Uncle Sociopath? Uncle Psychopath? Mary Trump Goes Public
Sociopath, Psychopath, Antisocial Personality Disorder - What’s the Difference and Why Does This Matter?
As talking heads appeared on television in response to the issues raised by Mary L. Trump’s book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, some tried to nail down whether or not Trump’s racism included his niece actually hearing her uncle—or the rest of the family—utter the n-word, or anti-Semitic equivalents. Though the answer here was “yes,” the deepest psychological reflections initially to emerge were provided by Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Lance Dodes.
His appearance on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show The Last Word seemed analogous to the shark expert played by Richard Dreyfus appearing in the movie Jaws. And the diagnosis he was providing was distinctly different from a family breeding and enabling sociopaths. His diagnosis was also more pernicious than the grandiosity and lack of empathy found in narcissism.
Dodes found Trump’s lying, and taking pleasure in it, as well from the suffering caused to others to be a form of sadism. And sadism he said “is one of the monstrous things about being a psychopath. It’s enjoying being vindictive and destroying those you see as enemies. And everybody is seen as your enemy, unless they’re worshipping you.”
In response to “the learned helplessness” that Mary L. Trump had portrayed as running deep in her family, Dodes said that from what she described, “Donald Trump’s father was also a very cruel, racist, vindictive man, and probably a psychopath.”
“So growing up with such a person, you learn to be either a victim, or you learn to be a victimizer. And Donald Trump (unlike Trump’s dead brother, Mary L. Trump’s father) learned to be a victimizer. He followed in his father’s footsteps, and became the same cruel, tyrannical, victimizing person that his father was. So it is a kind of a response to helplessness. If you have to be a victim or a victimizer, you become a victimizer, if you’re that kind of person.”
O’Donnell also wanted Dodes to weigh in on Mary L. Trump’s reporting that admitting a mistake in her family was admitting to weakness, which in her family was essentially punished with “the death penalty.”
Dodes replied: “There’s a term in my profession—soul murder. You can destroy somebody, especially a young child, by humiliating them, disdain or abuse. That’s how Trump is. That’s how he treats everyone. In order to admit mistakes, you have to care about what you’ve done. But he doesn’t care. The deaths of tens of thousands Americans really doesn’t matter to him. And so, if you don’t care, there’s even less reason to admit a mistake. For what difference does it make if it doesn’t hurt you?”
In the interview with Rachel Maddow just the hour before, Mary L. Trump said she was willing to risk her own safety by writing the book, feeling that it was her responsibility. That, Dodes said, “is completely different from the rest of the family, a corrupt and deeply ill set of relationships. She’s doing us all a service. But unfortunately, Donald Trump won’t benefit from any insight, because he’s incapable. But it helps us to at least have some insight where this terrible situation, this terrible person has come from.”
Given all the above, I found something curious about Mary L. Trump’s narrative, and the interpretive narrative about it from Dr. Dodes. Both trace the pathology of America’s 45th president and his family back to Donald’s father, Fred. Trump’s niece, a clinical psychologist, diagnoses Fred as a sociopath. Dr. Dodes, a psychiatrist, diagnoses both Fred and Donald as psychopaths. Most American psychological professionals wouldn’t be able to tell you the difference—or how each of these diagnostic constructs differ from antisocial personality disorder.
What’s equally curious is that the official manual of American psychiatry—a doorstop of over 900 pages—has nothing to say about sociopaths. It’s as if they no longer exist, an extinct species; or has grown to be an outdated term. And you’d have to sleuth through the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) with a magnifying glass while wearing a Sherlock Holmes hat to find any reference to psychopathy. If you blinked you could miss it. And the manual can’t even bring itself to utter the word psychopath.
“Psychopathy” only shows up briefly, but not in the prevailing model of personality disorders, but only in a suggested “Alternative Model.” There, there’s a brief reference to psychopathy, or “primary psychopathy” which is viewed but as “a unique variant” of its own, self-created construct of Antisocial Personality Disorder.
But to even employ a psychopathy reference in your diagnosis, you’d have to jump through several more hoops (6 out 7 diagnostic criteria, rather than the 3 diagnostic criteria that are required in order to diagnose someone with ASPD. It’s as if the DSM would prefer, and make it far easier to use their own brand. Because even after jumping through the further hoops, you’d still have to jump through one more, in order to make some mention psychopathy in your diagnosis. You’d have to find evidence of a twin set of traits—a lessened degree of anxious withdrawal on the one hand, and a heightened degree of attention-seeking on the other.
The above considerations leave me with some questions. Has having an inadequate reference to sociopaths and psychopaths in American psychology’s official diagnostic manual left American psychologists less able to recognize either? And has it left America more vulnerable to having one, or both, in its White House? And lastly: How did this ever come to be?
To find some answers, we’ll have to don our own Sherlock Holmes hat. And we’ll have to go back in time … Narcissism is perhaps the oldest of recognized personality disorders, as Greek and Roman poets had given us the myth standing behind it, and were musing about it 2000 years ago. Psychopathy is also one of the more established personality disorders, but has practically disappeared from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
For a deep dive into the DSM, read Psychopaths: The Mask of Sanity - Advanced Reading, the first in a series of related articles written with psychology professionals in mind. If you want to proceed with the Introductory Articles, click on the link at the bottom right.