Presidential Psychopath or Sociopath?

I grew up when the black and white television show, The Untouchables, was popular.  We seem to have a fascination with gangsters as evidenced by their popularity as an entertainment topic.  Recently, I’ve been watching reruns of The Sopranos with its lead character, Tony Soprano.  Tony’s analyst called him a psychopath and a narcissist, just not to his face.  Tony was described by another as someone who had never been able to accept not getting what he wanted.  Tony played by a twisted rule book designed by the original old-school gangsters of the 30s.  This code of conduct had nothing to do with morality, the rules merely provided structure for the criminal organization that allowed it to function.

Cast of Sopranos 

Tony also treated women like Kleenex, useful for a bit of relief, but disposable.  He claimed to be religious and he used that religion to provide some additional structure to his life.  He had no use for the Ten Commandments and in fact, he had broken them all, some many times.  Those religious rules were for the rest of his family, just not him.

Tony never met a carbohydrate that he didn’t like.  In fact, much of the conversation in the show revolves around food.  Pass the ziti, hand me a cannoli, I’ll have a gabagool (capicola) sandwich with peppers, were all part of the dialogue.  The main characters seemed to fall into two body types normal and morbidly obese with a preponderance of the latter.  James Gandolfini who played Tony Soprano was 6’-1” tall and weighed 275.  In the show, his only exercise was sex and walking down his driveway to pick up the morning paper.

Gabagool (capicola)

While Tony Soprano was a fictional character, he has counterparts in real life.  Some of these counterparts are certainly members of what we would call organized crime, then there are others that we all see regularly in the news.  We call them politicians and their corruption is just as evil as the gangsters’.  I won’t use his name, but if you read this far, I’m sure you have seen the parallels between Tony Soprano and a certain past occupant of the White House.

A narcissistic sociopath who must get whatever he wants, who treats women like objects for his own amusement, and whose moral compass has no needle.  A man who is blatantly corrupt and sees his corruption as a strong point of his personality and finds others without his warped ideals to be losers and suckers.  Does anyone come to mind who seems to share the personality traits and even the physical stature of Tony Soprano?  Well, in the White House since the 70s, we’ve had Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and old what’s his name.  Anyone come to mind?

Yes, it would seem that Tony Soprano has a doppelganger.  Just as it has been with mobsters throughout the years, there is the thin façade of respectability that attempts to hide the corrupt intent.  Al Capone, Pablo Escobar, John Dillinger, Bonnie Parker, and Clyde Barrow, Whitey Bulger, Jessie James, and more recently, John Gotti, all enjoyed certain popularity with those who weren’t their victims. 

We have now seen a new type of mobster make it into the White House to occupy the most important position in the land.  We have seen him use the power of that office in furtherance of his own aggrandizement and criminal enterprise.  This was a man who, in business, saw corruption as a necessary tool to be used to gather wealth.  Lying and grifting were second nature.  We saw him openly try to claim that when the G7 summit was to be held in the United States, his Doral resort was the only suitable venue in the nation.  He was actually surprised by the backlash of disbelief.  We saw him use his (actually our) Justice Department to investigate his rivals in Congress and the press.

We saw him openly hand out top administration jobs to obvious grifters like himself.  We saw these appointees regularly engineer policy to help other businesses that could provide money or other things of value to promote Job One for all politicians, getting reelected.

Those who might take umbrage with the tagging of our 45th president a psychopath need to thoroughly understand his qualifications for this dubious honor.  There is a fine line between a sociopath and a psychopath but both are subsets of another general classification of APD or antisocial personality disorder.  The difference between the two might be subtle and I will grant you that the individual in question could fall into either camp.  The chart below describes the two classifications and you can draw your own conclusions.

I wouldn't fault you for either choice and I will provide you with another illustration to guide you in your decision process.

Most mental health professionals will agree that both groups have some trait similarities.  A common disregard for the rights of others, abhorrence for social convention, a lack of guilt and empathy, they take no responsibility for their actions, they are deceitful and manipulative, and they are highly impulsive.  However we label 45, it is safe to say this is not what we want as a role model or representative for our nation on the world stage.  We wouldn't want our children to grow up like him, we wouldn't want our daughters to marry someone like him, we wouldn't want him as a friend.  

The mere fact that we are still discussing him six months into his successor's term in office, tells you how dangerous I think he still happens to be.  He is a powerful force with a following.  He is still widely supported within his party by serving members of Congress.  He is still out there claiming to be the legitimate president of the United States.  He still claims he will be reinstated next August after he successfully "wins" the election through audits being conducted by his handpicked "auditors."  That is a scary delusion held by a sick mind and condoned by members of his party and millions of supporters.  Psychopath or sociopath may be debatable, but this individual needs to be called out every time he opens his mouth.  We can't watch another Adolf Hitler lull a nation into lethargy and provide for its demise.

I will leave you with one final thought.  About 1% of Americans are psychopaths, although such people tend to be concentrated in some areas: as many as 12% of major corporate CEOs are believed to be psychopaths as well as 15% of our prison population.  I think the main subject here belongs in that latter group.