David Remnick, speaking on Morning Joe, used those words this morning referring to Donald Trump. Why empty? Trump as a clinical object was so severely damaged as a child – no doubt by his parents – that he never developed an adult mind. Soul, of course, means here something like the moral and ethical make-up of a human being. Many people, sadly, are in the same condition as Trump – we call them Personality Disorders under which we find narcissistic disorder, psychopathic disorder, sociopathic disorder, borderline disorder, and several others. I leave it to the experts to narrow it down regarding Trump but just as autistic people, depending on their place on the spectrum, can amaze us with powers of concentration, so people with disordered personalities can sometimes bowl us over with the power of their single-minded defense mechanism, whichever they use.
The problem for them is they have only one and when it fails, they fail as a psychologically complete being. Trump may be approaching this level of decompensation. But don’t forget, he has lived a long time like this and just bulls his way through everything – the power of the disordered mind.
Pat’s Polemics
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