Dangerous Denial of Donald Trump
Understanding Dissociation, Psychic Blindness, and Peril (Vol. 4; Issue 13)
A few Trump supporters make statements like:
If he thinks America needs a dictator, then America does.
Or:
If Trump thinks authoritarianism will stop immigration or inflation, then I believe him.
(A quick internet search validates these statements).
Despite my stature as a “trained professional,” I doubt written communication can convert such psychotic thinking into normality.
However, a few sane, even thoughtful, persons openly dislike Trump’s immaturity, impulsivity, or inexperience. Nonetheless, they meekly support him because:
At least Trump will continue to promote conservative policies.
Or:
Trump’s better than another four years of Biden.
These often well-meaning individuals ignore the jeopardy of another Trump presidency because they fear Biden, they fear liberalism, or they fear Biden’s cognitive decline. These persons display a potentially changeable psychic blindness. The opaque can turn translucent. I direct this week’s issue to such people, highlighting the danger posed by extreme forms of dissociation. I hope to pierce through the porous but calloused skin of these people, seeking to change their attitudes.
But, first, a few words about ego defense mechanisms. Much like how humans’ body-minds protect them from harmful bacteria, viruses, and other invasive foreign bodies, they similarly guard against psychological dangers. Keeping out disease-causing entities obviously enhances health. Preventing painful emotions from intruding into consciousness—whether from the unconscious mind or from the outside world—provides comparable shelter. Unresolved childhood trauma might emerge abruptly, like lava from a geological vent. These disrupt subjective experience. In like manner, persons divorcing, struggling with an ill child, or enduring prolonged unemployment understandably need to avoid overwhelm. In these cases, ego defenses help to adapt, to cope.
Sometimes these normal mental guardrails reach dissociative levels. The ways we humans ignore the lingering risk of nuclear war, or the looming threat of global warming, illustrate psychic blindness. It disempowers. The election of Donald Trump represents immediate peril. Consider some of Trump’s actual statements.
When first running for president in 2016, Trump encouraged supporters to “knock the crap” out of Black Lives Matter protesters, promising to pay their legal bills if they were arrested.
Trump threatened “potential death & destruction” if the Manhattan district attorney charged him over hush-money payments—one of the first of many court cases progressing rapidly. He fumed on his Truth Social platform (and the caps are his):
OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED, AS THEY TELL US TO BE PEACEFUL!
After the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022, Trump predicted that “terrible things are going to happen.” He then quoted South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham as warning of “riots in the streets” if Trump were charged. (Trump was indicted, charged, and the legal process is in motion, and no such rioting occurred).
Trump’s inflammatory and racist rhetoric intensified after he declared his candidacy in November 2022. He promised to pardon January 6 insurrectionists; he suggested that General Mark Milley be “executed.”
At a subsequent rally, Trump warned:
If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath—that’s going to be the least of it.
Just weeks ago, on CBS’s Face The Nation, Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice president, commented on Trump’s belief that those imprisoned for the January 6th insurrection are hostages. He said:
I think it’s very unfortunate at a time that there are American hostages being held in Gaza, that the president or any other leader will refer to people that are moving through our justice system as hostages. It’s just unacceptable.
Trump has since called for the incarceration of duly-elected members of the January 6th committee. Further, he plans to use the military to quell peaceful demonstrations, and he promises to create a national abortion ban. As recently as December 2023, Trump proclaimed at a rally in Waterloo, Iowa that although, “I never read Mein Kampf,” he believed illegal immigrants are:
destroying the blood of our country.
These are fascist statements. Earlier this week, just before appearing in court for the notorious porn star hush money case, Trump posted on his Truth Social:
These are Rigged cases, all coordinated by the White House and DOJ for purposes of Election Interference. THE NUMBER ENGORON SET IS FRAUDULENT [referring to the fine for illegal business practices in New York state]. It should be ZERO, I DID NOTHING WRONG! The D.A. Case, that I am going to today, should be dismissed. No crime. Our Country is CORRUPT!
A journalist for the Guardian interviewed Harvard political scientist Daniel Zilbatt who noted:
Since 1945, I don’t think there has been a politician in a democracy who’s used such authoritarian language—ever. It’s hard to think of anybody. Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin when running for office don’t use the kind of language that Donald Trump uses. That’s pretty notable.
How are Trump’s statements relevant to the unconscious mind? Because the social contract governing societies quells fears of social chaos. We rarely feel the risk of the turmoil or pandemonium unfolding when social contracts break. It rarely occurs. Occasional rioting, such as the Watt’s riots in August 1965, brought fear into ordinary households. What if the LAPD collapsed? What if rioters threatened greater numbers of peaceful citizens? We experience an unconscious tranquility—at least to some extent—because of the “social contract” first identified by Jacques Rousseau (1762/2003). It provides reassurances about prevention of mass violence. Cave men wielding clubs transitioned into legal systems ensuring justice under the rule of law. Trump overtly questions and abuses the latter.
Few consider the Biden versus Trump contest ideal. Fair enough. But what about the risk of an actual dictatorship? Few also understand that Adolph Hitler was democratically elected in 1933. You might hate Biden, you might fear massive immigration, and you might fear social democracy. Again, these are nothing compared to watching the American experiment in democracy fail.
Returning to the idea of ego defense mechanisms, it was the French psychologist Pierre Janet (writing in the late 19th century) who first used the word, dissociation, to describe how persons’ mental processes fracture under stress. His understanding of consciousness-splintering delivered the idea of defense mechanisms to psychoanalysis. Freud (1894), one of Janet’s students, first used the phrase, “defense mechanisms,” in his paper, The Neuro-psychoses of Defense. Anna Freud (1936) expanded upon the idea, delineating how these protective mechanisms range from the adaptive to the maladaptive.
Mature defenses, like anticipation, neutralize threatening information by motivating people to prepare. Sublimation channels discomfort from threats into productive activity. Denial is characterized by its unique hermetic-like seal. It effectively blinds persons to any number of phenomena, i.e., the reality of death, their abuse of alcohol or substances, or their enabling others to mistreat them. These various defense mechanisms are, essentially, varieties of dissociation. Humor, for example, separates out painful experiences through levity.
In the case of the possible Trump election, reality-distorting barriers reach new maladaptive heights. Psychotic levels of denial prevent individuals from accurately perceiving the threat of Donald Trump’s leadership.
The psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion (1961) describes how a group, “having thrown all their cares on the leader … sits back and waits for him to solve all their problems” (p. 81). Chrzanowski (2019), writing specifically about the first Trump presidency, notes how, “the group regresses to a passive helpless state and exhibits a loss of critical thinking” (p. 712). Many supporters of Trump display just such regression, just such a lack of critical thinking, and just such psychic blindness.
Biden’s alleged senility, the risk of Kamala Harris assuming the role of president, insufficient border protections (promoted by Trump unless he is elected), lessening of conservative values, and the similar worries pale in comparison to electing Donald Trump.
Let us all hope that Trump’s ongoing egotistical, anti-social, and authoritarian behaviors awaken persons capable of critical thinking or, to be a bit nasty, persons capable of thinking at all, to turn against him. The American populace would gain international prestige if Trump loses the November election by a landslide.
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References
Bion, W. (1961). Experiences in Groups and Other Papers. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Chrzanowski, C.S. (2019). The group’s vulnerability to disaster: basic assumption and work group mentalities underlying Trump’s 2016 election. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 100:711-731.
Freud, S. (1894). The neuro-psychoses of defense. Standard Edition, 3:43-61.
Freud, S. (1921). Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. Standard Edition, 18:65-144.
Freud, A. (1936). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. London: Routledge.
Rousseau, J-J. (2003). Du Contract Social [On The Social Contract]. Trans. G.D.H. Cole. New York: Dover. (Original work published in 1762).
Interesting thanks, I hadn't thought of defense mechanisms as all being forms of dissociation.