By Erik Dolson
Fred Trump, father of Donald, has often been blamed for his son’s pathological narcissism. There’s no doubt Fred was vain, cold, and greedy, and possibly bequeathed these qualities to his son.
But there’s a more likely source of Donald’s lack of empathy, inability to go five minutes without ego reinforcement, using of women.
Starting no later than when he was two-years, two-months, and two-weeks old, Donald Trump lost access to his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, for an extended period of time.
Donald was born on June 14, 1946. On August 26, 1948, his brother Robert was born. Robert’s birth resulted in Mary suffering “severe hemorrhaging … an emergency hysterectomy, which led to a serious abdominal infection, which led to more surgeries,” according to Michael Kruse writing in Politico magazine in 2017.
It’s probably safe to assume that Mary was not completely accessible to Donald even before Robert’s birth. Donald was a demanding, difficult child, a handful for a woman in late stages of pregnancy and easy to withdraw from, physically and emotionally, especially when there were servants to pick up at least formal duties.
This is a classic formula for the development of an attachment disorder.
In the first 36 months of life, a baby needs physical and emotional connection to its primary caregiver, usually the mother, to develop into a secure, socially adept human being. There are many elements, but to oversimplify, that connection involves love, laughter, eye contact, empathy, and communication. It requires that baby’s fears are recognized and reassurance is given that baby will be safe from threats, real and imagined.
Without access to the primary caregiver (usually mother, but not necessarily), or if that caregiver is unresponsive, baby does not receive reassurance. Behavior often then escalates as fears with which we were born are unresolved and become firmware of our psychology. As we mature they are reinforced as we interpret our world and memories with confirmation bias.
Defense mechanisms become foundation stones of futile relationships, first as a child and then as an adult still seeking warmth and security while not realizing we bring insecurity in all its forms as self-fulfilling expectations.
Poor attachments create people who are angry, lonely, insecure, constantly demanding validation because they were never enveloped in adequate security as infants, when they needed it the most.
The erratic behavior of Donald Trump is best interpreted as Adult Attachment Disorder, especially recognizing that all anger is based in fear. His tantrums are those of a two-year-old, his posturing a form of make-believe, his absurd over-inflation of hurts and accomplishments a way of expressing only the depth of his felt abandonment.
It’s all an asking for fulfillment.
The psychologist generally credited as the founder of attachment theory, John Bowlby, was asked in 1949 to create a report on the mental health children orphaned in the world wars. Bowlby published his book on the concept in 1951, when Donald was about five years old.
Bowlby’s work was taken up by others, notably by Dr. Mary Ainsworth, who developed “The Strange Situation Test,” with which she identified three primary types of attachment: “secure,” “ambivalent,” and “avoidant.” These categories have since been modified and become more fluid, but the concepts have withstood decades of scrutiny.
By studying how a young child responded to the stress of being put in a strange situation, Dr. Ainsworth could predict a caregiver’s parenting style. It’s been estimated that 40% of the population suffers from some level of attachment disorder, with only 60% capable of “secure attachment.”
That said, Donald’s attachment disorder wasn’t Mary Trump’s “fault,” and even today it’s not Donald’s “fault.” As Bowlby learned studying pathologically anti-social behavior of orphans after the world wars, this is part of our “social biology.”
Many forces can disrupt the parent-child relationship, and these disruptions have been around forever … being eaten by lions, war, starvation, plague, infection …Attachment dynamics fail for many reasons, but for many more, attachment dynamics have helped us to survive as a species.
Another reason Donald’s behavior is not Mary’s fault, despite her own misgivings, is because individual disorders survive individuals. We don’t know much about Mary’s upbringing in Scotland, nor about Donald’s in Queens, New York. There is reason to believe that disorders are often handed down from mother to daughter or mother to son, and then down to the next generation, even in the absence of a recent trauma.
That “primary caregiver” could also be father, grandmother or aunt … but insecurities learned in the first three years of life persevere, if not epigenetically then in deeply buried memories inaccessible to us beyond an emotional response to others when we attempt to get close.
Much has been written about “toxic masculinity.” Donald Trump has been held up as an exemplar of that syndrome. But it’s also possible that his behavior is not an inheritance from his father, but the result of his mother’s inability to be present when needed.
That a significant percentage of America identifies with him indicates that we are sliding as a society toward a pervasive sense of entitlement, hurt, and pain-filled outrage, with a lack of empathy in a distorted reality. Many of these flaws were once controlled by a spiritual awareness, at least a humility, we seem to have lost,
Which causes an Old white Liberal to wonder what impact on babies there might be in moving mothers out of the home and into the workplace; if the buying and selling of fathers and mothers in slavery led to even recent destruction of families within Black communities; if preoccupation with cell phones or drugs or video games might not lead to an epidemic of attachment disorders that threatens all civilization.
The negation that men and women have different interests and thought processes leads to a breakdown in the social fabric. There are positive social results from pairing of the two brains in solving problems. I suspect humans need both a mother and father to socialize them from birth. Not at all clear that equality of sexes in all matters makes any sense and trying to create that is a huge mistake. Obviously women can do most "men's jobs" allowing for physical abilities, but mentally?
Some of these issues now arrive in the trans arena where trying to turn a man into a woman or the reverse hasn't helped much. While I have no doubt the XX and XY types might believe themselves to be other than their genes require, I'm not sure their brains are capable of that. Not sure that men and women are interchangeable and the trans issue is an extension of trying to make it true.
On Trump, I have no doubt of deep flaws. I suppose that most who aspire to become a President might also have personal baggage. In a way I'm somewhat tired of nearly every politician or aspiring politician having a duplicitous character. Maybe it's the cynicism of old age.
Regarding the damage in children of parents being sold that might persist over a generation or two but wouldn't it tend toward the mean over time as nominal socialization continues? I'm reminded of Black Wall Street in Tulsa. Within that community people were prospering. Young boys weren't wild. Tragic that progress was set back by fools but by MLK's time we were beginning to recover in efforts to equality. How we arrive with too many poor stuck in cities largely dependent on government with a excess of single parent households shows a social policy failure that we write books about with little improvement. We lose many talents in the process.