Donald J. Trump is easily disliked, frequently feared, or begrudgingly respected by political opponents. He is difficult to love, and frequently misunderstood. President Trump is maligned and devalued by many Americans. The anti-Trump phenomenon and Trump derangement syndrome is notable among many psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychologists, and other mental health professionals. Many of them have written extensively about Trump’s personality and psychology. Few of these writings have been objective or even neutral toward Trump or his policies.

During my career of over fifty years in medicine, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis I have observed that we psychiatrists and certainly psychoanalyst psychiatrists value words, “mentalizing” with words, and complex verbal interaction, insight, and emotional catharsis in the psychoanalytic process and conversation. This is of course a natural result of our training and experience. In fact, all psychoanalysts are required to complete a successful personal analysis. Implied in this requirement is that our neurotic symptoms and neurotic character patterns must be sufficiently resolved so that we are not impeded in our work with our patients and analysands.

However, many effective, “normal” persons do not make use of psychotherapy methods or experiences in resolving their conflicts or maturing in their life, vocation, or relationships. Doing psychodrama therapy and supervising dance, music, and art therapists taught me more about action therapies, cognitive behavior therapy applications, and other approaches to conflict resolution and maturation.

Many successful people learn and grow through action, learning from failure, and resilient trial and error. Donald Trump is such a person. He has navigated the rough and tumble failures and successes of the world of New York and other real estate dealings, “reality TV” land success, the swirling legal peregrinations of casino ownership, and the politics of The Art of The Deal.

Donald Trump’s road in life bears little resemblance to many successful analysands and psychoanalysts. Trump is a man of action! Words for Trump are actions because when he uses them, he means what he says and promises. He acts to keep his political promises and does not merely make speeches.

I think many psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychoanalysts would feel bowled-over and intimidated at a non-doctor patient interview with the aggressive, intuitive, and paradoxically charming Donald Trump. In fact, many psychiatrists seem to quickly mislabel Trump’s actions and words as impulsive, impulse-ridden, delusional, lying, irrational, even dangerous. Psychotherapist psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychoanalysts prefer their patients to use words to mentalize and reflect on a path to insight as a means to resolve conflict and mature as persons in psychotherapy. Trump uses words as actions and acts politically to back up and implement his words in executive action. His empathy and compassion are found in his relentless words of persuasion, provocation, and evocation of action in the form of legislation he can sign into law or as presidential orders.

In his Tweets, Trump often free-associates with the citizenry rather than communicating political focus-group-tested policy statements. It would be valuable if Trump’s Tweets were carefully color coded as to whether they reflect his formal policy statements, his political opinion, or his candid and dramatically expressed feelings about political issues or opponents.

Image: Executive Office of the President