Underestimating Trump

One peril we face in trying to understand Trump is underestimating him. There is a delicious moment of television during the primary season when Representative Keith Ellison, Democrat from Minnesota, warned that Trump might become president and the New York Times reporter, Maggie Hagerman, led out a “vigorous belly laugh.” After Trump’s election some of my liberal friends were convinced that the Republicans were preparing to impeach him to make way for Vice President Mike Pence, who while very conservative, is temperamentally fit to be president. In the same vein, many critics announced that Trump had a narcissistic personality disorder, a diagnosis rendered as part of the argument that he was simply unfit to be president. Let me make clear that I oppose the politics of the Trump administration and the Republican congress. The purpose of this post is not to assess his policies, but rather to consider the man in the round, to grasp his talents as well as his limitations, and to assess the conditions under which he might succeed or fail on his own terms. As the great Chinese military master Sun Tzu said, “If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.”

The limits of narcissism as an explanation

Take for example the issue of narcissism. Steve Jobs was a famous narcissist. He bullied people, denied the paternity of his child, cried when his initiatives were blocked, attacked people personally when he felt their work was inadequate, violated antitrust laws by threatening competitors who were hiring Apple employees, and parked in handicapped spaces. Yet we admire him because we know that he brought his rage, ambition and single-mindedness under the control of his impulse to design beautiful, useful and novel tools. Looking beyond his psychology, we see how he was shaped by a wider context; in particular, the entrepreneurial setting of Silicon Valley, the role of the hobbyist culture in developing the personal computer, and the aftershocks of the counterculture. This matrix, shaped by his talent, his setting and his psychology gave rise to what he can call his character. Character as a concept offers up a way of understanding a person in the round. A psychological diagnosis by contrast is one-dimensional.

Consider as well the case of Jimmy Hoffa, the leader of the Teamsters (truck-drivers) union, who built it into an economic powerhouse from the 1930s through the 1950s. In a masterful study of character, Abraham Zaleznik highlights his political and organizing genius, as well as the primitive layers of his character. He built the union’s power by identifying the weak points in interstate trucking routes, where a strike at one warehouse could cripple truck traffic between major metropolitan areas. He played off one employer group against another and kept his “file cabinet of data and information all in his head.” His union members loved him. He was schooled by a Marxist and believed that capitalism was doomed. Growing up in the depression, in the home of his single mother, he had a deep sense of injustice. As a young labor organizer he fought physically with anti-labor cops and scabs and valued his toughness. He “had flashes of uncontrollable rage, and although he learned to keep his feelings under control in public, he occasionally resorted to bare fists when aroused. Flaring up viciously at his associates, he undermined the self-respect of those he admired most.” He was close to his children and family and flew home on weekends to be with them. His daughter reported, “He never spanked us.” As Zaleznik makes clear, we would so impoverish our understanding of Hoffa if we reduced him to a psychological diagnosis, for example highlighting his rage and antagonism as expressions of narcissism. Instead, we should see his character in the round; in its roots in the Great Depression, his sense of injustice, his Marxism, in close ties to his struggling mother, his genius for organizing, his physical courage, as well as his primitivity.

Trump’s Dark View

One question this raises is what talents and dispositions does Trump bring to the present moment in American politics. One feature of his success, I suggest, is his dark worldview and its resonance with the experience of many voters. My readers will recall his inaugural address in which he noted that, “Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”

The reference to “carnage” was a striking metaphor, evoking as it did slaughter and bloodbaths. The address echoed his earlier acceptance speech at the Republican nominating convention in which he referenced the “chaos in our communities.” Critics pointed out that these terms were gross exaggerations. But their emotional overtones resonated with precisely those residents in older urban and rural communities where joblessness and drug use are undermining families and communities. One result is “cultural carnage” as men in such settings lose the material basis for their roles as providers and fathers, the hallmarks of their masculinity. This is why they and their wives were sensitized to the discourse of political correctness (PC), which, by attacking “male privilege,” only fanned the flames. This is also why Trump could profit by attacking PC, and why Clinton failed to win the “white woman” vote. They were protecting their men.

It may seem strange that Trump, born into privilege, should win the affections of working class people in decaying industrial towns. But one of Trump’s great strengths is his concreteness. He has led his life in the world of buildings and construction and had an early education in manual labor as an apprentice in his father’s real estate business. Describing his early education in construction, one author notes,  “He ran errands. He collected coins from laundry rooms. He hosed down dust at the Trump Village construction site.” Working in a machine shop he reported, “I loved it, working with my hands, and I saw a different world, the world of the guys who clean and fix things.” (loc 4082)*

Attending a military academy as a teenager he was schooled in a culture of physical discipline and toughness where, “Physical brutality and verbal abuse were tolerated, even encouraged.” His mentor, the academy’s athletic director, would set up a boxing ring two afternoons a week forcing cadets with poor grades or disciplinary problems to fight each other, “whether they wanted to or not.” (loc 724) His frugal father, who was at once his protector and mentor, put great store in the value of supplies and tools, picking up unused nails off the floor and returning them to his carpenters at building sites. From one point of view Trump’s buildings and signs are garish shaped by, “surface decoration, clumsy massing and opulence.” But they also reflect a life lived in a material world where ideas, abstractions and nuance lack salience.

In addition, Trump comes to his dark worldview honestly. It is not a conceit or a public relations stance. This is why he can represent it emotionally. Despite his privileged background, he is after all the son of an enormously successful real estate entrepreneur; he sees the world starkly, as a battle for status and as a setting where defeat is always around the corner. An oft-reported vignette is revealing here. Talking to a New York Times reporter in 1980, when he was 24 years old, he described an experience he had upon attending the opening of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in New York city. “The rain was coming down for hours … In a corner just standing there in the rain, is this man, this 85-year-old engineer who came from Sweden and designed this bridge, who poured his heart into it, and nobody even mentioned his name. I realized then and there, that if you let people treat you how they want, you’ll be made a fool. I realized then and there something I would never forget. I don’t want to be made anybody’s sucker.” 

The life and death of his older brother, Fred Jr., was also telling in this regard. The presumed heir apparent of their fathers business, Fred Jr. lacked the interest and temperament for the construction business. He was a gentle and good humored and loved flying, but died of alcoholism in his parents’ home some years after separating from his wife. Reflecting on his brother’s presumed failings, two months after his death, Trump said that he had learned, “to keep my guard up one hundred percent. Man is the most vicious of all animals, and life is a series of battles ending in victory or defeat. You just can’t let people make a sucker out of you.” (loc 1646)

The term “sucker” is revealing. It is closely connected to the idea of humiliation. Humiliation is different than shame. The latter is an internal experience. We are ashamed in front of ourselves when we fail to live to up to our own ideals. But humiliation is public, in which for example, a man who has a reputation for public probity is revealed to have stolen money from the company treasury, or hired escorts. A person has some control over how he regulates his internal experience of shame, for example, by rationalizing his conduct-- “my unhappy marriage drove me to use drugs,”--but little to no control over his public humiliation. Trump’s foolish obsession with the number of people who attended his inauguration, an obsession that undermined his gravitas, was not in this sense based on a thin skin, or low self-esteem. As befits a good narcissist he has high self-esteem. Rather, it reflects his attunement to the prospect of humiliation.

Trump’s restlessness

The prospect of defeat and humiliation accounts I think, for Trump’s strong work ethic and indeed his restlessness. To build his brand as a business tool he encouraged the press and newsmakers to think of him as a playboy if not a sybarite. But this is far from the truth. Ned Eichler, who helped the Penn Central Railroad divest its real estate in Manhattan, saw the younger Trump as a man “more focused and more competitive than anyone he had ever seen. ‘He’d be in a meeting, performing and carrying on, and then some guy would ask him a technical question and he’d be on it like a tiger… The only topic of conversation, all day long and during dinner as well, was business. You didn’t talk about any of the ordinary things, like movies or books. With Donald, there was no small talk.’” (loc 4500) Peter Osnos who edited Trump’s book, The Art of the Deal, for Random House Publishing, noted that, “Trump had this urge to be a really big name, so he cultivated celebrity. But his lifestyle was surprisingly unglamorous. He’s quite disciplined in some ways. Doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, lives above the store. He was not a big New York socialite, never was. He basically enjoyed going upstairs and watching the tube.” (loc 1734)

As two authors write, “For all of Trump’s salacious chatter on the radio and carefully staged appearances with models and other beautiful women, those who spent lots of time with him through the 1990s described not as an overheated Casanova, but rather a workaholic and something of a homebody, a savvy business operator who was keenly aware of the value of being perceived as a player. Goldberg, the attorney who was often by Trump’s side during those years, said many of his client’s much-ballyhooed associations with famous women and top models were mere moments, staged for the cameras. ‘Give him a Hershey bar and let him watch television.’” (loc 2914)

His relationship to women

Indeed, his relationship to women is more complex than his occasional predatory behavior or his playboy image would suggest. (Though it should be noted that, as happens to many powerful men, women have sent him solicitation letters.) He has mentored women and given them great responsibility in his business. His first wife Ivana, was his business partner. He gave her the role of CEO of the Trump Castle and casino in Atlantic City and put her in charge of doing the interiors for the Commodore Hotel. “Demanding, insistent, hoarse-voiced from screaming so often and so loudly, Ivana worked eighteen-hour days for months on end to be sure that the new hotel would radiate glitz and glamour in every detail.” As she told a reporter in 1988, ‘Donald calls me his twin as a woman.’” (loc 5244)

As her quote suggests, Trump may in fact be most comfortable with women who are masculinized. This may be due in part to his wariness of women’s sexuality. As he told a reporter, “Women have one of the great acts of all time. The smart ones act very feminine and needy, but inside they are real killers. . I have seen women manipulate men with just a twitch of their eye—or perhaps another body part. . . . There’s nothing I love more than women, but they’re really a lot different than portrayed. They are far worse than men, far more aggressive, and boy, can they be smart. Let’s give credit where credit is due, and let’s salute women for their tremendous power, which most men are afraid to admit they have.” (loc 2687)

A psychoanalytic perspective

A psychoanalytic perspective may illuminate this constellation of character traits; his dark view, his restlessness and his suspicion of femininity. It is common conception in psychoanalysis that a worldview is partly a projection of our inner world. This is the world shaped by our fantasies and images, mostly unconscious, of the primary figures in our lives; the figures of “mother,” “father,” “man,” “women,” “rivals and friends,” the “dominant and the submissive”, and the “sexualized and the neutered.” We can see this internal world externalized in our myths, fairy tales, films, and literature. This is why these art forms are compelling and their familiar themes so timeless. For example, the popularity of the Batman movie, “The Dark Knight,” is a projection of a fantasy of inner chaos that anyone who has experienced some damage or disappointment in an early relationship to a mother, father or sibling, can identify with.

We can only speculate about the specific contents of Trump’s inner life. Perhaps his fear of women and their femininity reflects some early and primary disturbance in relationship to his mother. From a psychoanalytic point of view such an early experience certainly marks a man. Indeed, a reading of his biographies suggests to me that he had a good relationship with his father, who though a sometimes a harsh disciplinarian -- after all, he exiled Donald to a military academy when he was thirteen -- was also a mentor and life-long supporter.

But whatever the contents of his inner life, he responded adaptively to inner chaos by becoming a restless builder and business developer. This is one reason why he did not simply take over his father’s business, an easy step for a less ambitious son. Instead, he decided to take the risk of constructing luxury buildings in Manhattan, rather than build middle class apartments as his father had in Queens, an outer borough of the city. In this sense he has externalized his conflicts and channeled them constructively, at least in term of his wider culture’s scale of values.

This is altogether common. For example, there are any number of successful Wall Street traders who pore their genius and emotional life into trading as a way of staving off a lack of meaning. But the emotional basis for meaning is in the loving relationships we develop, if not at first with the members of our family of origin, then with the primary figures in our adult lives. Building the latter relationships takes psychological work.  Many successful and ambitious people put it off by externalizing it through culturally sanctioned activities like trading, commerce, lawyering, or even scientific research. Such people, particularly men, may face a life-crisis only later in their lives when they consider retiring, or when they lose their edge.

Trump as Trickster

One of the more peculiar features of Trump’s primary campaign was the ease with which he insulted his opponents, calling Marco Rubio, “Little Marco,” Ted Cruise, “Lying Ted,” (with the added phrase-“nobody likes him”), and Jeb Bush, “low energy.” In describing Carly Fiorina he said, “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?” Doubly puzzling was the fact that many voters found these insults funny. After all, in earlier presidential primaries and elections small slipups derailed campaigns; for example, when President Gerald Ford, running in the Republican primary for a second term, was labeled a “klutz” after slipping on the stairs of Air Force One. 

One hypothesis is that Trump posed as the great disruptor. Carl Jung proposed that cultures throughout the world shape their mythology by evoking archetypal figures such as the “hero,” the “wise man” or the “explorer.” One such archetype is the “trickster” who “disobeys rules, ignores what is normal or expected and often encourages chaos. He openly questions and mocks convention, and encourages other characters to follow their impulses, to do what is fun or what feels good rather than what is right.”

The biblical patriarch Jacob is certainly a trickster. He tricked his brother into giving up his birthright “for a mess of pottage” (bowl of soup), his father into giving him a deathbed blessing due his older brother, only to be later tricked by his uncle Laban, who gave him the matriarch Leah rather than Rachel, the woman he really loved, after seven years of servitude.

In modern culture, the “Joker,” in the Batman movie “Dark Knight” is a destructive trickster. He lives for chaos, though he retains features of a clown, for example his makeup, his grin, “the upward swoop” of his shoes at the toe, and indeed his name. Bart Simpson, a cartoon character in a long-running television franchise, is a more benign trickster. In the “The Telltale Head,” an episode of the first season, Bart joins a group of juvenile delinquents who shoplift at the “kwik-e-mart” and throw rocks at the statue of “Jebediah Springfield,” a revered town founder. Later, Bart cuts off the head of the statue to impress his delinquent friends. The episode’s title is actually a takeoff on Edgar Alan Poe’s story, A Tell Tale Heart, about a murder. Turning a murder story into a clownish tale is itself an act of trickery, disguising murder as the decapitation of a statute. As Freud said, a tendentious joke is a rebellion against authority; its hostile intent masked by the discharge of pleasure we feel upon laughing at it.

If this line of reasoning is correct, Trump’s mix of hostility and humor resonated because he took up a culturally embedded and readily understood role --the trickster -- as a way of promising that, unbound by convention –after all, he almost always spoke of the cuff -- he would upon his election overturn traditional policies and practices, risking chaos in the process. This is also why he has questioned shibboleths about trade, treaties, nuclear weapons, our relationship with Russia and the two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

One can see why his promise of disruption resonated. After all, Trump’s populism meant that he was borrowing tropes from the left as well as the right. What did the left’s conception of the “neo-liberal order” mean if not that elites had such a lock on resources and opportunities that “left behind” communities, whether in the inner cities or in old industrial towns were on their own to choose their favored route to social decay? What did it mean if not that global commerce favored world cities such as New York, London, and Paris, which by rapidly becoming playgrounds for the rich, made even middle class living standards unsustainable? What did it mean if not that student debt now exceeds credit card debt hobbling young people, starting out on their careers, for many decades to come? How could there be any change without significant disruption? The elites, as Trump implied in his inaugural address, were corrupt. Trump as a symbol of disruption, compared with Clinton as a symbol of continuity and corruption, sealed his victory and her defeat.

Commerce as War

Trump’s preparation for the trickster role was conditioned by his belief and experience that commerce itself is a form of war, which after all abides by few conventions and privileges disruption, surprise and deceit. Indeed it is said that in war, “the first casualty is truth.” In an oft-told tale, Trump was eager to attract Harrah Hotel executives as investors in a hotel he wanted to build in Atlantic City. He owned the site but had limited financing for construction. “To impress the Harrah officials, Trump told a crew to dig up dirt and push the piles around the two-acre lot..to make it look like the most active construction site in the history of the world..  Three weeks later, Harrah’s agreed to invest $50 million up front.” (loc 2222)

My own view is that this conception of commerce as war was realistic, or at least socially acceptable within his milieu. Consider for example the case of the lawyer Roy Cohn. Some writers have made much of the fact that Trump seemed close to him or at least used him as counsel. After all, as one journalist writes, “In the Sixties, Cohn was indicted four times (the first case ended in a mistrial) and always acquitted. He has suffered several judicial reprimands for unethical conduct, had his wrists slapped in civil cases, and been ordered to make restitution. In the Seventies, he has been indicted for violating Illinois banking laws; the Internal Revenue Service has audited his income tax returns for the last nineteen years and seized some of his assets. He has been the target of criticism and innuendo about his ethics, his finances, his personal life.”

Yet at the peak of his career his clients included, “Newhouse newspapers and Conde Nast magazines; the Catholic Archdiocese of New York; the Ford Model Agency; Studio 54; Potamkin Cadillac, Baron di Portanova; the biggest names in New York real estate, including Lefrak, Helmsley, Trump; Louis Wolfson, owner of Affirmed; Warren Avis, as in rent a car; Peter Widener and his sister Tootie, a Main Line Pennsylvania family with coal, rail, and racetrack interests; Jerry Finkelstein, a New York businessman; John Schlesinger, a British investor in South Africa; Carmine "Lilo" Galante, the reputed boss of bosses; "Fat Tony" Salerno; Nicholas "Cockeyed Nick" Rattenni; Thomas and Joseph Gambino, sons of the late Carlo; and a string of hoods; Nathan's Famous; Luca Buccellati, the jeweler; Congressman Mario Biaggi; Mrs. Charles Allen Jr., wife of the chairman of Allen & Company, He has counseled his friend George Steinbrenner, owner of the Yankees. As a favor to his friend Halston, Roy advised Bianca how to handle Mick.”

As another journalist wrote after Cohn’s death, “Large slices of the upper crust of New York and Washington snuggled up to him, laughed and entertained one another with stories about his crimes as though they were choice insiders' jokes, and wrestled for the privilege of partying with Cohn and his crooked and perverse friends.”

The puzzling question is why Cohn should have such social standing. One hypothesis is that many people of wealth and privilege, particularly if their status is not secured, such as first generation entrepreneurs, believe that competitors, ex-spouses, new spouses (who sign prenuptials), tax authorities, politicians on the take, gangsters, banks that hold their debts, recreational drug dealers, and fair-weather friends are out to bankrupt them. Cohn in this sense was their pit-bull, whose dirty tactics and litigiousness, made it costly for his clients’ enemies to go after them. I suggest that this social milieu, where the struggle for money and status is never ending, shaped Trump’s conception of commerce as war by other means.

The Apprentice

There is a striking dialogue in Trump’s TV show, The Apprentice, about the relationship between truth telling, winning and what it takes to compete in his milieu. Recall that The Apprentice was a show in which contestants formed teams and competed to complete real tasks like creating and promoting a workout class for a gym, or designing a promotional character for a new brand of ice cream. Many of the tasks were trivial but the team dynamics were serious. Trump and his staff judged how project managers responsible for a particular task took up their roles and how team members collaborated to accomplish the tasks. In the end the “best performer” won a job in Trump’s organization.

My readers familiar with group dynamics will readily recognize the tension in the show’s design. To win, contestants had to stand out, to excel. But should they fail to collaborate with others, and subordinate appropriately to the project manager, they would lose. Similarly, project managers had to take up a leadership role. But should they fail to mobilize their team members’ best efforts, for example by being authoritarian, they would lose. In the “boardroom” scenes Trump and his advisors would interrogate team members about their process and performance. Taking counsel, Trump would decide which team members to “fire” based both on their task performance and the way in which they took up their roles in the boardroom itself.

At one board meeting Trump is querying a project manager, Ted, who apparently okayed a decision to give out gift bags with nothing in them. A woman named Summer is on his team.

Trump: You know Ted these people are laughing at you. I am starting to laugh at you.

Summer: (Interrupting). I am sorry, you know. Let me,.. I must say something really quick.

Trump: Why should your interrupt me, when I am knocking the hell out of him?

Summer—ah…

Trump: By interrupting me when I am knocking him, what are you doing to yourself?

Summer: Because I am being truthful and will always be truthful.

Trump: How stupid is that? Right?

Summer: It is not stupid.

(A teammate, whispering, counsels Summer to say, “Sorry.”)

Trump. I am getting ready to almost fire him for being a horrible leader and you interrupt me?

Summer: If I stay, I want to stay on the truth..

Trump: (To Summer) And you had no great strengths yourself. You did a lousy job, here I am getting ready to practically fire this guy and you keep interrupting me and stopping me from doing it, and in the end what Carolyn (Trump’s advisor) said is true.

Summer: I want him to be fired with the truth ..

Trump: She (Carolyn) said what have you done, and you couldn’t answer it. You know what Summer, you’re fired.

Summer: Okay

Trump Go, thank you (to whole team)

Trump: (to Ted): You did not make it by much, I want to tell you. You know she saved your ass with her own stupidity. She saved your ass. 

This is a harsh interchange, underlining the entertainment value of the show. But Summer’s “stupidity” is salient on the scale of values that Trump abides by; whether or not participants on the show are tough enough and competitive enough to survive in his world of commerce. In a telling moment in another episode, Felicia, the project manager and Ala are at loggerheads, with Ala “browbeating” Felicia, (Trump’s term), for her poor leadership. At the end of their argument we have the following dialogue.

Trump: Felicia do you really believe you are tough enough to work in New York?

Felicia: Absolutely I do.

Trump: By the way Ala, I have no doubt about it. You are tough enough. But Felicia you are not strong enough to be here. You’re just not strong enough. You’re lovely, you’re smart, you have so many things going, but you’re not strong enough for this city. Felicia, you're fired.

From Campaigning to Governing

There can be little doubt that Trump was a brilliant campaigner, upending many traditions and practices, while melding his spontaneity, skills in self-promotion, and his capacity for publicity, to what turned out to be a very sophisticated polling and outreach operation. He currently dominates the news. But it is very reasonable to ask if he has the capacity to govern, or at least the ability to learn how. In some degree, people asked the same question about Barack Obama, who after all came into the role with no executive experience and limited exposure to the rough and tumble of politics. His rhetorical gifts as well as the promise he represented for a post-racial society carried him a long way. In retrospect, his failure to build a stronger Democratic party in the wake of his two presidential campaign victories was a grievous one.

It is seriously wrong to imagine that Trump’s relative lack of education; he has a business degree and was an indifferent student, signals any lack of intelligence. A developer, Jack walker, who worked with him for a decade, noted that he could retain a “remarkable amount of detailed information in his head.” (loc 6024) I have reviewed only selected videos of his shows, The Apprentice and later, The Celebrity Apprentice. They are hard to find online. But a colleague of mine, a psychiatrist and management professor whose judgment I trust deeply, reports teaching management and leadership skills using these videos. He was struck by Trump’s ability to incorporate a great deal of second-hand data about team members’ performances --he did not observe them in their work -- and then integrate this information with his assessment of a person’s character based on his or her boardroom behavior. As my colleague wrote, “He blocked out the noise and picked up the signal,” a salient skill when making decisions situations rife with uncertainty and complexity.

Abstraction

Trump has great interpersonal strengths and the habit of command. However, his capacity for abstraction may be limited. By this I mean his understanding of how power is institutionalized, how the contest for influence is governed by rules and conventions rooted in culture, and how the levers for exercising power are widely distributed. President Lyndon Johnson understood these power dynamics and used them successfully to build a coalition that supported the passing of Civil Rights legislation in the U.S. Congress. The abject failure of Trump’s immigration order, a two-page document rendered without careful vetting, and his subsequent attack on the character of the judge who ruled against him, reflects this lack of understanding. He acted as if power was based on interpersonal exchange and the competition for dominance, rather than on the interplay of institutions.

To some degree, he comes by these limitations honestly but they may prove costly. As an entrepreneur running a family business he never faced the dilemma of balancing interest groups. His subordinates were unquestionably loyal, his children I imagine were deeply grateful for the opportunities he gave them. The pressing issue is whether he can learn to rely on advisors who can make up for his limitations.

A signature idea?

There is no doubt that Trump is relying for the moment on the Republican Party’s traditional program of deregulation, low taxes and privatization. This is a turn away from Obama’s priorities, but it is not a moment of social or economic disruption. My hunch is that this will not satisfy Trump’s restlessness, his impulse to disrupt and his habit of command. Nor is it likely to create jobs in the communities who so strongly supported him and are hoping, after all, for improvements in their living conditions. Economists agree that jobs are created when new small businesses are established. It is unlikely that small business owners would commit time and money to an enterprise located in a depressed city, even if taxes were lower and regulations less onerous.

Trump had one signature idea in his campaign; the trillion-dollar infrastructure program for rebuilding bridges, roads, tunnels and airports. This idea emerged organically I believe from Trump’s own experience. He is after all a builder, and “decaying” bridges and roads instantiate the idea of “carnage,” physically and concretely. The idea also has the merit of being simple in conception, focused in its execution with the likelihood that it could provide construction jobs as well as work for people whose employers sell construction materials and equipment. A “buy American” proviso would amplify its impact and solidify his support among unions. As is the case with defense spending, the dollars could be spent widely so that voters in a wide array of congressional districts would see benefits in their neighborhoods. Should there emerge local shortages of skilled or semi-skilled workers, cities, counties and states would have an incentive to fund community college and other vocational training programs. Were Trump clever, he would negotiate with construction unions for their commitment to scaling up minority apprenticeship programs. Many Democratic congressmen would support the program.

But the plan at least as it has been discussed to date, is designed to avoid federal deficit spending, the most ready source of dollars for spending on such projects. Instead it relies on private spending and lending stimulated by tax credits. The Cato institute, a conservative think tank has registered its skepticism. For example, private companies or public agencies, like electricity producers, may simply use the credit to finance their current spending plans rather than increase spending. In addition, much infrastructure, like local roads, is not profitable. Even if investors get a tax credit for funding such projects, they can’t expect to recoup any profits from them.

Deficit spending is anathema to the Republican majorities in the House and Senate. But should Trump presume that he has no leverage over them, particularly after he has advanced their agenda on so many other fronts? My hunch is that this is the kind of dilemma that is likely to engage him fully. It lands him in his sweet spot of negotiating multi-party deals, a skill he honed in his years as a developer. It focuses his attention on issues he has mastered in an arena where the resources and objectives are concrete and visible. Most importantly, it provides direct material support to the people who voted for him. There are of course many reasons to be skeptical. But as I wrote at the beginning of this essay, we should not underestimate Trump.

*loc refers to the location in the amazon kindle version of the book.

  

The Psychodynamics of Star Wars

“A long time ago in a galaxy far away…” So begins the opening “crawl” of

Star war movies. These movies invite us to consider them as evocations of an ancient legend that explain the origins and foundation of the world we have inherited and as we know it today. In this blog post I would like to take this conceit seriously, namely to examine Star Wars as a modern myth or origin story that sheds light on our current experiences. The risk in doing this is to take what is after all an entertainment vehicle and commercial undertaking far too seriously. On the other side, the franchise’s persistence over thirty years in films and books, its world wide popularity, and its trafficking in the fundamental themes of good and evil should give us pause enough to consider it seriously, as we might the legends of the Greek gods, the Norse heroes of the Wagner Ring Cycle, or even the portraits of the patriarchs in the Bible.

C.J. Jung suggested that myths could be seen as social dreams through which our shared arc of life, from birth to death, is expressed through universal archetypes, for example, mother, father, child, devil, trickster, wise old man or hero. If we accept this idea, we could say that Star Wars might be such a myth in which such universal archetypes, for example, Yoda as the wise man, Darth Vader as the devil, the droid as the trickster, and Luke Skywalker as the hero, are joined to our collective preoccupations as we experience them today. The newest film’s casting, The Force Awakens, underlines this feature.  Actors who were young some thirty years ago, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill, reprise their roles, but as older and aging characters. As aging actors they too will recede in importance, as younger actors take up central roles in succeeding films of the Star Wars franchise. Older filmgoers, watching this latest movie, can come into touch with their own aging. Let’s for the sake of argument assume that this mythical and archetypical frame of reference is relevant, and see what insights this point of departure affords us.

The Disordered family and cosmos

A striking feature of the most recent Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, is that the cosmos is disturbed because family relationships are disordered.  Failed family relationships are evident throughout the movie. For example, the new female heroine, Rey, whom the film suggests will succeed Luke Skywalker as the next great Jedi warrior, has been orphaned early in life, separated from her parents as the result of some traumatic and perhaps political event. When we encounter her early in the movie she methodologically records every day she has been separated from her parents by markings on a wall, as if she were in prison. In addition, Kylo Ren, the grandson of Darth Vader and the son of Hans Solos and Princess Leia (now a general in the Republic), is estranged from his parents. In addition, Solo and the Princess are estranged from each other, most likely because they have lost their son, Kylo Ren, to the dark side. Also, Luke Skywalker has vanished from the face of the galaxy and is thus estranged from his sister Princess Leia and all of those who have depended on him as the Jedi representative of his generation.  Finally, as the Fore Awakens informs us, Luke Skywalker once trained Kylo Ren to become a Jedi, thus acting as both his guru and as father figure. When Ren went over the dark side, precipitating Skywalker’s withdrawal, the two became estranged permanently.

Now in the life of a small child, a disturbed family life is indeed a cosmic disturbance. In this sense Star Wars evokes a child’s feeling that parental conflict can literally unravel his or her world. But the bridge from the cosmos to the family has adult meaning as well, insofar as we believe that the foundation stone for civilization is the orderly family. In psychoanalysis the figure of the father, or more broadly, the paternal function, personifies this linkage. The father introduces his children to the demand that they control their impulses in order to take up their roles first in school and then in society. We know that children who grow up without fathers, are more likely to drop out of school, abuse drug and alcohol, have more problems with aggression, are twice as likely to commit suicide, and for boys, are more likely to commit crimes. In short, children in such families are more likely to feel overwhelmed. As they mature, their powerlessness may lead to feelings of despair, one reason why they are more likely to commit suicide or crimes.

There is a pivotal emotional moment in the film, when Kylo Ren kills his father, Hans Solo on the Starkiller base. Solo spots Ren from behind walking across a narrow footbridge on the base and calls to him by his original name “Ben” (named after Ben Kenobi). They see each other for the first time after years of estrangement. Solo shows emotional strength in reaching out to Ren. Yet on the other side, he is foolishly risking his life in trying to make contact with his son. After all, at that moment they are antagonists. Kylo is looking for Rey and her droid, while Solo is protecting them. Should Kylo find the droid he could locate Luke Skywalker’s hiding place in the galaxy and destroy him, eliminating the latter’s potential role as a tutor to the next generation of Jedi warriors.

Responding to his father’s pleas that he rejoin his family and the light side, Kylo says, “I'm being torn apart. I want to be free of this pain.” One question is what is the source of his pain and why has it led him to such a point of despair that he is being torn apart. One conception is that Ren suffers from the burden imposed by weak fathers and father figures. The weak father is an attenuated version of the absent father. Hans Solo was once a vagabond, a trader who lived at the margin of society making money by dealing with shady characters, borrowing money and not repaying his debts. He attained moral stature by joining the rebels’ fight against the Empire, (Star Wars IV, A new Hope). But in the Force Awakens, (Star Wars VII), he has apparently reverted to his original dubious profession as a merchant and trader on the galaxy’s fringes, partly because Kylo, originally named Ben, has turned to the dark side. When Rey the heroine first meets Hans Solo and asks him if he is in fact the famous Hans Solo, he replies, “I used to be.” On the bridge, when Hans asks Kylo to remove his mask and reveal the face of his son, Kylo replies, “Your son is gone. He was weak and foolish like his father, so I destroyed him.”

One psychoanalytic conception is that a weak father burdens the psychological development of his son. In this conception, every son needs a “strong enough” father to help him gain control over his own impulses. The son identifies with and internalizes his father’s competence and independence. He trades his wish to gratify his impulses for his father’s love and respect. His father and later other figures of authority, whom he both loves and fears, become the precipitates of what Freud called the son’s “superego.” But when the father is weak, the son must become his own internalized policeman. Unmodified by love and respect, his superego becomes unduly harsh charging him to excess with being inadequate, ineffectual and guilty, for this is the only way he can control his impulses. When this experience becomes intolerable, it leads to despair. Under these conditions the son may seek relief by turning over his harsh superego to an overly strong father figure, such as Snoke the leader of the Dark side, who relieves him of his guilt, and assures him of his potency.

One conception is, that at that moment on the bridge, Kylo is caught between two experiences of his father, as loving or weak, as the forgiving father or the fool. This is too painful a tension for him bear. This is why he tells his father that he wants to be “free of this pain.” Then, though first hesitating, he kills his father thus underlining his transition to the dark side. The psychoanalytically tuned viewer may link this scene on the footbridge to the scene in Oedipus Rex in which Oedipus, meeting his father on a narrow road, kills him in a dispute over whose carriage has the right of way.

The dark side and the devil

This link between despair and murder also has religious and mythological roots. Goethe’s story of the Faust legend is the exemplar story here. Faust, despairing of ever reaching a complete understanding of the universe, considers killing himself. He is saved by a pact with the devil, Mephistopheles, who promises to do his bidding in this world if Faust will in turn serve the devil in Hell. When Faust agrees, the devil soon after helps him seduce Gretchen, a woman he finds attractive. Gretchen in turn poisons her own mother so that she and Faust can meet in private. As this drama suggests, the devil permits what is normally forbidden for example, killing for sexual pleasure, an impulse we may at some point entertain in our fantasy but that we would never express in reality.

Examined from a mytho-theological perspective, the Faust story suggests that despair challenges faith, raising the prospect that God, like failed fathers, is weak in this world. If this is true, it suggests that an anti-god or anti-Christ is strong, and in the theology of the western world this is none other than the devil. The devil offers us a road out of despair by promising us potency, if we make good on our crisis of faith and abandon God. If God in turn represents the moral function of the superego, the set of, the “thou shall nots” and “thou shalls” of the Ten Commandments, then as David Bakan argues, the devil suspends the superego, permitting what the superego forbids. This is the religious meaning of the dark side. Snoke as the leader of the dark side is the devil. He frees up his followers, to act out fantasies they would ordinarily keep out of awareness and certainly keep in check for example murdering innocents at will. He relieves them of guilt. This is why his followers feel grateful to him and seek his approval. Broadly speaking, this is the basis for what historians call the “totalitarian seduction.” It is a deal with the devil. This is why Hux, the military leader of the dark side’s storm troopers, sounds like Hitler when he addresses them in a mass rally as they prepare to destroy the resistance’s base. Hitler personifies the devil in modern times.

The emotionally vulnerable man

In some currents of popular culture, when a man or father is moved by his emotions, it is a sign of weakness, an indication that he cannot control his impulses. The Force Awakens initially traffics in this conception. Luke Skywalker upon facing the devastating loss of Kylo Ren and the murder of his Jedi students, is depressed and withdrawn. When we see him --only at the very end of the movie-- we encounter a man all alone and seemingly in despair. Solo, as we have seen, is victimized by his love for his son. Indeed, one of the movie’s conceits is that Kylo Ren is an “incomplete devil,” who becomes inappropriately enraged upon meeting obstacles.

But then the film goes on to offer a more nuanced perspective on the emotionally vulnerable man. The question posed is, can a man’s emotional vulnerability trigger his growth in stature?  In the first Star Wars movie (IV, A New Hope,) the male paragon is the virtuous warrior, the Jedi, a man disciplined enough to risk his life to preserve the Republican and democratic way of life and to do so with equanimity and deliberation.  Obi Wan or Ben Kenobi is the exemplar. In the first Star Wars film, A New Hope he confronts Darth Vader in order to give Skywalker a chance to escape and fulfill his mission of ultimately destroying the Death Star.  Obi Wan understands that Vader, both younger and stronger can kill him. In the middle of their light-sabre battle, knowing he has helped Skywalker escape, he simply accedes to his defeat, saying to Vader, "You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

At one level he is predicting his reappearance as a spirit or ghost. Indeed in The Force Awakens, Rey, upon discovering Luke Skywalker’s light sabre in a dungeon-like setting, hears Kenobi’s voice. But in naturalistic terms we can interpret his statement to mean that he will become an ideal, much as Moses or Jesus are, and will inspire other warriors to take up the battle of the dark side with the same courage, equanimity and poise that he has done. The other warrior/pilots of the republic, as befit ordinary heroes, demonstrate a similar grace under fire.

Kenobi has achieved what Freud called sublimation. He has learned to regulate his emotional or instinctual life, which can overpower the rational faculties, by linking them to the work of achieving higher ideals and thereby forgoing immediate gratification in the service of a wider love, what Freud called “Eros.” His control is so complete that he can sacrifice his life for the welfare of a next generation. In a sense, the mantra, “May the force be with you,” may be translated as, “May you appropriate those instincts or drives which animate you, for a greater good.” In this sense Kenobi becomes for the next generation, what Freud called an “ego ideal.” While the superego is the seat of injunctions and the source of guilt, the ego ideal is the seat of aspirations and a source of the capacity to love at a level that goes beyond immediate gratification. 

The newly introduced main character Finn, presents a different picture. Unlike the fighter pilots of the resistance, he initially lacks grace and courage. When we first encounter him as a storm trooper he is overwhelmed by the sight of blood as his fellow troopers kill villagers on the planet Jakku. Fearing that he will get caught for failing to fire his weapon, he deserts his troop, then pretends that he is a Jedi so that Rey will help him in his flight, and finally abandons her -- despite her pleas that he join the resistance- when he can arrange for a flight off the planet. In other words, he is at first a coward and a liar. Finn ultimately grows into a warrior when, upon learning that Kylo Ren has captured Rey, he comes into touch with his love for her, and masters the weapons he must use in an attempt to rescue her. In a sense, Finn is at a lower level of  “warrior development” than a Jedi, because his courage derives from his passion for a person, a woman, rather than from his commitment to an ideal.

A culture of narcissism?

The difference between Obi Wan Kenobi and the men of The Force Awakens highlights the psychoanalytic distinction between the ego and the self. The former describes an executive function of the mind that is aware of its own divisions and ambivalences. It is the way a person observes and controls his own emotional responses to internal as well as external stimuli; for example, by distancing himself from feelings of self-imposed guilt, or taking an ironic stance toward his own passions. Eli Zaretsky, in his wonderful book Political Freud, calls this type of person an exemplar of psychoanalysis’ “maturity ethic”. But in a post-modern age, Zaretsky suggests, we privilege our emotions and put greater value on responding in the moment to them, whether they are noble or not.  

One popular and scholarly conversation suggests that this shift from ego to self highlights a new culture of narcissism where we use our feelings to make peremptory demands on others for recognition and affirmation. For example, students in college classes who demand that they not be exposed to literature that creates discomfort.  Conservative critics worry that such a culture of narcissism with its focus on self-esteem, means that people lack courage and the will to take risks. To them it represents a decline in the masculine elements of the culture as well as a cultural attack on “white males,” and on what they represent and have achieved. This may be why today, Donald Trump, in all his primitivism, is nonetheless appealing.  

The movie presents a different possibility. It suggests that as men take on more “feminine” characteristics, women can take on more masculine ones. The paternal and maternal functions are preserved in our culture but are expressed differently and in new ways by both men and women. This parallelism evokes experiences in every day family life. Fathers are increasingly involved in infant and baby care- changing diapers, feeding, bathing and story telling -- just as mothers are more engaged in the world of work, making good on their ambitions. The hopeful aspect of this vision is that as men mature into their adult character, they will feel less taxed psychologically by the demand that they repress their feminine side, for example by being passive, and for women, the demand that they repress their masculine side, for example by being active. People would feel more psychological freedom and less guilt in taking up their adult roles more fully.  

Rey, the movie’s central character, exemplifies this new role for women.  She represents the next generation of Jedi, the Force flows through her naturally, and as an orphan has learned to defend herself against predators who occupy the frontier settings on her home planet of Jakku. She has mechanical skills, is a self-taught aircraft pilot, and is inspired by the history of the resistance. But she is not a one-dimensional superwoman. She longs for her parents and is drawn to Hans Solo as a potential father figure, a yearning that Kylo Ren, who battles her in a penultimate scene, senses. In the movie’s final moment she finds Luke Skywalker in his mountain hideaway and in a gesture of love returns to him his light saber that, once he had abandoned it, had been stored for some thirty years in a dudgeon/castle on the planet Takodana.

The psychoanalytically tuned viewer may see this as a moment in which a woman returns a phallic object to a man - his weapon -- as the first step in helping to revive his potency. But this is too narrow a “reading” of this moment. I suggest that it is instead a moment of tender reconciliation between the sexes and the generations. It suggests that the daughter cannot be wholly herself without her father and that a man cannot be wholly himself without a woman. In this sense, the very last scene answers the opening chords of the first scenes by offering the prospect that the family unit can be restored so that civilization may once against thrive. It is in this way a romantic ending but not necessarily an unrealistic one.

The Force Awakens leaves me with the question about the meaning of the “warrior” archetype in a post-modern culture. Emerging from the devastation of the twentieth century, a century of two world wars, nationalisms and ideologies, we may be wary of ideals and feel more secure in strengthening our attachments to specific people whom we love and wish to protect. But Star Wars suggests that the dark side is ever present, that the totalitarian seduction, with its political implications, is always just around the corner. This is the warning that Freud offers us in his magisterial, Civilization and its Discontents. Do we take this seriously? If we do, are we prepared?