A pschoanalyst assesses what's likely happening with Trump as he faces legal consequences

 By Hal Brown

You can read a long excerpt from Justin Frank's book

 (cover above) on Amazon here.

Justin Frank's book cover has a giant Trump head on the traditional Freudian couch. 

I made the illustration below showing that Trump is not "normal" which I meant to convey just how atypical his personality is. This doesn't mean it is impossible to understand how his mind works, what motivates him, and how to best predict his future behavior. It means that this is a very difficult endeavor requiring a particular knowledge base and skill set.

Thanks to Raw Story's Tom Boggioni, who summarized the Chauncey DeVega interview which was published in Salon, (link below) with psychoanalyst Justin Frank, MD (here 'Caged animal' Trump may need a 'secure padded cell' as trial progresses: psychiatrist ) I don't have to do it.

If you don't read the interview at least I think you should consider reading the summary on Raw Story. Still, I think you will find the interview illuminating and I hope you read it.

"He is visualizing burning things and blowing them up": How Trump may be coping with being caught

Justin Frank, author of "Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President," on this week's historic indictments

These are the three quotes Salon emphasized:

One more excerpt:

Predators can massively regress in such circumstances and lose even a modicum of self-control. They lash out and need to be restrained for their safety and that of their caregivers. That's why we have secure padded cells (euphemized as "quiet rooms") inside locked wards in mental hospitals.

These are colloquially often referred to as "rubber rooms". Illustration modified by HB.

I have been writing about how people shouldn't assume that they know with absolute certainty what Trump has been feeling these days as he faces the legal consequences of his actions. (see footnote)

Justin Frank doesn't do this. His comments are replete with modifiers which explain that Trump is most likely experiencing certain emotions and why this is the case with him given his personality type. 

What Frank offers is an exposition of what I was too lazy to even try to write about. Besides, he is a psychoanalyst as opposed to a psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapist which I was for the 40+ years of my career. He simply is far better qualified than I am  to dig this deeply into what those in the mental health field call the psychodynamics of an individual.

Addendum:

Here's a video of a Thom Hartmann interview with Justin Frank:

In this exclusive interview, Thom and Dr. Frank talk about psychosis, whether or not if it is contagious / hereditary, the presidency, plus much much more.

Here's another Thom Hartman interview with Justin Frank.

Dr. Frank has also been on the Lawrence O'Donnell show.

Update: This is gratifying

Footnote (my previous blogs on this subject):

Wash. Post artists take liberties in drawing Trump during his arraignment.

Michael Cohen and others claim to know what's in Trump's headspace. They don't..

Nobody knows for certain how Trump feels except Trump

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Wash. Post artists take liberties in drawing Trump during his arraignment.

 By Hal Brown

The drawing below is what caught my attention in The Washington Post (subscription article) this morning:

Top caption: "Reporters inside the courtroom noted that Trump seemed disengaged with those around him during the arraignment. (Jane Rosenberg/Reuters)" Bottom: two screen grabs from when cameras were allowed in the courtroom. Click image above to enlarge.

In the article there's another sketch by a different artist (click image to enlarge):

Many journalists have speculated on what they thought Trump felt during his arraignment. Of course they don't know. They are basing assumptions based on what a normal person would feel.

Of all the images from the video coverage this is only one shows Trump outwardly expressing what one can reasonably construe as a feeling:

I wrote about how people are making assumptions that they know, or think they know, how Trump is feeling twice in the past few days. 

Nobody knows for certain how Trump feels except Trump

and

Michael Cohen and others claim to know what's in Trump's headspace. They don't.

Today we have non-written speculation in the form of drawings which, unless Trump changed his facial expressions drastically, exaggerate his feelings.

All I am attempting to convey is that those writing about or talking about how Trump feels ought to be more precise in using modifiers like "probably" and "a typical person" since Trump has an unusual personality. He doesn't experience his external world the way the vast majority of people do.

In this way he is more like the most ardent members of his cult who perceive reality in a distorted, sometime even clinically paranoid way.

My own educated guess, as someone who was a psychotherapist for over 40 years, is that Trump is most likely engaging in psychological denial and keeping his anxiety buried (i.e., unconscious), but that for fleeting moments it leaks into awareness. Even if he doesn't actually think about his plight he may not be able to totally control his facial expressions. He's been an actor all of his adult life, a performance artist. He's no Robert DeNiro who is known not only for playing many kinds of characters, from Travis Bickel to Frankenstein's monster, for staying in character even when the cameras aren't rolling.

Trump has played two similar public roles: whatever he was supposed to be on "The Apprentice" and, as a politician, the uber-confident self-aggrandizing macho-man.

I noted in a previous blog that there is something that Trump can't control. These are his dreams. Whether nightmares or anxiety dreams of being helpless and being harmed, these would show what is in his unconscious mind. Unless he sleeps with Melania (debatable) nobody knows if he wakes up screaming in the middle of the night.

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