How a few comments to a HUFFPOST article comparing Trump to Hitler is a snapshot of divided America, By Hal M. Brown (The article is about Trump's anti-trans rants, but comments may show that a lot of men suffer from castration anxiety.

 

I read The Nazis Made A Horrifying Move In 1933. I'm Terrified Trump Is Now Doing The Exact Same Thing.

“Until recently, the question remained theoretical. But it’s not an exaggeration to say that President Trump is running plays straight out of Hitler’s playbook.”

The author, Ali Moss has a Substack where she also published this article.

I made this comment on HUFFPOST:

Then I looked over the comments and got the idea for today’s Susbtack.

The comments section of HUFFPOST continues to be an accurate representation of the dichotomy of viewpoints between Americans. On the one side we have those who condemn the author of this article and the entire idea that transgender children actually are born that way. These posts are sometimes crude and angry. They sometime say any comparison of Turmp with Hitler is, not always in these words, Trump derangement syndrome.

On the other side we have people who agree with the author that what Trump is doing has horrifying similarities to what Hitler did. These commenters tend to be both well thought out and respectful.

I looked at the comments and found a thread in response to what Roberta Powell posted. She was responding to a comment I can’t see because it was removed:

You can read it below. There are several typos.

• Roberta Powell

  We are there. He has labeled the same people as criminals, nonexistent or enemies. LGBTQ, DEI, foreign born, the press, the universities, libraries and liberals are lunatics destroying the American dream. And just like 1933 Germany he found a violent minority who agree. He oiks very elserlyfound more that join him for their own gain. Hitler was not 80 years old. Trump is. Trump's Reich ls led by the elderly but enforced by the middle aged. They have no limits. What laws they do not remove they break. This is a far right lunatic political party with an opposition that sits back to let the right do damage and lose support. We know we are not represented in Congress by either party. Unless we join the right wingers we are alone. We are there. It is 1930 Germany here in the U.S.A. and a depression is being set up. It's going to get very bad here.

  • LAXMAN FIVE

    So you like males on female sports teams and in their locker rooms right liberal? Only a Nazi would be against that. Right.

    • Two term Papaw

      All three of them!!!!

      Meanwhile MAGA can’t afford groceries without a second low wage job

    • Roberta Powell

      It's sports. I see huge muscular "born girls" and dainty, feminine "born boys" being used as an excuse to destroy every freedom our ancestors fought for. It's insane. I don't see the point. Why force girls to compete with transgender boys? It's not fair. Any athlete born female could take hormones and go through surgeries and compete against girls according to Trump. And they are? Just to win a high school trophy? That's nuts. And when girls compete with boys the girls still win sometimes. I think that is your real objection. Get over it and try harder.

  • undefined undefined

    DEI is racist and a man can't be a woman princess.

    • Roberta Powell

      But they can! DEI and transgenders can do their jobs.

• Susan Ortiz

  Some how her trans 11 year old had the freedom of speech intact to address the crowd under this nazi regime. How does that work?

  • Trump's Fascist Regime

    Ask the Columbia university protesters...

• Daniel Pedraza

  30 minutes ago

  Of course he is. His own daughter said he sleeps with copy of mine kempf by his bed. The entire DEI fraud that is a major Republican talking point is just a clever way to move towards white supremacy That's all it is.

  • Halle Piño

    You think that's "clever"?!

    Seems pretty transparent to me.

• Beef Supreme

  Another woman emotionally manipulated by the Big Media Propaganda Machine into feeling terrified. How sad.

Roberta Powell replied to something I added to the comments:

Ha! How is Trump different than Hitler?

• Hal Brown

  The similarities outweigh the differences. Hitler was a stable psychopath. Trump is an unstable psychopath. I am writing my Substack and knowing if you are the person I think you are will add more to it.

Just added:

Trump has had so many big lies beside the one about him really having won the 2020 election that led to his re-election that there’s no one lie we can pick out as the biggest of the big lies. My choice is that the biggest election outcome defining big lie was that the reason he servived the assassination attempt was that God ordained this. When I saw the photo of him with his fist raised I knew he couldn’t lose. 

There were other big lies such as that the MAGA thugs who assaulted the Capitol were patriots. Trump has also managed to make the entire trans issue into a big lie. In the inconvenient fact don’t mater MAGA-sphere it is a big lie that there are only two genders. What the hell does the Mayo Clinic know?

As a psychoanalytically informed psychotherapist I see things like this through a Freudian lens. My analysis of why Trump’s anti-trans fear-mongering resonates with so many men is that they are insecure about their own masculinity. They have a deeply buried unconscious fear of castration. I would venture to speculate that this manifests itself in symbolism in their dreams.

This is how Wikipedia defines castration anxiety:

Castration anxiety is an overwhelming fear of damage to, or loss of, the penis—a derivative of Sigmund Freud's theory of the castration complex, one of his earliest psychoanalytic theories.The term refers to the fear of emasculation in both a literal and metaphorical sense.

Freud regarded castration anxiety as a universal human experience. It is thought to begin between the ages of 3 and 5, during the phallic stage of psychosexual development. In Freud's theory, it is the child's perception of anatomical difference (the possession of a penis) that induces castration anxiety as a result of an assumed paternal threat made in response to their sexual proclivities. Although typically associated with males, castration anxiety is thought to be experienced, in differing ways, by both sexes.

In the literal sense, castration anxiety refers to a child's fear of having their genitalia disfigured or removed as punishment for Oedipal desire

I wonder whether if there was the research into gender identity and gender reassignment surgery in Freud’s lifetime whether he would have considered how he interpreted dreams about castration.

It doesn’t take a leap of imagination to come up with a Freudian explanation about someone’s unconscious fears when they lied and obsessed about the size of crowds that came to hear them speak. Likewise, if someone depicted themselves in computer generated images as muscular superheros sometimes carrying big guns, you don’t have to be Freud to speculate about their unconscious fears. Fake pro-wrestling crap, and the very worst, his need to sexually dominate women… I could go on but I will spare you.

Read my recent Substacks.

Trump Cabinet Picks: Manic Machiavellian megalomaniac runs amok, by Hal M. Brown, MSW

Let me lean back this morning and light up my metaphorical Freudian cigar and try to burn back a few layers of the multiple layers that encircle the inner core of Donald Trump which fuel his nuclear reactor of a mind.

So far we have three Trump Cabinet picks that have caused pundits to speculate why Trump would select three uniquely unqualified people to serve in positions vitally important to the security of the country. 

When you consider that Pete Hegesth for Secretary of Defense is the least bad of the three (Update: Although as new information comes out you have to reassess him - read here) you have to wonder who could be worse than he is. Who is the second worst? That would be the nominee for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard who repeated Russian propaganda about Ukraine housing U.S.-funded bioweapons labs. Then we get to the top of the bottom and it is a mind blower, Matt Gaetz for Attorney General. (Update: We have just found out that even though she was on the plane with him when he made the selection Susie Wiles was not aware that he was going to do this. Read story)

There is well deserved hand wringing among Republican members of Congress over these choices. They bought it, Trump broke it, but they have to own it. Think of a sign in a pottery store: "If the owner breaks it, sorry sucker, you have to buy it."

Among the punditry there is speculation as to why Trump would have picked these people. I've heard some MSNBC panelists suggest this may have been a tactic on Trump's part so he would have one or more of them not get confirmed by the Senate to make way for a more qualifed person who would turn out to be just as bad  but more effective at being bad.

I propose that Trump's motivation was not strategic. I think he is in a manic state and wants to lash out at all of his critics. John Bolton said it well:

"I thought [Gabbard] was the worst Cabinet-level appointment in history until I heard the Matt Gaetz appointment," Bolton said. "Really, my reaction was that this is like the legend of Caligula, the Roman emperor who wanted to nominate his horse as a Roman consul. You had to be a Roman senator at the time to be a consul, and it was intended to show how demeaned and degraded the Roman Senate had become. RawStory

Trump is not just riding high on his victory. My assessment is that he is in a manic state. He feels he can do anything.

He's always been a megalomaniac. By "always" I don't mean just as an adult. 

A strict Freudian interpretation of Trump's megalomania is that he never fully resolved a normal stage of psychological development. Freud and Freudians believe that at a young age children go though a phase when they feel omnipotent. They believe that a "child lives in a sort of megalomania for a long period; he knows only one yardstick, and that is his own over-inflated ego ... megalomania, it must be understood, is normal in the very young child". (Wikipedia)

In normal psychosocial development children pass through the various phases or stages but some have portions of their personality fixated, or stuck, at some stages for reasons having to do with family dynamics too complex to go into here.

For more information read 

Freud’s Psychosexual Theory And 5 Stages Of Human Development

Here's an illustration from that article:

Click above to enlarge

In the above chart you can see how partial fixations in each phase can lead to characteristics we see in Tump.

Add to all of the above is that Trump is a psychopath. This is how psychoanalyst Dr. Justin Frank puts it in the Chauncey DeVega Salon article: 

"Criminal labels and orange jumpsuits": Experts on how Trump weaponizes his own fears.

Lacking a conscience or morality to limit his sadism, and believing in his worth above all others, leads Trump to think he has the right to destroy anyone who does not submit to him. Without the innate capacity for empathy toward others and a sense of right and wrong, Trump is an extreme outlier in human psychology.

DeVega himself wrote:

It is true that Donald Trump is a pathological liar. But he has been remarkably honest and transparent in his desires and plans to become America's first dictator and unleash a reign of revenge and tyranny.

The only way to understand Trump and what he does is to understand that the why. The only way to understand the why is to realize that Trump has a personality that fits what is called the Dark Triad. 

Wikipedia describes the dark triad as:

All three dark triad traits are conceptually distinct although empirical evidence shows them to be overlapping. They are associated with a callous-manipulative interpersonal style.

.

• Narcissismis characterized by grandiosity, pride, egotism, and a lack of empathy.
• Machiavellianism is characterized by manipulationand exploitation of others, a cynical disregard for morality, and a focus on self-interestand deception.
• Psychopathy is characterized by continuing antisocial behavior, impulsivity, selfishness, callousness, and remorselessness.

Previous list of blogs here.

Primary Hal Brown's Blog website.

Morning Joe says Trump's "fretting" about prison, but is he even capable of fretting?

 

By Hal Brown, MSW, Retired psychotherapist

There was a discussion on Morning Joe where Joe Scarbourgh said that there were reports that Donald Trump was "privately frettiing" over the propsect of going to prison.

Click to view

There it is, Trump "fretting" actually made the chryon so those who had their sound muted could see it. If Trump had the show on one of several TVs in his bedroom he could see it. He might have decided to turn off the sound on Fox News and watch MSNBC.

Here's some of what Joe said:

"He's the most insecure guy on the face of the earth behind that facade. He has to know what his fiercest defenders on Fox News say. Ninety-one counts – if he goes 90-1, he's going to jail for the rest of his life, 90-1. He could win 90 and lose one, every one of those counts, basically, at Donald Trump's age, that equals a life sentence, so, yeah, the guy is worried.

.... 

"I mean, we'd be throwing people's names around – 91 counts, every one of them is a life sentence. The guy, obviously, is cracking. I think he's losing it, which is why the last thing he wants to do, the last thing his lawyers want him to do, is go out and debate. He may give admissions, and his political people don't want him to lose his mind onstage." 

Trump wants to consider himself to be a rock star. Havig a big article in Rolling Stone is a milestone in a performer's career. I rather doubt Trump is happy that he and is mugshot are here:

There it is, that pesky word again.

I've heard Joe mention that he was aware that Donald Trump sometimes watched the show. I wonder what he would have thought if he watched this segment. Joe, Mika, and the crew have called Trump lots of things but saying he's insecure and that he's fretting over the chance of going to prison may get to him more than being called a buffoon or a clown.

As one of the top 1000 mental health experts (but then who's counting) who has publically expressed their opnion about Trump's psychopathology I feel complelled to correct the Morning Joe panel. 

If Trump was fretting it would be a rare indication that he had lapsed, not into florid psychosis, but into the realm of mental health.

If Trump worked in academia he'd be the Dean of Denial and be in charge of assuring that students only were taught things that they were comfortable with.

Photo adapted from illustration in Reed College students stage multi-day protest over video that showed a professor making racist remarks

This isn't the first time pundits have ascribed normal psycholgical reactions to Donald Trump. For example this was from March:

Trump is 'very anxious' about being finger-printed and asking for bail in Manhattan: NYT's Haberman

Plain and simple we don't know what Trump is experiencing. Is he anxious? Is he fretting? We just don't know. 

Denial is the most primative or basic psychological defense mechanism. Freud first postulated it as a way some people dealt with facing extremely difficult facts of their personal reality:

Denial is a psychological defense mechanism postulated by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.

The subject may use:

• simple denial: deny the reality of the unpleasant fact altogether
• minimisation: admit the fact but deny its seriousness (a combination of denial and rationalization)
• projection: admit both the fact and seriousness but deny responsibility by blaming somebody or something else

Wikipedia

You can see Trump using all three types of denial. The more he uses simple denial the more psychogically impaired he is. Judging a the capacity for reality testing is a measure used in psychology to determine how dysfuntional a person is. It is called reality testing and defined as follows:

Reality testing is the psychotherapeutic function by which the objective or real world and one's relationship to it are reflected on and evaluated by the observer. This process of distinguishing the internal world of thoughts and feelings from the external world is a technique commonly used in psychoanalysis and behavior therapy, and was originally devised by Sigmund Freud. Wikipedia

Most of you are familiar the Kübler-Ross model of grief, which describes the five emotions that people experience when they cope with death. (Wikipedia). The first stage is denial. Pyshologically healthy people go on throough the next three stages, anger, bargaining, and depression before reaching the final stage of acceptance.

Denial is the first because it is the very most basic defense. 

I wonder if we'll see Trump go through these stages if he is sentenced to prison. I have my doubts because he is far from being a psychogically healthy person.

If Trump is anxious, if he's fretting, it would mean reality is percolating into his conscious awareness. If he's repressing this thoughts and feelings he is at risk of them manifesting themselves in somatic ways. 

I'm a clinical social worker and not a physician but I think I am on firm ground in speculating that as the chance of being incarcerated increases Trump is at higher risk of succumbing to some of the stress related physical illnesses.

Update:

Far be it from me to dispute Mary Trump who is the only mental health professional who actually knows (or knew) Donald Trump up close and personal, buit I think she is describing him as if he was normal.

I doubt Donald Trump reads what his psychologist neices writes about him. If he reads this piece here's what I think would bother him the most (in bold)

"I’m sorry Donald, but calling Charles Koch a 'very stupid, awkward, and highly overrated globalist,; is a clear sign to me… You must be getting nervous that Koch has already raised more than $70 million to oppose you in the Republican presidential primary. And there’s more coming," she said. "I can only imagine how off-the-charts your anxiety is especially since you know there is so much more trouble coming your way. Your childish name calling can only take you so far."

Mary Trump added: 

"Even more transparent than your anxiety is your jealousy. Charles Koch is at least 24x richer than you. You really shouldn't let your emotions take over like this Donald. Your pattern of name-calling and grievance is wearing thin and it just makes you look like the weak loser you are.

Koch isestimated to be worth about $60 billion making him the 20th richest person in the world. Forbes estimates Trump's worth as a paulty $2 ½ billion.

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Prolonged stress puts your body in a continuous state readiness for physical action. When your body has no time to re-establish equilibrium, it becomes overworked and your immune system weakens, making you susceptible to sickness. Many essential bodily processes are disrupted and your risk of health problems increases.

Some common physical effects of stress include (reference):

• memory impairment
• depression
• skin conditions, such as eczema
• difficulty sleeping
• obesity
• heart disease
• digestive problems
• autoimmune diseases