Trump on the couch : inside the mind of the president

Trump on the couch Inside the mind of the president

Justin A. Frank

Book - 2018

No president in the history of the United States has inspired more alarm and confusion than Donald Trump. As questions and concerns about his decisions, behavior, and qualifications for office have multiplied, they point to one primary question: Does he pose a genuine threat to our country? The American Psychiatric Association's Goldwater Rule constrains psychiatrists from offering diagnoses on public figures who are not patients and who have not endorsed such statements. But in Trump on the Couch Clinical Professor of Psychiatry Justin A Frank invokes the moral responsibility that compels him to speak out and present a full portrait of a man who presents us with a clear and present danger... With our country itself at stake, Dr. Frank... calls attention to the underlying narcissism, misogyny, deception, and racism that drive the President who endangers it. A penetrating examination of how we as a nation got here and, more important, where we are going, Trump on the Couch sounds a call to action that we cannot ignore.

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Subjects
Trump, Donald, > 1946- > Psychology.
Trump, Donald, > 1946- > Public opinion.
Presidents > United States > Psychology.
Political leadership > United States.
Social psychology > United States.
Public opinion > United States.
United States > Politics and government > 2017-
Published
New York : Avery, an imprint of Penguin Random House [2018]
Language
English
Main Author
Justin A. Frank (author)
Physical Description
xxiii, 279 pages ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 259-263) and index.
ISBN
9780735220324
  • Introduction
  • Part 1. Origins
  • Chapter 1. Mother
  • Chapter 2. Father
  • Chapter 3. Brother
  • Chapter 4. Rivals
  • Part 2. Pathologies
  • Chapter 5. The Psychology of Lying
  • Chapter 6. The Psychology of Narcissism
  • Chapter 7. The Psychology of Destructiveness
  • Chapter 8. The Psychology of Racism
  • Chapter 9. The Psychology of Sexism And Misogyny
  • Chapter 10. The Language of Donald Trump
  • The End of the Beginning
  • Glossary
  • Bibliography
  • Acknowledgments
  • Index
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Narcissism, racism, sexism, and destructiveness are among Donald Trump's numerous pathologies.Drawing on Trump's tweets, interviews, speeches, The Art of the Deal, and many books and articles expounding on the president's personality, Frank (Psychiatry/George Washington Univ. Medical Center; Obama on the Couch, 2011, etc.) concludes that Trump "is a menace to himself and his people," completely unfit for office. The author has never met Trump, so he relies on "applied psychoanalysis," a method, he speculates (without evidence), that has been used by Russian intelligence, revealing to them "a person who was uniquely positioned to be co-optedby an authoritarian Putin regime." A Klein-ian psychoanalyst, Frank blames Trump's many psychological problems on his distant and unloving mother and his demanding father, who told Trump "that he must grow up to be a killer and a king." Both despaired at controlling their hyperactive son, whom teachers described as "headstrong" and "surly." A bully even at the age of 5, he threw rocks at a neighboring toddler in his playpen. Sent to the New York Military Academy after seventh grade, Trump felt banished. Frank asserts that because he was "deprived of paternal empathy as a child, Trump still yearns for a father," which accounts for his attraction to men such as Steve Bannon and political dictators. His mother's lack of love and attention generated feelings of humiliation and betrayal, which the author thinks are shared by his base, who feel betrayed by Washington politicians, "as they may have originally felt disappointed by their own parents years earlier. Trump instinctively recognizes their narcissistic wounds" and encourages them "to vent their rage." As protection from the outside world, which threatens his fragile self-esteem, Trump has constructed "an internal psychological wall" within which he hones fantasies of power and paranoia. Examining Trump's language, Frank diagnoses "a subtype of dyslexia" that leads to his difficulty understanding complexity and "simply reacting while avoiding the work of thinking."A highly damning portrayal unlikely to surprise any non-Trumpist reader. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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