Trump Always Reverses That Then Reverses Again.

When I saw CNN's Jake Tapper suddenly blurt out, "What the hell is going on?" in an online video the other day, I idea I'd better speak up.

Like millions of people around the world, Tapper has go increasingly baffled by President Donald Trump's odd behaviors: sucking upwards to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, then rewriting his own words the adjacent day; scolding British Prime Minister Theresa May in an interview in The Sun, and so denying that he ever did so when he was in May's presence hours later; lying, reversing himself, lying again, then lying almost the lies.

Come upwards with your own list of peculiar and often contradictory Trump statements — about women, the Admission Hollywood tape, immigrants, Charlottesville, gun rights, you name it. The lesser line, more and more than, seems to be that exasperating question, "What the hell is going on?"

Late last yr, 27 prominent mental health professionals were and then concerned about Trump'southward odd and sometimes belligerent behavior that they contributed chapters to an unprecedented volume called, "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump." Their deep concern, they said, justified setting aside an important ethical standard of the mental health professions — the ane that forbids mental health professionals from diagnosing public figures they've never really evaluated.

But diagnose they did — without a consensus, of course, because none of them, equally far as I can tell, had e'er even met Trump. (Tony Schwartz, Trump'southward ghostwriter for "The Art of the Deal," has a chapter in the volume, just he is not counted equally one of the 27 mental health professionals.)

Is Trump really mentally deranged, maybe ready for the loony bin? If so, how could he have achieved so much over the course of his life? How could he accept functioned so well in business, in media and now fifty-fifty in politics? How could he have raised such loyal and high-functioning offspring? How could he terminal even a solar day in the most stressful office in the most stressful building in the nigh stressful city in the world?

Trump's 'audience command' problem

Trump is not mentally ill, and I doubtfulness that he is even "living in his ain reality," every bit so many take claimed. He is simply fairly unique in a manner that is hard for the public to understand. In a nutshell, Trump is highly vulnerable to what can reasonably be chosen "sympathetic audition command."

If that sounds jargony, I apologize. It's actually a pretty uncomplicated concept and, in Trump'due south case, it explains a lot — peradventure even 90 percent of the behavior that seems and so baffling.

All normal people are subject to "audience command" to one degree or another. That means but that they regulate what they say and do based on who'southward around them. They are respectful sitting in a church building pew, a fleck more daring sitting in a classroom, and somewhat wild sitting in the bleachers. Almost a police officeholder, most people are cautious and deferential; near a best friend, people feel comfortable and speak freely.

Sometimes audience control goes haywire. You might behave one way with your parents and a very different manner with your new romantic partner. When you finally bring your new friend dwelling house to see the 'rents, yous might experience bad-mannered and barely know what to exercise or say.

Except for situations similar that, audience control doesn't unremarkably cause issues, and it likewise usually doesn't persist when the audience is gone. But for Trump, audience control works in a special way:

More:On Trump mental fitness, the experts are silenced and the public's in the night

Donald Trump'southward malignant narcissism is toxic

Trump'due south troubling behavior raises questions his medical exam didn't answer

When Trump is in the presence of someone he dislikes or distrusts, he attacks and  volition continue to lash out for a while, but not necessarily forever. When someone he perceives as a threat becomes deferential (Rocket Man, for instance), Trump non only stops attacking, he also  becomes highly vulnerable to influence.

In general, when Trump is around someone whom he perceives as supportive, or when he gets a telephone call from a supportive billionaire, or when he hears a supportive commentator on Fox News, his thinking is rapidly influenced by what that person is saying. This is "sympathetic audience control." With Trump, the impact is so strong that it persists after the person is gone — maybe fifty-fifty until some other sympathetic individual comes along.

When Trump is in forepart of a big group of cheering people, his thinking is fully controlled past the crowd. It might seem he'due south in control, but the opposite is actually the case. The supportive audition completely dominates his thinking, causing him to repeat, over and over, things he believes the audience wants to hear.

We need to add just one more chemical element here to make sense of Trump'south roller coaster heed: Like my 92-year-sometime mom, Trump lives in a very modest window of time, and no, I don't mean he lives "in the moment" in that healthy, New-Age-y sort of way. I hateful he has trouble looking backwards or frontward in time.

Yous might recollect he formulates and lives by long-term plans and strategies, simply I doubt that very much. He is much more like a rudderless sailboat blown almost by the wind, with the direction largely adamant moment-to-moment according to who's got his attention and whether he views that person as friend or foe.

No principles, simply gusts of wind

Sympathetic audience control and a modest time window produce near of the odd cerebral glitches we see in our president. Moment to moment, he either sees a foe and shoots, or he sees a friend and is influenced. In that kind of perceptual world, Trump inevitably — and without shame or even sensation — shifts his views oftentimes, sometimes multiple times a mean solar day.

Not but do his views shift, he also has no trouble denying, entirely without guile, in my view, what he said yesterday. All that's shiny and real to him is what friends or foes are saying within those small time windows. Everything else is fuzzy, and that'south why he can then hands tell then many lies. From his perspective, lying has no meaning. Only reacting has meaning. Trump reacts.

The pocket-size fourth dimension window and sympathetic audience control also explain why Trump always seems to exist creating foreign policy on the fly, why his meetings with world leaders rarely produce tangible results, why he tin't get congressional deals, and why he is near certainly incapable of negotiating those famous bilateral agreements that were supposed to replace the multinational treaties he has swept aside.

If I'm right, and I'thou pretty certain I am, Trump is capable of simply a minimal level of analytical or critical thinking. Peradventure more than alarming, our president — the putative leader of the complimentary world — doesn't believe in annihilation and he rarely, if always, means anything he says. The impulsive tweets, the bourgeois court appointments, the unfunded tax cuts, the obsession with a wall, the swipes at immigrants — all are byproducts (dross, if you volition) of sympathetic audience control operating in small fourth dimension windows. At that place are no principles operating here, just gusts of wind.

And if I'thousand correct, Trump will continue to function this mode — blindly, erratically and reactively, without principle or management — for the balance of his life.

Robert Epstein, senior research psychologist at the American Found for Behavioral Inquiry and Technology, is a old editor in chief of Psychology Today and the author of xv books. Follow him on Twitter: @DrREpstein

davisbuttephon1999.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/07/30/trump-lies-reversals-rudderless-unprincipled-leader-psychologist-column/848728002/

Share this post