Trump's Impaired Empathy
How an Incapacity for "Emotional Witnessing" Impacts Leadership (Vol. 5; Issue 5)
Donald Trump’s reaction to the tragic January 29th airplane crash illustrates the meaning of the phrase, empathic failure. This psychoanalytic term-of-art refers to the inability to understand the experience of others. For example, last week I met with a friend whose house was destroyed in the Altadena fires. Had I offered him any of these exclamations during our lunch, I would have demonstrated poor empathy for him:
What a lesson in impermanence you just had!
Or, more relevant to Trump’s problems with empathy:
The power companies failed you, and your roofer is incompetent. You should sue them both.
Whether you feel love, hate, or indifference towards Trump, you should at least be able to appreciate the lessons he offers regarding narcissistic personality styles. Highly egocentric characters like him struggle to feel, and communicate, empathy. Trump’s statements following the airplane disaster, which left 67 people dead, exemplify such deficits. They offer an opportunity to explore what empathy means, and to understand the role it plays in intimacy and in leadership.
The day after the crash, Trump, tasked with the role of “consoler-in-chief,” spoke to reporters in the the White House press room. He offered scant consolation. The “empathy” consisted of him uttering the phrase “The country is in mourning,” acknowledging the victims’ families’ “hour of anguish,” and paying tribute to the first responders. These comforting comments lasted all of three minutes. Then, and predictably, Trump launched into self-aggrandizement and externalizing blame.
I put safety first,
he said, adding,
Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first. They put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen because this was the lowest level. Their policy was horrible and their politics was even worse.
Per usual, and also typical of narcissists, notice the hyperbole in Trump’s use of terms like “lowest level,” “horrible,” and “even worse.” Individuals with narcissistic styles project their own vulnerability outward, thus, the propensity to blame. Fault always lies with someone other than them. If you know anyone with severe narcissism, then you’ve seen the phenomenon. They are never in the wrong. And, they tend to make those around them feel insecure (because of the projection of their own vulnerability).
Insensitive to discussing potential causes without a formal investigation, Trump blamed these former Democratic presidents who, he also noted, made “a big push to put diversity into the F.A.A.’s program.” Diversity caused the disaster, Trump suggested. (In truth, the “problematic” hiring policy had been in place during his first administration). Trump also blamed the former transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, who he called “a disaster.” These statements combine hyperbole with externalization of blame.
Trump next theorized, without evidence, that lowered standards for hiring air traffic controllers contributed to the crash. He said candidates for these positions had been rejected for being “too white” while those “with serious mental or physical disabilities” had been hired instead. Unsurprisingly, Trump, here, displays overt racism. Here, we see disinformation added to the exaggerations and accusations. Trump could not say whether such persons were actually hired as air traffic controllers. He could not say whether such persons were on duty the night of the crash. When a reporter asked him how he could blame diversity programs, Trump replied,
Because I have common sense.
No wonder many worry as much about Trump’s cognitive decline as they did about Biden’s.
Common sense?
Some of Trump’s former advisors diagnose him with an “empathy gap.” His performance that Thursday night revealed not just a gap, but an immense chasm that could rival the Mariana Trench. Whatever empathy existed in his childhood sunk to the depths driven by the weight of decades of corruption.
Empathy is far from an easy thing to feel or show. It involves a type of projection, specifically the ability to imagine, and sense, what other persons are experiencing. You mentally put yourself into their situation, feel as much of their feeling as you can, and then speak your perception of their world to them. It requires maturity. It requires emotional intelligence. It requires the capacity to communicate.
My friend who lost his home is a rather cognitively oriented person. He began our lunch, as I expected, with a description of the practical steps he’d taken to deal with the loss. Attempting to communicate an understanding of the wildfire taking his house, I began by meeting him on his terms. I acknowledged the pride he felt at his efficiency. Consistent with any intimate friendship, I then encouraged him to share his emotional responses.
After pressing him a bit, my friend landed upon the word dread. Our conversation turned to the varied meanings of that term. He later added, probably referring to the cost of the overwhelm he feels, that he was numb as well. No wonder. His pain runs so deep through his body-mind that it betrays categorization. It illustrates what Jacques Lacan (1978) means by the Real—experiences that cannot be symbolized or imagined. Trauma, by definition, falls within the realm of the Real. PTSD symptoms can be understood as efforts to retrospectively create language and images to fill in the void left by the traumatic event.
We psychoanalysts are trained in empathy, but many mature individuals have a natural aptitude for it. One of the more common, albeit normative, ways of providing empathy is to share similar experiences. When encountering a friend with a serious illness, you might quickly tell the story of your own scary medical situation. That’s not an awful response, but it’s often unhelpful. It is much better to stay with the experience of the frightened person. Better responses include listening, asking for more details, or simply discussing the other person’s pain with them.
Several psychoanalysts consider “attunement” or emotional “witnessing” as key components of empathy. Robert Stolorow (2008) writes about how the risk of trauma is always present, but he adds hopefully that also understanding the hurt of others holds:
the possibility of forming bonds of deep emotional attunement within which devastating emotional pain can be held; rendered more tolerable; and, one hopes, eventually integrated. (p. 121-2).
Stolorow means being “carefully attentive to” or “tuned in” to others’ experiences. This not only communicates empathy, but it can create deeper closeness. Along these same lines, Warren Poland (2000) explains that, by use of the word “witnessing,” the psychoanalyst:
grasps the emotional activity in the mind of the patient at work, and is seen and recognized by the patient as a distinctly separate person. (p. 21)
The “distinctly separate person” phrase echoes the problem of responding too quickly by sharing your own similar experiences in the interest of empathy. Poland emphasizes the need to listen carefully to what this other, separate person feels—regardless of what one might think or imagine them to feel.
My friend and colleague Dana Amarisa specializes in helping individuals respond to those who’ve suffered losses—a unique and, for most people, particularly difficult form of empathy to provide. Her book, Condolences Pocket Guide: What To Say and Not Say To Grievers, counsels on how to empathize with persons in grief. She advises “witnessing and bearing with them in their pain.” Interestingly, she uses that same word, “witnessing.” Anyone close to the families of the victims of the January 29th crash certainly fall into that category. Trump’s statements hardly communicated a sense of attunement or of emotional witnessing.
In prior essays, I have delved into empathy in greater detail. Empathy plays a central role in intimacy. Narcissists see others primarily as they imagine them in their minds. And, because of their deficits in empathy, these internal images are rarely altered by real experiences with them. Trump’s tendency towards idealizing others, and then devaluing them, is also typical of narcissists. His bromance with Musk will surely come to an explosive end. It is inevitable, and the blast will reverberate around the world.
A romantic relationship, friendship, or closeness with any loved one requires empathy. How else can the lonely experience of being an individual be understood without it? Trump’s history of unstable marriages and of oft-ejected “friends” is entirely consistent with high levels of narcissism.
The role of empathy in leadership is obvious. It warrants a more detailed essay of its own. Suffice to say that empathetic leaders elicit feelings of trust in those they oversee. They communicate care. Empathic leaders are typically respected and well-liked. Even the most ardent supporters of Trump have yet to observe how his lack of empathy defines his presidency. It obviously expands beyond individuals into the world of immigrants and even citizens of other countries.
As I wrote this essay, Trump threatened our most important trading partners, Mexico and Canada, with high tariffs. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board dubbed it “the dumbest trade war in history.” He promised to “purge” the FBI for agents involved in any past investigations of him. Hours ago, he proposed a US takeover of Gaza—a violation of international law vociferously resisted by the Palestinians, Egypt, and Jordan.
These actions reveal as much authoritarianism as narcissism. He told Sean Hannity he would be a dictator “for day one,” but obviously Trump’s diktats keep coming day by day. The coming months and years will reveal just how much global citizens react to a president with a diminished capacity for understanding others, not to mention authoritarianism and impulsivity combined. In the meantime, people around the world can enjoy—at least—an improved understanding of the concept of empathy, and of malignant narcissism (Kernberg, 1984) bordering on sociopathy, thanks to Trump.
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References
Amarisa, D. (2021). Condolences Pocket Guide: What To Say and Not Say To Grievers. Independently Published.
Lacan, J. (1978). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts ofPsychoanalysis. J. Miller (Ed.). Trans. A. Sheriden. New York: Norton.
Kernberg, O. (1984). Severe personality disorders: psychotherapeutic strategies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Poland, W. S. (2000) The Analyst's Witnessing and Otherness. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 48:17-34.
Stolorow, R. D. (2008) The Contextuality and Existentiality of Emotional Trauma. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 18:113-123