “At one point in the meeting on Friday, Mr. Trump asked about that idea.” No attribution whatsoever was presented for this statement, not from the “one” or “two” sources “briefed on the meeting.”
Before one concludes that Mr. Trump has lost his mind, as the article states, it is prudent to ask several questions. Did Mr. Trump actually ask that question? Is a question, if asked, the same as a discussion? Is there any indication that Mr. Trump expressed seriousness, or any interest, in following through on his reported but not verified question? Has Mr. Trump publicly encouraged Republicans to vote against accepting the elector’s vote in Congress, as some Democrats did in 2017 against Mr. Trump?
These and similar questions are not asked, much less answered. It would seem imprudent therefore to use this unexamined anonymously sourced report as the basis for speculations about the president’s mental health.
The second article is slightly more modest, adding a question mark to the question: “Is Trump Cracking Under the Weight of Losing?” Before answering that question, it is again prudent to first ask: What do each of the following people have in common—Mary Trump, Bandy Lee, Barbara Rees, Tony Schwartz, Michael Cohen, Tim O’Brian, Wayne Barnett, Jack O’Donnell, and Dan Gable? Answer: They are almost all, with one exception, long-time anti-Trump activists that answer the articles’ title question with a resounding yes embedded in long quotations. That is a typical standard operating procedure for this author’s long list of anti-Trump psychological “analyses.”
The regret that one has in reading pieces like these, in addition to the frustration of having to repeatedly read the same baseless psychological speculations, is that they continue an unfortunate tradition of politicizing psychological analysis that began with Freud. He infamously, along with his former patient, William Bullitt wrote a universally panned psychoanalysis of President Woodrow Wilson.
Having apparently not learned their lesson, a substantial group of psychiatrists responded to a political tendentious set of questions designed to psychologically smear Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater published in the misnamed ˆFact Magazine. There the matter stood until all scholarly and political restraints were removed in the effort to do the same to Donald Trump.
The reason it’s worth the effort to clarify these issues is that the core of any president’s crucial national and international role is substantially self-defined. Its essence lies in making decisions, and these in turn rely on the choices he sees and/or prefers. Their foundation is his motivation and understanding, both a direct by-product of his adult character and identity. If we want to understand who a president really is, the skills and shortcomings he brings to that position, and the circumstances he confronts while in office, and what he wants or can do about them, there is no escaping a fair, clear examination and exploration of presidential psychology.
This is not only knowledge for knowledge’s sake. It is knowledge for usefulness’s sake. If it is done right, it allows us all to have a better, more accurate, and therefore more realistic understanding of our country’s circumstances and the president’s. Expectations can then be adjusted. Demands can be moderated. And in so doing, commonalities can be sought rather than divisions exacerbated.
A good first step going forward would be to treat Mr. Trump, and every president, as a real person, with a mixed package of abilities and limitations like the rest of us, rather than a psychological caricature and political piñata.
References
Warren Boronson.1964. “What Psychiatrists Say about Goldwater,” FACT, 4:24-64.
Ralph Ginzburg. 1964. “Goldwater: The Man and the Myth,” FACT, 4:2
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