One interesting line of thought that was suggested to me by my friend Dr. Jorge Cappon, well-known Mexican psychologist and psychoanalyst, was the extent to which cult figures like Donald Trump are influenced by competition. Another related question might be “Are competitive interactions with others always conceptualized by the people who are competing as an important means of gaining some kind of power.” For instance, when Donald Trump plays golf with politicians and world leaders, is he using it as a sign to the person or people with whom he is playing that he is the dominant one, that he is the person with the power?
Before we delve into these questions, it might be wise to explore what we mean when we say that someone is being competitive. In its narrow sense, it means that someone is participating in a formal contention. A competition pits two or more people against each other to demonstrate their skills in a game (mental or physical) or in performing a task or in completing a project for a company. A competition normally has rules – things one is permitted to do in order to advance oneself in the competition and things one is not permitted to do. Depending on how significant the infraction is, a player can be penalized or he can end up forfeiting the competition. But the rules create the basis for the friction, the intense organic stimulation bordering on abrasive stimulation, that makes the competition so exciting and so interesting. It also makes winning the competition a more meaningful achievement.
For someone like Trump, formal competitions are not what grabs his attention. Underneath all of his personality layers, Trump is very numb. What most stimulates him to life is going into a situation and winning at all cost. If it means doing something illegal or bullying one’s opponents in order to come out with a particular outcome, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is to succeed. Rules just get in the way.
Trump likes to operate free of rules, because he is incapable of absorbing the organic stimulation that comes from a grounded environment. What makes him feel alive are abrasive tension-pocket explosions that stimulate him as a result of the destructive chaos that they generate. For instance, the controversy surrounding many of his Cabinet appointees and all the pushback that they have been generating. Either they are moral degenerates or they are totally unqualified for the posts for which they have been nominated or they represent a clear and present danger to the American people. Or they are combinations of more than one of these defects and sometimes of all three. Any sane person would be frightened at the prospect of even one of these controversial prospects attaining the office for which he or she was nominated. To have all or most of these nominees attain their respective offices would be the equivalent of a natural disaster.
The real question is if Trump has a competitive personality or is he just an aggressive bully. I would submit that he is the latter. Yes, he has run for president three times and he has won twice. But it is obvious that he has total disdain for the process, and if he could have, he would probably have just preferred to take over the U.S. government with a coup d’etat. And who are the political leaders that he most admires today: Victor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary; Vladimir Putin, President of Russia; Xi Jinping, President of China. All three of these leaders are authoritarians who could care less about the fine points of the democratic process.
Trump is not stimulated to life by the organic friction of competition. It is just too weak a form of stimulation to help him pull out of his numbness. Although he suffers from numbness just like his followers, what makes him stand apart from them is his capacity to generate his own abrasive tension-pockets. His abrasive nominations for his Cabinet. His abrasive conspiracy theories. His abrasive mission for retribution with regard to all the grievances that he has suffered. And what is so beautiful about all of this with regard to all the abrasive stimulation that it generates is that he presents it to his followers in such a way that his tension-pockets become their tension-pockets. They too can feel intermittently alive from all the shocks that he creates.
So, Trump is not interested in competing with people. He is not at all interested in the process that is required to get him to his goal. In particular, he is not at all interested in the processes required to be able to maintain a democracy. And that is what makes him such a frightening once and future president.
© 2024 Laurence Mesirow
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