SOCIOPATHY: She was frog-marched into the countryside!

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2025

No one could call her a slouch: Conceptually, physical illness is easy. By way of contrast, so-called mental illness ("mental disorder") is relatively hard.

Also this:

As we noted a few weeks back, there seem to be hundreds of (clinical) "mental disorders" within the current medical playbook. This week, we chose to feature "sociopathy" for a particular reason.

Long ago, and far away, we learned to pity the child. In her best-selling book about Donald J. Trump, Mary Trump—the president's niece—focused on "sociopathy" at one critical point.

Mary Trump is a clinical psychologist. That doesn't mean that her assessment are necessarily accurate.

That said, she's been observing the family in question ever since she herself was a child. As we've often noted, this is what she said at one point in her best-selling book about the sitting president:

MARY TRUMP (pages 12-13): None of the Trump siblings emerged unscathed from my grandfather's sociopathy and my grandmother's illnesses, both physical and psychological, but my uncle Donald and my father, Freddy, suffered more than the rest. In order to get a complete picture of Donald, his psychopathologies, and the meaning of his dysfunctional behavior, we need a thorough family history.

In the last three years, I’ve watched as countless pundits, armchair psychologists and journalists have kept missing the mark, using phrases such as "malignant narcissism" and "narcissistic personality disorder" in an attempt to make sense of Donald’s often bizarre and self-defeating behavior. I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist—he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—but the label only gets us so far.

[...]

[Clinical] experiences showed me time and again that diagnosis doesn't exist in a vacuum. Does Donald have other symptoms we aren't aware of? Are there other disorders that might have as much or more explanatory power? Maybe. A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe forms is generally considered sociopathy but can also refer to chronic criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others.

The book in question bears this somewhat murky title:

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

The title is explained in the book. The book was published in July 2020.

In her detailed, best-selling book, Mary Trump describes her grandfather, Fred Trump, as "a high-functioning sociopath." At substantial length, she describes the challenges which are typically faced—and the price which can routinely be paid—by the children of sociopaths.

Is it true that Fred Trump was a sociopath? We can't tell you that! But Mary Trump says that her uncle, Donald Trump, might also meets the criteria for the clinical diagnosis which relates to that colloquial term. Also this:

At substantial length, she does explain, in many ways, why we might decide to "pity the child." She doesn't make that specific recommendation herself, but the basis for pity is found all through her book.

In which we can pity the child—pity the five different children—who had to grow up, or who failed to grow up, in the home of Fred Trump and his medically disabled wife.

We would suggest that you "pity the child" who grows up as the child of a sociopath. We suggest you recall what the leading authority on that clinical disorder says about such children:

Antisocial personality disorder 

Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) is a personality disorder defined by a chronic pattern of behavior that disregards the rights and well-being of others. People with ASPD often exhibit behavior that conflicts with social norms, leading to issues with interpersonal relationships, employment, and legal matters. The condition generally manifests in childhood or early adolescence, with a high rate of associated conduct problems and a tendency for symptoms to peak in late adolescence and early adulthood.

The prognosis for ASPD is complex, with high variability in outcomes. Individuals with severe ASPD symptoms may have difficulty forming stable relationships, maintaining employment, and avoiding criminal behavior...Children raised by parents with ASPD may be at greater risk of delinquency and mental health issues themselves.

[...]

Causes

Personality disorders are generally believed to be caused by a combination and interaction of genetics and environmental influences. People with an antisocial or alcoholic parent are considered to be at higher risk of developing ASPD. 

We've long advised you to pity the child. It's also true that adults afflicted in such ways should have their ability to do harm removed from them where possible.

Was Fred Trump a "sociopath?" How about his son? Is it true that there can be a genetic component to such clinical "disorders?" Can the syndrome in question be inherited?

We can't answer questions like those. Questions like those are not discussed within polite journalistic circles. For better or worse, it's also true that prevailing rules of the game have decreed that such questions have gone unasked in the case of the sitting president, and with respect to some other unusual people around him.

Under prevailing rules of the game, questions like those can't be asked. Fairly obvious possibilities can't be reported or discussed.

This is part of the cultural background within which we the people have managed to drift to our current situation. In the case of Mary Trump, she became a familiar figure on cable news programs after her major best-seller appeared, but she was treated as a standard political pundit. She was almost never asked to discuss the psychological ruminations which occupy the first fifty pages of her high-profile book.

Our public discourse is extremely primitive. Despite the torrents of praise we're inclined to heap on ourselves, we humans aren't "the rational animal" and we never have been.

Within the journalistic tradition, issues of "mental illness" are routinely reported and discussed with respect to a wide array of "street crimes" and associated behaviors. For better or worse, such issues are never reported or discussed with respect to major political figures.

According to the largest study of which we're aware, something like six percent of adult men can be diagnosed with ASPD. But, again for better or worse, we're not allowed to wonder about the way this clinical "disorder" might be affecting the way our national politics works.

All the way back in 2017, one person stepped forward to confront these issues. No one could possibly call her a slouch. The leading authority on this person offers this highly impressive thumbnail:

Bandy X. Lee

Bandy Xenobia Lee is an American psychiatrist whose scholarly work includes the writing of a comprehensive textbook on violence. She is a specialist in public health approaches to violence prevention who consulted with the World Health Organization and initiated reforms at New York's Rikers Island Correctional Facility. She helped draft the United Nations chapter on "Violence Against Children," leads a project group for the World Health Organization's Violence Prevention Alliance, and has contributed to prison reform in the United States and around the world. She taught at Yale School of Medicine and Yale Law School from 2003 through 2020.

[...]

Early life and education

Bandy Lee was born and raised in the Bronx, New York. She is of Korean descent. As a teenager, Lee volunteered in Harlem as a tutor for homeless African-American children. Her grandfather was Geun-Young Lee, a physician who treated patients in need of care after the Korean War, who Lee says inspired her with a belief that practicing medicine also involves social responsibility.

Lee received her M.D. from the Yale University School of Medicine in 1994 and a Master of Divinity (M.Div.) from Yale Divinity School in 1995. Lee completed her medical internship at the Bellevue Hospital Center in New York. During her medical residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Lee was designated as the chief resident. She was then a research fellow at Harvard Medical School. Upon completion, she was offered a faculty position at Harvard University but turned it down to return to Yale.

Career

Lee studied the anthropology of violence in East Africa as a fellow of the National Institute of Mental Health and co-authored academic papers on Côte d'Ivoire, Tanzania, and Rwanda. She is a specialist in violence prevention programs in prisons and in the community and worked for several years in maximum security prisons in the United States where she was instrumental in initiating reforms at New York's Rikers Island jail complex. She has consulted with five different U.S. states on prison reform.

Lee was director of research for the Center for the Study of Violence and, with Kaveh Khoshnood, founded Yale University's Violence and Health Study Group. She heads a project group of the Violence Prevention Alliance for the World Health Organization that contributes to increasing the evidence base on interventions that work to prevent interpersonal violence in low- and middle-income countries. She helped draft United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan's chapter on "Violence Against Children" and is the author of the textbook, Violence: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Causes, Consequences, and Cures.

That's what the leading authority says. We can't vouch for the perfect accuracy of every word. 

That said, no one could call this person a slouch. But back in 2017, she tried to create a discussion of certain issues concerning Fred Trump's child back. For doing so, she was eventually frog-marched into the countryside, never to be heard from again.

Will someone "be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence?" Everything is possible! For today, we offer this as a portrait of the current state of the American discourse. 

Despite the comical volumes of praise we heap on ourselves, we humans have a long way to go. That includes the widely praised academic and journalistic elites who can't find a way to discuss such topics right here in our own self-impressed Blue America.

We advise you to pity the child—to pity the children—who grew up in the home of Fred Trump. (In part, we offer that advice because it would have been the more politically savvy way to go.)

Today, one of those children has surrounded himself with a remarkable array of top aides who also grew up in highly unusual circumstances. (Did your grandmother ever decide to set her sleeping husband on fire?) 

That group has sometimes been described as "a playroom of broken toys." Our major news orgs have gone to heroic lengths to disappear various aspects of their highly unusual childhoods, along with remarkable aspects of their highly disordered adult lives.

Dr. Lee could have been a contender! She might have helped us understand the forces which are brought to bear on the children who grow up in highly unusual homes. 

Instead, she was frog-marched away. Discussions like that aren't allowed!

We leave you today with one last question:

Is a form of "mental disorder" involved in academic and journalistic conduct of that type? How far does a (colloquial) disorder extend within our underfed discourse?

He could be a "sociopath," his own niece flatly said. In many appearances on cable news shows, nobody asked her about that!