Dan P. McAdams - The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological Reckoning

DAN P. McADAMS

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: McAdams, Dan P., author.

Title: The strange case of Donald J. Trump : a psychological reckoning /

Dan P. McAdams.

Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2020] |

Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019040653 (print) |

LCCN 2019040654 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780197507445 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197507469 (epub) |

ISBN 9780197507452 (updf) | ISBN 9780197507476 (online)

Subjects: LCSH: Trump, Donald, 1946 | Trump, Donald, 1946Psychology. |

PresidentsUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC E913 .M43 2020 (print) | LCC E913 (ebook) |

DDC 973.933092dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019040653

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019040654

For Everett Daniel, who will look back and know more

My largest debt of gratitude goes to my wife Rebecca, who has always supported my projects, including even one so quixotic as this book. She read all of the chapters, too, and provided expert editorial assistance. The silver medal goes to Will Dunlop, my good friend and colleague who teaches personality psychology and conducts cutting-edge research on personality and life stories at the University of California, Riverside. Will read all the chapters and provided detailed critiques and suggestions, most of which I incorporated into the final version. So did Rick Robins, whose astute critiques helped to improve the final product. Let me also express a debt of gratitude to Lynn Goldschmidt, who provided expert editing and encouragement toward the end of my writing, when I had begun to lose confidence that what I was doing was truly a worthy project.

Let me also thank Renee Engeln, Jon Adler, and Emily Neuberger, who read early chapters and provided wise feedback, as well as Gina Logan and Keith Cox who have also given suggestions for the project. Special thanks also go to my brother, Matt Lucas, who read nearly all of the manuscript and sent me helpful comments and strong support all along. And a warm shout-out and thank you to my dear friends, Grant Krafft and Patty Cain, with whom I have had innumerable conversations over the years about President Trump, politics, and the world in general.

I owe a delayed dose of gratitude to Don Peck, at The Atlantic magazine, who originally commissioned me to write a psychological piece on Donald Trump in the early spring of 2016, and who, along with a team of fact-checkers and other experts, helped me fashion my ideas into a coherent article. If he had never contacted me, I doubt that I would have ever considered the idea of exploring the strange case of Donald J. Trump. I believe that Jonathan Haidt may have been instrumental in convincing Don to contact me, so special thanks to Jonathan as well. Let me also thank David Doerer and Hal Bush, who both urged me to write a book on Trump a year or so before I resolved to do so. And let me offer thanks to Joseph Carroll, the editor of Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, who encouraged me to explore the psychology of Donald Trump within the provocative context of human evolution, which ultimately led to the ideas presented in this books chapter, Primate. Mike Bailey and Jon Maner both provided invaluable assistance for that effort, as well, for which I am also very grateful. Abby Gross at OUP has been supportive throughout, and I am very thankful for her encouragement and sponsorship. Let me also thank the four anonymous reviewers, enlisted by Abby, who provided both support and critique of the project.

I have had many discussions about the psychology of Donald Trump with good colleagues over the past three years, and I know that those exchanges have shaped this book in many ways. I am especially appreciative of my dear colleagues in the Society for Personology, all of whom are dedicated to the idea that psychology can and should inform the study of biography, the apprehension of full human lives in their full social, ideological, economic, cultural, and historical contexts. In this regard, I would like to thank Jim Anderson, Sunil Bhatia, Jack Bauer, Susan Bluck, Jim Clark, Alan Elms, Mark Freeman, Gary Gregg, Phil Hammack, Ravenna Helson, Jeannette Haviland Jones, Ruthellen Josselson, Jennifer Pals Lilgendahl, Jack Martin, Kate McLean, Ed de St. Aubin, Monisha Pasupathi, Mac Runyan, Brian Schiff, Todd Schultz, and Paul Wink. Let me reserve special thanks for Jefferson Singer, whose beautifully written psychobiography of Robert Louis Stevenson provided me with the central conceit for this project, drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Let me also acknowledge with gratitude the late Jay Einhorn, who shared ideas with me that found their way into my writing, and the late Joe Markowitz who, like Jay, offered clear-eyed and insightful observations about the life and personality of Donald Trump.

Finally I would like to thank the Dean of the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University, David Figlio. David strongly urged me to seize the moment and write this book during my sabbatical year. I would like to thank my recent and current graduate studentsin particular, Jen Guo, Raffi Cowan, Hollen Reischer, and Ariana Turnerwho continued to do stellar work on their own research studies even as I was severely distracted during the period when I was writing this book. Let me also acknowledge the Foley Family Foundation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who provided funding for my students and me for over two decades, as we conducted research on adult personality and social development under the aegis of the Foley Center for the Study of Lives at Northwestern University.

In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, an upstanding London physician struggles to suppress a primal force inside of him. He invents a potion that separates out his good public self (Jekyll) from his inner demon (Hyde). Drinking the elixir literally transforms Jekyll into Hyde, a younger and more energized version of himself, a new person who revels in acts of wanton violence and lust. Mr. Hyde murders a man, and he becomes more violent and vengeful over time. Eventually, he takes over as the dominant persona, and Jekyll shrinks into dissipation. In a desperate last act, Jekyll manages to regain control long enough to write a confession. And then, he commits suicide, killing them both off.