Trump and the Group (response article)

Paul Elovitz has given us another excellent appraisal of the personalities of presidents and presidential candidates. Building on his own previous work on Trump and based on numerous biographies and statements of the President himself, Elovitz anchors his view of Trump’s personality on narcissism and a lifelong need to be disruptive. In his analysis, Elovitz stresses the role of Trump’s use of the defense of splitting as a preferred means of dealing with inner conflict.

Psychohistory has had two major domains of inquiry. The first is psychobiography, in which the psychohistorian attempts to apply psychological understanding, often psychoanalysis, to an individual historical subject. The second domain involves the application of small and large group social psychology to understand how history can be understood in terms of group structure and process. From this perspective, a group as large as a country can be

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seen as sharing common emotions and solutions to here and now conflicts in the group. Groups can also be seen as sharing fantasies and myths. The personality of the leader can be understood as resonating with and responsive to the emotional needs of the group at a particular point in the group’s history.

I would like to take Elovitz’ paper as a starting point and extend the analysis to Trump’s role in the group as a whole. By doing this, I hope to address the issue of Trump’s appeal to those who support him against what would appear to be their own values and best interests.

Those who voted for Trump included evangelicals who voted for a thrice-married and irreligious man; Rust Belt white working class men and women who voted for a billionaire developer who often refused to pay his workers; women, including college-educated women, who voted for a misogynist; and mainstream Republicans who voted for a man who advocated dismantling important elements of Republican orthodoxy and picked fights with prominent Republicans like John McCain and George W. Bush. How can we account for an electoral majority voting for a man with Trump’s apparent disadvantages as a candidate?

The answer is that the electorate was under the sway of a powerful, shared unconscious fantasy, and that Trump was seen as the embodiment of that fantasy. Trump understood the emotional needs of a good deal of the electorate and they responded positively to his message and personality. Being the “narcissistic disrupter” was a distinct advantage rather than a liability, and I will briefly attempt to explain why.

Wilfred Bion was among the first psychoanalysts to delineate fantasies shared unconsciously by members of a group. He called them basic assumptions and asserted that the dependency, fight-flight, and pairing assumptions stood opposed to the conscious task orientation of the group’s mission. The basic assumptions are irrational but can exert a powerful influence in group behavior (Experiences in Groups, 1948, 1961).

Utilizing Bion’s framework, Trump can be seen as articulating, leading, and embodying the fight-flight group solution to distress shared by his diverse supporters. Other forces within the group as a whole can be seen to have acquiesced to the fight-flight group by not turning out to vote in opposition (the Democrats), by offering free advertising to Trump (the media), and by weakening

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his opponent (the FBI). Elovitz’ convincing work on Trump’s personality indicates how well suited he is to lead the fight group. His own use of defense mechanisms of splitting, projection, and projective identification involve a kind of black/white dichotomous thinking that divides the world simplistically into good/bad, winners/losers, U.S. versus “Them” zero-sum situations. This use of splitting and projection exactly mirrors the very processes seen in the fight-flight group, where an enemy is identified and attacked. Vamik Volkan has spelled out the process of identifying enemies in his detailed explanations of ethnic conflict and war in just these terms.

I suggest that what we are experiencing in the aftermath of the 2016 election is a reciprocal synergy between Trump’s personality and the needs of the group to strengthen its identity, self-esteem, and boundaries by finding enemies and vanquishing them, thereby returning to some ideal of greatness from the past. Volkan has termed this process a return to “chosen glory” and he contrasts this with the “chosen trauma” that is often at the heart of such irrational quests.

In the case of the United States in the 2016 election, the chosen traumas that I believe have not been worked through are the 9/11 attacks plus the Great Recession of 2008-2009. The assault on the Twin Towers in New York was an assault on American collective self-esteem and on American Exceptionalism in general, and it is a blow from which we have not yet recovered. Added to that, we have experienced the most serious recession since the 1930’s. Globalization and automation complicated the economic recovery considerably.

Despite considerable effort, the task of mourning the implications of the 9/11 attacks and the recession has not been effectively handled. President Bush conducting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan did not bring a satisfying victory. President Obama was characterized as continuing the unsatisfying wars while the dangers from Al Qaeda and its successor ISIS are seen as continuing the murderous humiliation in countless continuing attacks in the U.S. and in Europe. War was seen as the solution to mourning, and this has brought only more death and disappointment. The attacks and the recession are experienced by the group as humiliations rather than limitations and difficulties that need to be accepted and addressed as problems to be solved. Trump’s solution is to counter the perceived humiliations with the fight group’s quest for an ever-

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increasing enemies list, a tightening of the borders, and an America first white Christian nationalism. There is no acceptance of the fact that our geography or our arsenal of weapons no longer make us immune from attack or that our exceptionalism has its limits.

Viewed in this context, Trump’s attacks on McCain as a failed warrior (because he was captured), as well as George W. Bush and Barack Obama, begin to make sense. Who better to redress America’s humiliation than a narcissist who thrives on disruption and making enemies? Trump’s Christian Nationalism (America First) can be seen as a formula for the redress of narcissistic humiliation through the employment of the fight group with its identification of enemies, tightening of in-group boundaries, and the vision of a return to greatness. Trump’s assertion that he witnessed (on TV) Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the collapse of the Twin Towers can also be seen in terms of narcissistic humiliation, which he promises to redress. In this sense, the needs and solutions of the leader and the group merge in a shared irrational group fantasy.

Even the opposition to Trump, the “Resistance,” can be viewed as part of the fight-flight basic assumption. The more Trump is irrationally opposed, the more another enemy is identified and blamed—the Democrats, the press, etc. The opposition may employ techniques of belligerent obstruction or even violent demonstrations that also fit more with basic assumptions than with constructive opposition and problem solving.

Finally, I would like to address the issue Elovitz raises about Trump and self-defeat. I agree that there is no evidence that Trump has any inner need to defeat himself. In his business ventures some of his projects have failed and some have succeeded. His chosen role as the disrupter-savior has not only failed to hurt him, but also was one of the factors in his widespread appeal. However, it is unlikely that the Trump presidency will succeed as his reliance on basic assumptions and the promotion of group fantasy is bound to collapse under the weight of reality and the lack of effective problem solving. Disappointment is certain to follow when the fantasy solution does not work. Bion has observed that the activity of basic assumptions is ubiquitous, but that successful leaders are able to harness the energy and passion of basic assumptions to enrich realistic compromise, competence, and commitment to problem solving. To this point in his presidency, Trump has given no indication that he has either the skills or the inclination to

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lead the country in any direction other than to disruption, alternative facts, and the identification of a growing list of enemies.

Our best hope is for the reappearance of the task group and leadership with workable alternatives to grandiose fantasies of greatness, as well as identifying and making enemies. Finding such a task group may allow us to accept the disappointments of modern life and the realities of a “good enough” country that can always be made better.

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