"Donald Trump and the Success of the Narcissistic Sociopath"

While the rest of the country was either recovering from a tryptophan-induced coma and/or raiding department stores at odd hours to score deals in the time-honored American post-Thanksgiving tradition of Black Friday, President Donald Trump was—as usual—tweeting.
Trump’s tweet sparked mockery, derision, and outcry, along with a clarifying tweet from Time that suggested no such conversation took place. But that single tweet is evocative for more than representing Trump’s outsized view of himself and his role in the world; it demonstrates elements of sociopathy and narcissism that the leader of the free world—and his peers in his previous life as a business mogul—showcase.

But why do those with sociopathic characteristics succeed? The answer is a complicated one that’s fascinated both organizational psychologists and business analysts for a long time. And it traces back to a story of men, narcissism, an obsession with power, and a quirk in the brain that makes it frighteningly simply for some people to not feel empathy.

Which raises the necessary question: What is a sociopath? The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, commonly referred to as the DSM—the guidebook of the American Psychiatric Association—classifies sociopathy as an antisocial disorder, or having a general “disregard for and violation of other people’s rights.” It goes on to dictate the characteristics we are familiar with for representing these disorders: callousness, hostility, deceitfulness, lack of remorse, egocentrism.

Importantly, sociopathy is a result of environmental factors. Sociopaths have become cold and manipulative as a response to trauma: physical, mental, and/or social abuse that made them resistant to trust, erratic in their behavior, even violent.

But wait, doesn’t this armchair sort of diagnosis of Trump’s mental state break the sacred Goldwater Rule, the American Psychiatric Association’s ethical rule to avoid diagnosing a person with a mental condition (here, sociopathy)? The Goldwater Rule was put in place to not only avoid politicizing the psychiatric profession but also to maintain a sense of integrity for a person’s wellbeing and their health. While the stigma of being associated with a mental illness has certainly gone down, mental illness still considered by many to be something shameful. And how can one rightly diagnose a person without actually, physically interacting with them?

The psychological (not psychiatric, importantly) experts The Daily Beast spoke to—along with a number of practicing psychiatrists—have suggested that Trump’s years of media output—books, television appearances, tweets, and more—made his case one that is jarringly different, and one in which the Goldwater Rule doesn’t apply.