Trump is a psychopath based on a 20 point rating scale called the Hare scale which is used to assess people for that specific psychopathology. Just as he is referred to as a twice impeached, criminally indicted and now convicted former president, he should also be identified as a psychopath with a rating of 33 on a 40 point scale. Most normal people score around 4. Most convicted criminals score around 22.
American voters have a right to know that Trump is a bona fide psychopath before they go to the polls to choose the next president.
PSYCHOPATHS
Who are you and what is your background? Why should we trust that you know how to assess who is or is not a psychopath?
I am a clinical psychologist and director of a mental health practice in Washington, D.C. I have a good deal of experience as a diagnostician and have conducted a few thousand psychological evaluations over the course of my career.
After Donald Trump came onto the political scene in 2015, we saw a man who seemed reckless, callous, and able and willing to lie easily. Many people, including some mental health professionals, referred to Donald Trump as a psychopath. But that is not how clinical diagnosis works in general, and specifically not for the diagnosis of psychopathic personality disorder. For that particular disorder, you need specialized training beyond what you receive in a doctoral-level psychology or psychiatric residency program. I am one of a select group of mental health professionals who received training in the assessment tools that established Psychopathic Personality Disorder as a precisely delineated condition.
How did you decide to assess Trump?
I was affected by some of the clients in my psychotherapy practice. Many of them were in great anguish about what was happening to the country.
What is a psychopath? Is a sociopath also always a psychopath- please explain the relationship. Are some psychopaths personable and relatable?
The terms psychopathy and sociopathy are used interchangeably in the culture. However, as diagnosticians, we cannot abide by such casual usage. Sociopathy is neither a formal diagnosis in our Diagnostic and Statistical Manual nor associated with any scientific studies.
Clinical psychopathy is a precisely defined disorder that is diagnosed with a strongly validated assessment tool. A set of destructive personality traits characterizes the disorder. One of the items on that assessment tool is “superficial charm,” so yes, many psychopaths are personable and relatable.
Can psychopaths overcome their negative traits- can they change their behavior? Why or why not?
The condition is immutable, as established by much research on the course of the condition. It manifests itself early in life and does not diminish with old age. There have been many treatment protocols devised to try to help psychopaths change their destructive tendencies, but none have proved successful. The most popular theory about their immutability probably involves structural brain abnormalities that (so far) have not been amenable to change efforts.
How do you assess someone to determine if he is psychopath? Does the individual being assessed have to be seen in person to have an accurate assessment- why or why not? Could the average American voter come to the same conclusion about Trump just by seeing him on TV or hearing him in a rally?
Our ability to reliably diagnose psychopathy is largely due to the development of rating scales, the Hare Psychopathy Checklists, designed to measure the degree of psychopathy in an individual.
Because of the voluminous data available on him, a trained professional can undertake a diagnostic assessment of Trump’ at a distance’. An interview with him is not needed, and indeed, it may even be counterproductive in the assessment of this particular disorder, which is marked by deceitfulness and manipulation of others.
Because they have seen so much of him, American voters could (and many have) come to the same conclusion. In the case of Trump, they would be correct in their impression.
However, I would emphasize the formal diagnosis of psychopathy for Trump that is achieved through a rigorous and detailed process carries with it a breadth and depth of findings that carry us well beyond perceptions of a ‘bad actor’ and into a more precise and, I’m afraid, more ominous understanding of the man.
What is the Hare Scale and how do we know it is a trustworthy and accurate assessment tool?
The Hare Psychopathy Checklist is a valid and reliable tool to diagnose psychopathy. Robert Hare, the Canadian psychologist who designed the Checklist, wrote a book-length manual in which he provided extensive definitions and behavioral examples for each item on the Checklist to facilitate consistency and reliability in ratings. Statistical reliability (the degree to which different clinicians using the Hare Checklists come to the same diagnosis) and validity (the checklists are, in fact, assessing a distinct entity called psychopathy) of the checklists have solid psychometric support.
The Checklist is “rigorous.” There are demanding criteria for the breadth and quality of the information (life history data points) needed to make an assessment. Advanced training is also required to administer the checklist.
How did you assess Trump using the Hare scale? Take us through the process step by step that you took to come to your conclusions.
The first step is to catalog the mass of information available on Trump. Robert Hare laid down guidelines in his manuals for the checklists, which enabled us to prioritize specific batches of information over others. Information that possesses more excellent diagnostic value:
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- Information from his childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. The condition of psychopathy expresses itself early in life. Data from these earlier stages of development is needed to make an assessment.
- Information in which the trait is expressed in overt behavior (e.g., an instance of his lying is privileged over an accusation of his lying).
- Information that reflects his typical functioning and lifelong patterns vs. descriptions of more flamboyant, occasional behavior.
- Information that is well-resourced, substantiated, and has some external validation.
- Behavior that lends itself to coding and thus quantification (e.g., number of documented lies, lawsuits, or grandiose statements).
It was not difficult to meet the rigorous assessment process requirements in administering the Checklist because we are awash with information about Trump. He is arguably the most well-chronicled candidate in history. A partial list of informational sources would include 13 autobiographical efforts, 71 biographies, many of which are richly sourced, and hundreds of interviews from print, radio, and television. This abundance of data on Trump puts mental health professionals in a solid position to determine whether he does or does not have certain psychiatric conditions.
The next step is to go through each item on the Checklist and cull all the informational data that supports each item on the checklist. Each item is then assigned a score of 0 (trait definitely not present), 1 (there is meaningful data to support the trait), or 2 (trait definitely present, it is persistent and pervasive in the person’s life).
With 20 items, the highest score on the psychopathy end of the spectrum would be 40 (a rare occurrence), and a perfect score on the non-psychopathy side would be 0 (also very rare). The average score for someone in the general population is 4. The average score for individuals in a maximum security prison setting is 22. I mention that because the typical cutoff to get a formal diagnosis of psychopathy is 30. It’s a high bar that even most serious criminals don’t meet. Remember, the essence of this condition, as identified by the experts, is more about traits than criminality or antisocial behavior. One in 140 (less than 1%) in the general population meets the criteria for the diagnosis.
What was your assessment of Trump?
Here are the ratings for Trump:
Hare Psychopathy Checklist — Revised (HCL-R)
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- Glibness/superficial charm — 2
- Egocentricity/grandiose sense of self-worth — 2
- Prone to boredom/need for stimulation — 2
- Pathological lying and deception/gaslighting — 2
- Conning/lack of sincerity — 2
- Lack of remorse or guilt — 2
- Shallow affect — 2
- Callous/lack of empathy — 2
- Parasitic lifestyle — 0
- Poor behavioral controls — 2
- Promiscuous sexual behavior — 2
- Early behavior problems — 2
- Lack of realistic long-term goals — 1
- Impulsivity — 2
- Irresponsibility — 2
- Failure to accept responsibility for own actions — 2
- Many short-term marital relationships — 1
- Juvenile delinquency — 1
- Revocation of parole — 0
- Criminal versatility — 2
Total = 33
How was Trump’s handling of the pandemic crisis affected by being a psychopath?
Trump, at the mercy of the core psychopathic traits of impulsivity, callousness, and the drive to dominate, predictably undermined the federal response to Covid-19. The crisis demanded discipline and hard work, and Trump was not about to wade into those waters. Golf weekends or coronavirus task force meetings? No contest. Oversee a coordinated federal response? Ha! He stopped attending coronavirus task force meetings and became bored with the daily press conferences as soon as it became clear they were hurting his poll numbers. As we look back, it is clear there was never even a plan of a plan. There was chaos and neglect all the way through.
The cognitive infrastructure and the set of executive functioning skills needed in a President to develop a detailed and comprehensive response to Covid — a response that would not leave the rest of the civilized world aghast — was simply not there. His impulsivity trait prevailed. We paid the price.
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- Perhaps the primary culprit in the disastrous response to Covid is the “emotional deficit” identified with the condition. Psychopaths display structural abnormalities in their brains that result in functional deficits in their ability to experience:
fear and alarm
empathy and compassion
shame and guilt
- Perhaps the primary culprit in the disastrous response to Covid is the “emotional deficit” identified with the condition. Psychopaths display structural abnormalities in their brains that result in functional deficits in their ability to experience:
As a psychopath, Trump was devoid of these feeling states. Without access to such emotions to help guide his perceptions and reactions, Trump’s callous and remorseless behavior in the face of the crisis was inevitable.
Trump’s inability to process emotions related to threat situations helps us understand his sluggish response to Covid-19. In January, when he was getting alarming reports about the virus from the intelligence agencies and senior officials, he dismissed them. He compared the virus to the common flu and called it a “hoax”. In February, he took no action to develop testing or provide supplies for the looming health care crisis. He seemed blind to the scale of the risk. He was genuinely whistling past the graveyard, not out of fear but rather its absence.
Trump’s lack of empathy and compassion sealed America’s poor outcome with the virus. Only a psychopath would react to the alarming numbers of deaths as disembodied facts. Only a psychopath could respond to the wrenching images coming out of Europe at the beginning of the pandemic with all the intensity and depth of someone binging a series on Netflix. Lacking any gear of compassion, Trump barreled forward in the only gear he possesses: win-at-all-costs-political-domination. He refused to wear a mask and mocked those who did; he tweeted out support to protestors who flaunted social distancing guidelines; he doled out ventilators and protective equipment to governors based on their political leanings and sycophancy to him; he peddled exaggerations about the administration’s achievements and bogus treatments; and he conducted rallies and White House events that became super-spreader events.
Could a psychopath be a good president? Why or why not?
A psychopath is the last person you would want to have anywhere near the Oval Office for many reasons. Here’s a short list:
Because of his greater-than-normal need for stimulation, coupled with his impulsivity, disruptions to our government’s legal, financial, and administrative functions will accumulate.
In the exercise of his duties, at every choice point, power and dominance will likely prevail over the welfare of others.
Because he is unable to process emotions related to danger, government will be less responsive to threat situations, as we saw with COVID-19.
Because he is undaunted by fear of punishment, norms of trust and decency will continue to erode.
His callous and remorseless disregard for the feelings of others means that vulnerable populations will remain at significant risk.
What is the typical course for this condition? Deterioration, ending up in a dreary ending for the psychopath, and exhausted and often ruined lives for all those in his orbit.
(End of Interview.)
TRUMP KNOWS HE IS A VERSION OF HANNIBAL LECTOR
Trump is onto this brain problem he is stuck with. How do we know this? Trump uses his rallies as his therapy. He talks to his followers using a kind of “stream of consciousness” riffing and meandering. We hear how he thinks at these rallies- which many of his followers consider “authentic” and love about him.
What we often hear are uncensored eruptions from his unconscious mind. And lately we have been hearing about sharks, electrocution, and Hannibal Lector. He talks a lot about “the late great Hannibal Lector!” Why? I think he would like to make Hannibal Lector acceptable and funny instead of awful and scary as hell. And why would that be? Because Trump knows something important about himself. He knows he IS a version of Hannibal Lector. He is a psychopath.
Hannibal Lector is not the guy you want running your country.
Please share this post with everyone you can. Americans need to know who they are voting for before they go to the polls.