In an op-ed article in today's USA Today, Dr. Robert Epstein, a senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, looks at the behavior pattern of sociopath and pathological liar Donald "Rump" Trump and concludes that he suffers from "sympathetic audience control." While disagreeing with 27 mental health professionals who have deemed Rump a danger due to his malignant narcissistic personality disorder and other issues ("The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump"), Epstein believes that Rump is controlled in small time "windows" by reactions he gets from his audiences, either positive or negative:
"Not only do his views shift, he also has no trouble denying, entirely without guile, in my view, what he said yesterday. All that’s shiny and real to him is what friends or foes are saying inside those small time windows. Everything else is fuzzy, and that’s why he can so easily tell so many lies. From his perspective, lying has no meaning. Only reacting has meaning. Trump reacts." (our emphasis)Rump's mood shifts from, for example, insulting "Little Rocket Man" Kim Jong Un to lavishing praise on him just weeks later are a manifestation of this audience control syndrome: if his audience is critical, he's belligerent, if his audience is friendly, he's fawning, telling them what he thinks they want to hear to get their approval. How many times did we hear Rump praise a dictator like Putin because "he said nice things about me?" It's also the basis for his incompetent governing style and lack of results. Epstein continues:
"The small time window and sympathetic audience control also explain why Trump always seems to be creating foreign policy on the fly, why his meetings with world leaders rarely produce tangible results, why he can’t get congressional deals, and why he is almost certainly incapable of negotiating those famous bilateral agreements that were supposed to replace the multinational treaties he has swept aside."While Epstein may diverge from his mental health colleagues on Rump's mental disorders, he's no less worried about the consequences of Rump's behavior:
"If I’m right, and I’m pretty sure I am, Trump is capable of only a minimal level of analytical or critical thinking. Perhaps more alarming, our president — the putative leader of the free world — doesn’t believe in anything and he rarely, if ever, means anything he says. The impulsive tweets, the conservative court appointments, the unfunded tax cuts, the obsession with a wall, the swipes at immigrants — all are byproducts (dross, if you will) of sympathetic audience control operating in small time windows. There are no principles operating here, just gusts of wind.We don't give a flying fig about the "rest of his life" after the Presidency. Maybe he'll buy a nice dacha outside of Moscow. It's the severe damage he's doing now to this country and its democratic institutions, while careening from one tweet to another, and from one lie to the next playing for his audience's approval.
And if I’m right, Trump will continue to function this way — blindly, erratically and reactively, without principle or direction — for the rest of his life." (our emphasis)
