The Psychopath: A True Story(48)
The show continued with Jon talking about his book and his experience with researching psychopaths, as well as talking about the madness industry. He then brought on his second guest Dr Eleanor Longden, an eminent psychologist who also happens to hear voices and had her own story to tell about her experiences in psychiatric care. The second half of the show was just the three of us onstage taking questions from the audience.
The first show was on the evening of Tuesday 8 November 2016, and it went amazingly well. It was the same day as the US presidential election and we were asked questions about Donald Trump as people laughed at the possibility of his being elected to the office of the President of the United States of America. Clearly that couldn’t happen. It was unimaginable. But after the show I was asked if I thought Trump was a psychopath.
‘No, there’s a big issue with trying to diagnose people from afar but from what I know of him I would be more likely to say he’s a malignant narcissist,’ I answered.
‘What’s the difference?’ I was asked.
The difference between psychopaths and sociopaths is nature and nurture. Psychopaths are born with no empathic responses, and sociopaths are made by society but the results are the same as both are lacking in any chemical empathic response for anyone, including themselves. As already mentioned, empathic people care about their future selves rather like they do other people, as was demonstrated by the electric shock test. So psychopaths and sociopaths can live moment to moment without caring about what their future self might have to endure (pain, prison, homelessness, etc.).
Narcissists, on the other hand, lack any chemical empathic response for anyone except themselves. So their whole world revolves around them and anyone they consider part of themselves (such as an obedient child or spouse – who generally realise that if they don’t toe the line they will be cut off with the speed and efficiency of a guillotine). A malignant narcissist takes it one step further in that the narcissist will actively go out of their way to destroy someone they believe has slighted them or not given them the godlike status they feel they deserve. A component of malignant narcissism is sadism – and that is not limited to causing others pain but also taking glee in the suffering of their perceived ‘enemies’ (in other words, those who don’t worship them or people who have stood up against them in the past).
Apaths are another category, and are also interesting in that they are people with a conscience and with empathy, but who dull their own emotional responses around a psychopath or narcissist so as to be able to work for them. They are sometimes called ‘flying monkeys’ because (whether out of fear or greed) they do their master’s or mistress’s bidding without feeling for their victims.
To me Donald Trump shows every sign of a malignant narcissist – someone who clearly demonstrates a lack of empathy, pathological lying, a grandiose sense of self-worth and the like, but also paranoia (all those conspiracy theories), aggression, boastfulness, belief in his own fantasies (his claim that the crowd at his inauguration was the largest ‘of all time’ is a good example), and exaggeration of his own abilities and status (‘stable genius’!). What’s more, if you listen to Trump speak, he uses exaggeration, reframing, projection and has actually made the term ‘word salad’ commonplace!
As a Scot I had been exposed to Donald Trump’s treatment of the people around his Scottish golf courses and how he had tried to bulldoze over the locals to get what he seemed to feel entitled to. I could think of no one less suited to becoming the President of the United States and feared what he might do (particularly with access to a nuclear arsenal) if elected. Especially if he did not get everything his own way!
That evening, after the first Psychopath Night with Jon Ronson, I watched from my hotel room with increasing horror as the election results rolled in. Like millions of others around the world I was aghast to find that Donald Trump had actually won the 2016 presidential election.
The second Psychopath Night show was a different beast altogether. The audience were in shock – as were we all. The mood in the theatre seemed to be one of total disbelief as people tried to absorb the second extraordinary result of the year (the first being the Brexit vote in the UK). It seemed that the world was going mad – quite an appropriate setting for a sell-out show about the madness industry and psychopathy!
There was a lot of talk about what had happened as well as discussing the ‘Goldwater Rule’ (the informal name of the medical ethics rule which states it is unethical for psychiatrists to give a professional opinion about public figures whom they have not examined in person, nor received consent to discuss!) We did point out that as non-professionals in the field we are not bound by the Goldwater Rule. I strongly feel there is a more urgent requirement which is the duty to warn others about people who are genuinely unstable, putting the safety of society first. Interestingly, a group of psychiatrists and clinical psychologists came out in 2017 stating that the ‘Duty to Warn’ in the case of Donald Trump overcame all restraints of the Goldwater Rule.
John Gartner, a practising psychologist, went public with his statements. As founder of ‘Duty to Warn PAC’ (a political action committee working to raise awareness about the danger to the USA and the world posed by Donald Trump), his statements in Forbes Magazine in February 2017 were damning. Gartner said that America had had lots of presidents with mental health issues that ‘wouldn’t disqualify and might even enhance’ their ability to perform their duties. But, he said, the Trump situation is ‘from a psychiatric point of view the absolute worst-case scenario . . . if I were to take the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and try to create a Frankenstein’s monster of the most dangerous and destructive leader and had freedom to create any combination of diagnosis and symptoms’, Trump would be the result.