A Presidential Psychobiographer’s Countertransference to Trump

The Challenge of Presidential Psychobiography

As a presidential psychobiographer, I monitor my feelings for the insights they give me into those I research and write about and the choices I make in the process. Since 1976 I have been doing psychohistorical studies of presidential candidates and presidents. A number of fine colleagues have been my collaborators in this endeavor. The results have been presented at the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society, the International Psychohistorical Association, the International Society of Political Psychology, the Institute for Psychohistory, the Psychohistory Forum, and elsewhere. In all, in five journals I have over 40 publications on presidents and candidates, including “Trump’s Celebrity Politics and Psychobiography” (Clio’s Psyche, March 2016, Vol. 22, No. 4, 277-285). My 11,000-word comparison of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is scheduled for publication in the Journal of Psychohistory in its fall 2016 issue.

In writing my first article as a presidential psychobiographer I slipped into pathologizing when I labeled Carter a narcissist, something I have always regretted. This choice was made because my anxiety about publishing took the form of wanting the protection of theory. At the time of the decision, I was sitting in a psychoanalytic class on narcissism and borderline conditions and it felt good to have a label. While Carter has strong narcissistic tendencies, so do most who run for the presidency. I was responding to my own needs, more than Carter’s reality. This brings up the issue

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of the feelings involved in immersing oneself in another’s life in therapy and in psychobiography. In psychoanalysis the feelings and fantasies the patient has about the analyst are called the transference and those that the analyst has for the patient are called the countertransference. (As a psychobiographer I see myself as like the analyst.) The countertransference has two sources. One, what the subject induces in the biographer and two, what the biographer brings to the subject. Whatever their origin, the psychobiographer must deal with the feelings and fantasies involved to determine their origin and meaning in the struggle to understand the subject while immersing her or himself in the data of the person’s life. After my regrettable experience in labeling Carter, I have generally avoided psychological labels, and when I have used them it has been in a tentative manner—as suggestions, not definitive explanations. Labeling tends to close doors and I am interested in opening doors to a deeper understanding.

The 2016 candidates present a special opportunity and challenge. There is an enormous amount of material on them since both have been in the public eye for a very long time. Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton has written an autobiography and four other books, given many speeches, appeared before Congress many times, been interviewed innumerable times, and has had many books written about her. Donald John Trump is a loquacious celebrity who has given many interviews, written many books, been a television star with his own program for 14 years, and has been a media magnet with numerous articles and books written about him. Both have strong supporters and fervent detractors. For decades, authors have made quite a lot of money denouncing each of them. It is easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of materials. I have strong countertransference feelings to Trump which is why I focus on him and my feelings to him in this article.

Probing My Unconscious as a Tool in Understanding My Work on Trump

It has been my practice since 1996 to write comparative psychobiographical and psycho-political studies of the candidates. Empathy has been a major tool as I sought to understand their family backgrounds, childhoods, coping mechanisms, leadership styles, life crises, and personality traits. This approach helps me to be fair to both the Democratic and Republican probable nominees and avoid showing my personal electoral preferences to my colleagues and students. Although I have struggled very hard to do so, this

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year it has been extremely difficult to be even handed, which is why I am writing this separate article on my own countertransference feelings regarding Trump.

There are various tools I use to probe my unconscious feelings toward the candidates. One is to check for slips of the tongue and finger. In comparing Bush and Gore I noticed that on a number of occasions I typed “Bore” instead of Gore. In fact, during the 2000 campaign I did find Gore to be boring at times, more so than Bush. Dreams have been an invaluable tool for understanding my own relationship with the candidates. On April 17, 2016 at 4:00 A.M. I awakened sweating profusely in a cold room with a dream about Trump that took place in two parts.

Part One: There were two old rather large stable-type buildings with some old fencing similar to that found around racetracks or stables. One of these long stable-like buildings was on my left and the other was straight ahead. Coming out from the one on my left was Donald Trump. He walked toward me and I gave him some sort of brief greeting and he gave me a shorter one. We were both guarded in our manner.

Part Two: I am proctoring an exam in a darkish room with large doors ahead. There were only four students, two of whom are identified in the dream. One is Donald Trump and the other is a 32-year-old student in my Holocaust seminar who is from the Czech Republic and who works as a nanny. I was standing in front of Donald’s desk to keep him from cheating or leaving the room prematurely. Then he is standing and I am nose to nose with him, quite confident he will not cheat or go past me through the large doors into the light. I feel good.

My associations to the dream: it was on the day before my birthday and I was feeling good, thinking about what I wanted to do to celebrate. This included climbing the small mountain across from my house from which I can see the big picture of lakes in two directions and buying balloons to celebrate rather than just relying on the leftover balloons from my wife’s recent birthday. In short, I was feeling very good about myself and unusually confident. The horse setting has to do with the presidential primary campaign,

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which is traditionally referred to as a horse race. A racetrack setting also brings to mind the Republican’s history of being a sportsman.

My interpretation of the dreams is as follows. Trump’s cheating is related to my sense that as a celebrity, businessman, and politician he cheats whenever possible. He calls foul as he has lately because Ted Cruz has been working to get some of the delegates he thought he won. In the dreams I stand my ground before a man who is inclined to steam roll anyone who does not agree with him. My standing up to Trump is related to my decision to write how I feel about him, rather than maintaining a nonpartisan stance as I have previously as a presidential psychobiographer. Our values are simply at loggerheads, as I will spell out below.

Conflicting Values and Concerns about Trump as President

Trump is a master of celebrity culture, in which the distinctions between fantasy and reality and fame and infamy are blurred. To my mind, he represents some of the worst elements of contemporary culture with its focus on celebrities and the “in your face” display of ambition, power, and wealth. Long before I knew anything about his political ambitions, my sensibilities were offended by the sheer grandiosity embodied in the bronzed letters of the name “Trump Place” over a whole series of buildings facing the West Side Highway of Manhattan. A large billboard on the highway specifically names Trump for sponsoring the road’s clean-up.

The more I researched Trump, the more convinced I became that his claims to competence are not based on reality. He is the son of a multi-millionaire while portraying himself as a self-made man. As a businessman he is inclined to over-extend himself, calling first on his family and then the banks to save him. “He proudly boasts, ‘I am the king of debt,’ but then says ‘debt is bad for the country’” (Matt Flegenheimer and Amy Chozick, “Clinton Says Trump Would Cause a Recession and ‘Global Panic,’” New York Times, June 22, 2016, A14). In the past the banks bailed Trump out as “too big to fail,” but there is monumental danger to the U.S. and the world economies from a reckless leader who speaks of selling off America’s assets and getting creditors to renegotiate the national debt. As in the case of debt being good for him and bad for the country, Trump maintains double standards in aspects of business and life.

As a citizen and political psychobiographer, I am offended

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 by Trump’s lack of experience in governance. Whether or not I agree with their approach to the vitally important subject of U.S. policy and how our resources should be utilized and for whom, I want our occupant of the Oval Office to be a serious person with lots of relevant political experience. Trump has no experience in government, a contempt for politicians, and a lack of curiosity about what he doesn’t know. The latter is partly a result of his having been a very rich man and TV star for a long period of time, which meant most people simply agreed with him. When people, especially politicians, go to the very rich, they usually want money or endorsements; they are not there to argue the fine points of politics. In addition, Trump is noted for having a very short attention span that a high level employee of his timed as limited to 26 seconds. The employee writes that this is a very good thing, however, I see as a serious deficit in a leader who must make life and death decisions that impact the nation and the world (Harry Hurt III, Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, 1993, 18). I worry about his being thin skinned and personalizing any criticism, rather than examining its merits. I am repelled by his racism and sexism. Furthermore, I am troubled by the cult of personality that he encourages.

Respect for the Constitution, the facts, loyalty, and prior commitments are virtues I hold in high regard. Trump, however, in making political statements shows an indifference to constitutional realities and often an indifference to the facts. He developed a political base as a “birther”—denying Obama’s birth in Honolulu, even though Obama’s U.S. citizenship is well documented. His lack of loyalty is well known. Three examples come to mind. First, after a long friendship with the boxer Mike Tyson, when the heavy weight champion was defeated Trump shocked some of his entourage by going not to Tyson’s dressing room, but rather the new champion’s. Trump feared that Tyson losing would “rub off” on him (Hurt, 264). Second, when his mentor Roy Cohn, who had not even charged his friend Donald for some of his legal advice, was dying of AIDS, Trump distanced himself from him. Finally, when three of his top employees died in a helicopter crash, he used the occasion to get publicity, claiming initially that he was supposed to be on the flight with them (Hurt, 42). Loyalty from others is another matter. Showing off to a friend, at age 43 Trump asked his bodyguard and sometimes chauffeur, “Would you kill for me?” The answer was, “Yes Sir Mr. Trump” (Hurt, 249). What kind of person asks such a question?

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In researching Donald Trump I have to confront the fact that he is a very different personality than I am. He enjoys dominating others and shows little concern for who gets hurt, while I worry about hurting the feelings of others and claiming more credit than I deserve. His father’s mantra of be a winner, “be a killer” was alien to my family. My life has been enriched by probing my unconscious and struggling against my narcissistic tendencies, while Trump sees his narcissism as a good thing and wants little to do with introspection. I learned from a long analysis and group therapy, while Trump left his one session with a psychiatrist (marital therapy with his first wife), promising to never come back. He is a libertine who wanted an open marriage with his first wife, while I value marital fidelity. I value knowledge and am proud of being a professor, while Trump looks down on professors as not making much money and had a totally unaccredited money-making scheme called Trump University, which is under investigation for fraud. In researching and writing about him I have to take into account that we are very different personalities.

Searching for the Origins of Trump’s Personality

Empathy is a tool that I have used to gain insight into political leaders, some of whom I would never vote for or am even repelled by. I was able to use it with Trump, but not as effectively as with most other candidates. What did it mean to two-year-old Donny Trump when, after having her fifth child, his mother had a hysterectomy, peritonitis, three other operations, and almost died? I do not now know, but I hope to find out in the future. When at about 20 months Jimmy Carter had colitis and a baby sister was born, I was able to establish the origin of his reaction formation leading to his nervous smile when he felt aggressive. I have much less data on the Republican’s early childhood than on Carter’s or even Bill Clinton’s. I do know that Little Donald as a three year old was described as “quite jolly… a beautiful little boy, very blond and buttery,” but he would form the self-image of being a “very bad boy” who had to be sent to a military academy at age 13 to learn discipline (Gwenda Blair, Donald Trump: The Candidate, 2015, 8, 11). It is clear that he had enormous energy and an irrepressible quality that would lead to his having trouble fitting in at school. Little is known about discipline in his family, beyond that there were time outs and paddling with a wooden spoon. Building houses, which is what his father did for a living, was his preferred activity, showing an early identification with him. Donald proudly recounts borrowing his little brother’s blocks to make his structure even higher and

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then gluing it together. There is no mention of parental concern for his brother’s feelings at the loss of his blocks or Donny’s being disciplined. I suspect that as a boy he had an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Donny Trump gained attention as the family troublemaker who claimed to have given a black eye to a second grade music teacher and raised a ruckus by throwing spitballs, water balloons, and even cake at a birthday party. In his own words he was “very aggressive” and “a troublemaker,” who “had a habit of mouthing off everybody, while backing off to no one” (Elovitz, “Trump’s Celebrity Politics,” 279). His eldest sister Maryanne said, “He was a brat” (Timothy O’Brien, TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald, 2005, 49).

In summer camp at age 13 before being sent off to military school, when things were not going well for Donald he would lay on the bed of his cabin staring at “Trump 59,” which he had painted on the inside of the door. I thought of how at age 13 at times I would feel no one in the world understood me and I would spend time alone, daydreaming of grandiose accomplishments, and being totally self-absorbed. Was young Donald’s solution to this common teenage angst to develop or strengthen the grandiose self that would be the genesis of Trump Atlantic City Casino, Trump Books, Trump’s Carousel, Trump’s Castle, Trump Classic Cars, Trump Drinks, Trump Education, Trump Ice, Trump Pageants, Trump Palace, Trump Parc, Trump Payroll, Trump Resorts, Trump Restaurants, Trump Steaks, Trump Tower, Trump Ties, Trump University, and anything else he could get his name on? Is this a defense against feeling abandoned and unloved as his parents were about to send him to New York Military Academy? I suspect that buried deeply in his almost lifelong grandiosity is a sad and vulnerable boy who is unable to make close friends because he is too competitive to allow anyone near him, as described by his first year military academy roommate. A boy who is trying to get the attention of a critical workaholic father whose mantra for his sons was be a winner, be a king, “be a killer” (Michael D’Antonio. Never Enough: Trump and the Pursuit of Success, 2015, 39). Trump’s need for things and the applause of others is insatiable, which is why D’Antonio chose his Never Enough title.

In voting for a president, I look for someone who is closely connected to reality, has considerable political experience, and is focused on helping people. Donald J. Trump is further from ful-

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filling these standards than any of the many presidential hopefuls I have probed in the last 30 years. Regardless of who is elected this November, as an Eriksonian participant observer and psychobiographer, I will continue to probe my unconscious as I follow our politics and the decisions made by the president of the world’s leading nation.

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