THE SCARY PARALLELS BETWEEN DONALD TRUMP’S CAMPAIGN AND DICTATORIAL PERSONALITIES

When I taught at UCLA I got to know a psychiatrist, Maurice N. Walsh, MD (1905-1991) who was in the Neuropsychiatric   Institute.  He developed an interest in psychiatry and war when he was a medical resident at the Mayo Clinic and was asked to see a patient.  It was Rafael Trujillo, the Dominican dictator who had syphilis but who also was psychotic.  Soon WWII broke out and Walsh found himself in the Pacific helping pilots to carry out missions to bomb Japan with a high probability of crashing at sea before they could return to their base.  At the war’s end he was asked to examine Rudolph Hess for the Nuremberg trials.  He found Hess to be psychotic and his report was stamped secret and not allowed to be used in the trials.  Walsh wondered why it was that highly narcissistic persons who might be classified as megalomaniacs had such an appeal to the public and why they rose to power as dictators.  He became an advocate for the scientific (rather than political or economic) study of war.  He edited a book (1971) War and the Human Race gathering dozens of articles on medical, psychiatric, anthropological, biological, and other approaches to the study of war.   

              Every time I listen to one of Donald Trump’s interviews or speeches, I think of Maurice Walsh.  He said of Trujillo or Hess, why is it that if we heard this person on a soapbox we walk away and consider this person a nutcase but if he ran for office we would treat him as a serious candidate?  But Walsh also asked another question: Why are so many people charmed or attracted by these narcissistic personalities?  He argued that they appeal to people who are tired of nuance, complexity, inconsistency, compromise, and failure in the political world in which they live.  The narcissistic leader is decisive, admits no wrong, is good at fault-finding in others, and is willing to take the risks to set things right that is part of our own wish fulfillment. 

              I wish some of our political commentators on TV news shows would call attention to the striking similarity of Trump’s rhetoric and those of past bullying dictators like Hitler and Mussolini and Trujillo.  Those with a dictatorial personality like to preach macho values of war or the threat of war instead of diplomacy.  They disregard legalities in favor of executive authority as their first choice for governing. They have overblown confidence in their intelligence or knowledge of how the world works.  The dictatorial personality likes to give orders, likes to be surrounded by “yes men,” looks at criticism as a form of treason or lack of patriotism, and likes to have others fight their wars which are rarely responses to massive attacks or declarations of war.  

              I regret the disappearance of psychological and psychiatric research on war, aggression, and the narcissistic personality.  In mid 20^th century there were books like Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom and Carlo Levi’s Fear of Freedom.  In the last half of the 20^th century, I believe, the wrong approach was used, stressing evolutionary models of innate aggression or human nature making war seem inevitable because it is fixed in our genes.  I doubt that.  War is a disease of society. Diseases can be prevented but we need to do research that is not stuck in the traditional economic, political, and human nature arguments for its causes.  Those have not worked in the past and a fresh look is much needed.