Jeffrey Kluger - The Narcissist Next Door: Understanding the Monster in Your Family, in Your Office, in Your Bed—in Your World

I t cant be easy to wake up every day and discover that youre still Donald Trump. You were Trump yesterday, youre Trump today, and barring some extraordinary intervention, youll be Trump tomorrow.

There are, certainly, compensations to being Donald Trump. Youre fabulously wealthy; you have a lifetime pass to help yourself to younger and younger wives, even as you get older and oldera two-way Benjamin Button dynamic that is equal parts enviable and grotesque. You own homes in Manhattan; Palm Beach; upstate New York; Charlottesville, Virginia; and Rancho Palos Verdes, California; and youre free to bunk down in the penthouse suite of any hotel, apartment building, or resort that flies the Trump flag, anywhere on the planetand there are a lot of them.

But none of that changes the reality of waking up every morning, looking in the bathroom mirror, and seeing Donald Trump staring back at you. And no, its not the hair; that, after all, is a choiceone that may be hard for most people to understand, but a choice all the same, and theres a certain go-to-hell confidence in continuing to make it. The problem with being Trump is the same thing that explains the enormous fame and success of Trump: a naked neediness, a certain shamelessness, an insatiable hunger to be the largest, loudest, most honkingly conspicuous presence in any roomthe great, braying Trumpness of Trumpand thats probably far less of a revel than it seems.

Contented people, well-grounded people, people at ease inside their skin, just dont behave the way Trump does. They go easy on the superlativesespecially when theyre talking about their own accomplishments. Maybe what theyre building or selling really is the greatest, the grandest, the biggest, the most stupendous, but they let the product do the talking. If it cant, maybe it aint so great. They use their own names sparingly, tooeven when theyre businesspeople who have the opportunity to turn themselves from a person into a brand. There is no GatesWare software, no BezosBooks.com; its not Zuckerbook you log on to a dozen times a day, its Facebook. But the Trump name is everywhere in the Trump worldon his buildings, on his helicopters, on the side of every single plane in the fleet that was once known as the Eastern Air Shuttle until Trump bought it in 1989 and renamed it the Trump Shuttle. Its been on Trump Mortgage, Trump Financial, Trump Sales and Leasing, Trump Restaurants, Trump vodka, Trump chocolate, Donald Trump The Fragrance, Trump water, Trump home furnishings, Trump clothing, Trump Books, Trump Golf, Trump University and yes, Trump the Game.

There is presumption in the Trump persona, tooin his attempt to trademark Youre fired, after it became a catchphrase on The Apprentice, his top-rated reality show; in his offer to donate $5 million to a charity of President Obamas choosing if Obama would release to him, Trump, his college transcripts. There is petulancein his public feuds with Rosie ODonnell (A total loser), Seth Meyers (Hes a stutterer), Robert De Niro (Were not dealing with Albert Einstein) and Arianna Huffington (Unattractive both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man...).

There is, too, an almostalmostendearing cluelessness to the primal way he signals his pride in himself. He poses for pictures with his suit jacket flaring open, his hands on his hips, index and ring fingers pointing inevitably groinwarda great-ape fitness and genital display if ever there was one. After he bought the moribund Gulf+Western Building in New York Citys Columbus Circle, skinned it down, covered it in gold-colored glass, converted it into a luxury hotel and residence, and reinforced it with steel and concrete to make it less subject to swaying in the wind, Trump boasted to The New York Times that it was going to be the stiffest building in the city. If he was aware of his own psychic subtext, he gave no indication.

Donald Trump the person was not always Donald Trump the phenomenon. He began his career in his fathers company, building modestly priced rental properties in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, which is to the New York real estate world what Waffle House is to the high-end restaurant industry. He made his move into Manhattan in 1971, and while his interests and appetites were clearly, gaudily upscale, he was, in his own vainglorious way, something of a man of the people. When the city couldnt manage to get Wollman Rink in Central Park renovated on time, Trump offered to take the project over, got it done within months and gave the city change back from its original budget. Yes, the name Trump would forever appear in conspicuous all-caps on the retaining walls surrounding the rink, but a civic good guy deserves a little recognition, doesnt he? He was married to the same woman for fifteen years, they had three children together, and if the first of them was named, no surprise, Donald, well, what of it? We had two George Bushes and two John Adamses, didnt we? He was socially and politically moderate: pro-choice, troubled by the unregulated flow of money into political campaigns, a champion of universal health care. Our goal should be clear, he said. Our people are our greatest asset.

It is a matter of historical record that that Trump is no more, that a large, loud foghorn of a man has taken his place, a man whose business acumen is undeniable, but whose public persona has become, to many, unbearable. To call Donald Trump a narcissist is to state what seems clinically obvious. There is the egotism of narcissism, the grandiosity of narcissism, the social obtuseness of narcissism. He has his believers, yes. Love him or hate him, Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants, and sets out to get it, no holds barred, said one. Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money. But it was Trump himself who spoke those admiring words, which makes them comical, sure, but troubling as well.