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Eric Levitz reports that Trump’s aides cannot contain his fits on Twitter or in person because his sense of injury at being contradicted overwhelms him (New York, “Trump Aides Keep Leaking Embarrassing Stories About How He Can’t Handle Embarrassment,” January 24, 2017). The President insists that Sean Spicer channels his fury to the press or he gets enraged at Spicer. Levitz’ description of President Trump’s reactions is a perfect account of how a narcissistic personality order responds to a narcissistic injury.
Chuck Todd, Anderson Cooper, Chris Matthews and many of their guests as well as Trump’s own aides have asked, “Why does he keep talking about crowd size instead of policy issues?” None of them have an answer because they assume there is some motivation based on rational thinking. Maybe he is trying to divert attention away from other things? Maybe he is pandering to his supporters? But the real reason President Trump keeps lying about crowd size is that HE CAN’T STOP. The fact that more people came to President Obama’s inauguration than his is a narcissistic wound and he cannot be talked out of it with rational discourse or empirical data. Similarly, the fact that Hillary Clinton got more of the popular vote than he did is another narcissistic wound. It throws him into paroxysms of lying—claiming that 3-5 million illegals account for the difference in the popular vote. He even insisted that not one of them voted for him. Now he is going to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to do an investigation to prove that he is right. But, of course, if they find out that his claims are unfounded, he will not be able to tolerate that. He will need to attack the people who did the study—just as he attacked the author of the Pew Report who said President Trump misrepresented the findings of the study.
In an earlier article, I discussed the fact that feeling like you are the center of the universe has certain disadvantages—it makes other people angry and they may end their relationship with you as a result (i.e. friendship, marriage, partner). Another downside of narcissism is vulnerability to narcissistic wounds.
Narcissistic injuries do not feel like your feelings are hurt, they feel like your self is being attacked. The narcissist is hypersensitive. He can be wounded by the intonation in your voice; a particular word you use; or your body posture. He can also be injured by things you don’t do. He might get enraged at his colleague for not saying, “Your idea made the project work.” He needs constant reassurance that he is special and can spin out of control when he feels unappreciated. But the narcissist is usually not consistent in his reactions. What will cause an intense reaction on Tuesday may have no effect on Friday.
The narcissist is prickly; he may implode when hurt or disappointed and go into a major depression. For example, Pat goes into a depression if his boss does not explicitly compliment him for his work on a regular basis. On the other hand, the narcissist may respond to injuries by lashing out with rage. This is what we see in President Trump.
Narcissistic rage is not your garden variety of anger, it is beyond red hot—it is white hot. In a state of rage, the narcissist pulls out all the stops. In some cases, the attack can be physical—Paul has gotten out of his car and pushed a pedestrian who walked across the street when the light was red. He experienced it as a personal affront that was done to him—as if the pedestrian was saying “fuck you” rather than mindlessly looking at his phone while crossing the street. More often the violence is verbal. Narcissists are usually perceptive about the weaknesses of others and attack with razor-sharp accuracy. We saw this in the primary campaign when Trump called Marco Rubio “little Marco,” or in the campaign when he called Hillary Clinton “crooked Hillary.”
It is never easy to deal with someone with a narcissistic personality disorder. That is what President Trump’s aides are experiencing. It feels like walking in a mine field—you never know when you will step on a mine and the relationship will blow up. But in this case we are talking about the President of the United States. We are in danger of more than a mine field blowing up.
