Fascinating! Please consider including the brilliant work of Lloyd DeMause. His works are put forth in the journal of Psychohistory and his book called The Emotional Life of Nations which is a thorough analysis of how childhood abuse is the common denominator in all pathologies of society’s throughout the world. Thank you!
And it’s not just childhood trauma either although most of the psychos who rise to power have been abused as children, pathologies also result from trauma or abuse/s experienced as adults. I’m thinking of women (and some men) being raped and/or victims of domestic abuse or men (and some women) sent to wars. Been thinking about this lately and the large numbers of mentally ill in the USA. USA has attracted the traumatized from all over the world for centuries as immigrants. Trauma usually begets trauma unless it is healed.
Looking forward to reading his books. Thanks for mentioning his name and perspective.
This is a psychoanalysis presented as a national security briefing, and it's painfully on point. Trump’s pathology is policy. We’ve spent a decade treating his malignant narcissism like a personality quirk instead of what it is: a contagion of obedience and projection that rewires entire populations.
Stewartson’s mapping of Lakoff’s “Strict Father” metaphor to Freud’s father complex is genius and horrifying in equal measure. Trump doesn’t just invoke authoritarian patriarchy; he is its living recursion; the boy who never escaped his father’s contempt now forcing a nation to call him “Daddy.” Every cheer at a rally, every promise of punishment, is Freud’s repetition compulsion scaled up to the size of an empire.
The “ontological isomorphism” here isn’t theoretical; it’s operational. When a populace internalizes a father’s abuse as love, democracy doesn’t die in darkness; it dies calling him “sir.”
Fascinating! Please consider including the brilliant work of Lloyd DeMause. His works are put forth in the journal of Psychohistory and his book called The Emotional Life of Nations which is a thorough analysis of how childhood abuse is the common denominator in all pathologies of society’s throughout the world. Thank you!
And it’s not just childhood trauma either although most of the psychos who rise to power have been abused as children, pathologies also result from trauma or abuse/s experienced as adults. I’m thinking of women (and some men) being raped and/or victims of domestic abuse or men (and some women) sent to wars. Been thinking about this lately and the large numbers of mentally ill in the USA. USA has attracted the traumatized from all over the world for centuries as immigrants. Trauma usually begets trauma unless it is healed.
Looking forward to reading his books. Thanks for mentioning his name and perspective.
Complex stuff!
I can’t wait to try & understand all this bc it’s so important. Thank you thank you thank you for staying on it!
This is a psychoanalysis presented as a national security briefing, and it's painfully on point. Trump’s pathology is policy. We’ve spent a decade treating his malignant narcissism like a personality quirk instead of what it is: a contagion of obedience and projection that rewires entire populations.
Stewartson’s mapping of Lakoff’s “Strict Father” metaphor to Freud’s father complex is genius and horrifying in equal measure. Trump doesn’t just invoke authoritarian patriarchy; he is its living recursion; the boy who never escaped his father’s contempt now forcing a nation to call him “Daddy.” Every cheer at a rally, every promise of punishment, is Freud’s repetition compulsion scaled up to the size of an empire.
The “ontological isomorphism” here isn’t theoretical; it’s operational. When a populace internalizes a father’s abuse as love, democracy doesn’t die in darkness; it dies calling him “sir.”