Leigh Silverton on Substack: “Leigh Silverton on Substack What’s wrong with Donald Trump. Just a brief note to talk about a subject I’ve avoided because of the Goldwater rule — The psychopathology of The Donald. After having heard people repeatedly refer to him as a narcissist, I decided to give my diagnos…”

Leigh Silverton on Substack

What’s wrong with Donald Trump.

Just a brief note to talk about a subject I’ve avoided because of the Goldwater rule — The psychopathology of The Donald. After having heard people repeatedly refer to him as a narcissist, I decided to give my diagnosis impressions:

To call Donald a narcissist is missing the point. Donald is more primitive. In general, I think diagnosticians tend to miss certain primitive aspects of his personality that explain his pan-symptomatic picture, deep dependency on others in the way we need oxygen, thought disorder and cognitive slippage.

I see Donald as a mixed personality disorder with antisocial, narcissistic, and borderline features. The borderline features are what seems most often missed.

The mixed personality diagnostic impression means a number of things: First, Donald is untreatable. Besides the obvious psychopathy (antisocial acts) and combination of low self esteem and arrogance (narcissism) Trump shows borderline features and the psychotic core that are its hallmark.

More specifically, he has pan-symptomatic features such as hypochondriasis, phobias, splitting, projective identification, sado-masochism, cognitive slippage and other features that rarely co-occur. None of them contain anxiety. He’s constantly vulnerable.

Trumps’ internal life feels empty — he barely has an emotional life. He enacts any anxiety by attacking others. He is predatory and views the world as a predatory place. He needs the adoration of others like other’s need oxygen. Worse still, he employs the defense of projective identification. Rather than “project,” which is a primitive defense, Donald projects “into.” “Projecting into” is a way people at a low level of development operate and its one of the most primitive defenses there it. It means, essentially, giving other people your feelings. Donald feels humiliated most of the time and as though he himself is being attacked. This is why he finds paranoid objects and people to humiliate.

Having given over 1000 IQ tests over the decades, I should say that there appears to be an IQ issue. Based on his vocabulary, speech, and viewing his deposition readings, I would say his IQ is probably in the mid 90s to low 100s. Worse, severe psychopathology such as he has leads to a disruption in intelligence so that even with an IQ that’s lower than we might expect in a president, his intellect is uneven.

The Donald would not be competent to be president based on this fact alone. Having watched him read at a deposition, Donald also seems to have a learning disability. Finally, as has become obvious, he seems to be decompensating which could mean a dementing process.

Trump is not only incapable of empathy, he’s downright sadistic and without conscience.

Given this unfortunate combination of features and limitations, not only is he incompetent, in my view he could easily wage war against the American people at which he’s been hinting. He’s also vulnerable to any brighter person that could help him enact his contract on his enemies, attempt to dominate our country and even enact unconstitutional laws to attack our citizens and appropriate their resources as Hitler did in World War II.

I already have battle fatigue from January 6th. I have a place in Mexico just in case I need to get my Jew ass out of the States. And the deepest lady in the harbor will sigh.

Here there is no why.

cc Leigh Silverton, November 2, 2024