To take just one possible indicator, if the worldwide stampede to safe haven investments is anything to go by, there is a general sense of foreboding out there regarding President Trump’s election to a second term in office and the deleterious effects of this on the global economy, the stability of international relations and the likelihood of war with China, the genocide in Gaza, the gathering pace of global warming, authoritarian rule, and the suppression of dissent.

Moreover, if past performance is the best predictor of future performance, then the chaos and unpredictability of his first few months in office suggest that, for at least the next four years or so, there is much more of the same or worse to come.

However, predicting precisely — or even roughly — what he will do next, where and how bad it will be, will continue to be difficult because of his psychological make-up, because he has surrounded himself with sycophants of broadly the same type who will do his bidding without question or hesitation, and because he is doing everything that he can to increase and concentrate in himself the already (unprecedented) great power of his office. It would seem that constraints on his fast-growing personal authority are being abolished or undermined by the day.

Yet despite all of this, while there has been much general discussion of what many consider to be Trump’s scrofulous, malevolent and rebarbative nature, there have been few detailed accounts of the behaviours that comprise his egomaniacal condition, which is perhaps best classified formally as the mental illness known as narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).

Clinical psychology is still unable to tell us much of (Popperian) scientific merit about the aetiology of mental illness (the persistence of fanciful ideologies — primitive superstitions — like psychoanalysis is testament to this), but it is good at identifying consistent patterns of behaviour that are associated with different psychological maladies.

An authoritative description of NPD is provided by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed, Text Revision (Zimmerman, 2023 ) and is set out below (with some minor explicatory additions).

Those afflicted with NPD are characterised by a persistent pattern of grandiosity (pompous superiority or pretentiousness), a constant need for admiration and a more or less complete lack of empathy. To qualify, a sufferer must exhibit five or more of the following traits:

• An exaggerated, unfounded conviction of their own importance and talents (grandiosity)
• Preoccupation with fantasies of their unlimited achievements, influence, power, and intelligence
• A belief that they are special and unique and should associate only with people of the highest calibre
• A need to be admired unconditionally and constantly
• A sense of entitlement (and impunity)
• Exploitation of others to achieve their own goals
• A lack of empathy or the ability and interest to understand what others are experiencing or feeling – to put themselves in another person’s shoes
• Envy of others and a belief that others envy them
• Arrogance and haughtiness

People who have NPD recognise these qualities in themselves and — crucially — regard them as exemplary and therefore strive to strengthen and maintain them.

It follows that their self-esteem is intimately bound up with the extent to which they see themselves as being admired or revered by others and they are highly sensitive to this. Their almost complete psychological dependence on constant admiration makes them intolerant of the slightest criticism or accusation of failure and they are therefore easily provoked – typical responses are rage and contempt and vicious counterattack. Extrapolations afforded by the addition of great personal power to this volatile mix are not difficult to imagine.

The daily observations of casual empiricism suggest strongly that Trump’s personality fits snugly with this frightening profile in its entirety, frequently it would seem at the highest extremities of each trait. This corroborates popular misgivings and makes almost certain a short- to medium-term future that is much worse than now on all of the counts mentioned in the opening paragraph. The combination of great and growing personal power and the president’s egomania is clearly incendiary in all of these respects. And the complexities and risks of managing interpersonal and international relations (which in his case will be much more closely intertwined than is usual) will rise accordingly, as many people and countries have already found out to their cost.

It is, of course, not accidental that the election of authoritarian heads of state like Trump (Javier Milei in Argentina, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, and so on) should coincide with the breakdown of late-stage capitalism and the decline of US hegemony. More than ever, at such times “hard” men and women are needed to control the increasing unrest — “the trampling and roar” — of the “bewildered herd”, and to stem the rot. Trump et al. are products and essential assets of a capitalist system in distress.

Trump’s palpable derangement is convenient also because his antics provide the mainstream media with endless copy that distracts popular attention away from and covers up, or obscures, some of the worst current excesses of capitalism’s desperation, most notably the genocide in Gaza; the killing and starvation in places like Syria, Yemen, South Sudan, and Somalia; the acceleration of extractivism (“drill baby drill”); and the increasingly heavy-handed clamp down on dissent.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.