This very much accords with the way I've been thinking about the collective mental health crisis we find ourselves in.
For what it's worth, here is something I posted on it a few months back:
A conservative friend whose respectfully contrarian positions have inspired a fair amount of discussion during the Trump era, posted a comment about voters who simply compared their economic status and well-being during the Trump and Biden presidencies and cast their votes accordingly. But being the spawn of a psychologist and of a culture of psychology that flourished once upon a time in the mid- and late 20th century, I have to squint at this through another lens.
It was asked, why former center-left Democrats like Joe Rogan and Elon Musk would come out for Trump.. When it comes to people like Rogan, Musk, RFK Jr., Bret Weinstein, etc., I think it's less a rational calculus of life under a Trump administration vs. life under Biden as it is a spreading condition among certain voters--straight white males in particular, but also women like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Candace Owens and a howling babel of influencers and followers. It's called narcissistic woundedness.
There's a gaping wound in the center of many men--women too but men in the extreme--a sense that the world is rigged against them in a culture defined by diversity and multiculturalism, and that it threatens the ground of their being.
The gateway drug is finding themselves overwhelmingly passionate about niche issues and niche remedies--anti-vaxing, anti-abortionism, anti-regulation, anti-aging, anti-endocrine-blockers, testosterone replacement therapy, child sex trafficking, trans athletics, gun rights, fracking, climate change denialism, and on and on. It's not that these issues don't have their quotient of validity, at least in terms of reasoned dialectic, but that the hysterias they arouse can generate great billowing smoke screens of self-righteous anger around that gaping wound--smoke screens that simultaneously obscure it and reveal its proximity.
Above any and every issue, there is something about Trump that triggers an identification with the narcissistic wound, because he embodies it He is a walking, talking, ceaselessly braying avatar of narcissistic woundedness He is the gaping white hole in the soul that sucks a huge proportion of the national psyche into himself.
Thanks, Claire, for the exhaustive amplification of this thesis.
Amazing article, that profiles the roots and characteristics of NPD, Trump, and Musk so well. I have been searching for articles on this topic recently and most of them are from the first go round with Trump, so I applaud you for bringing it forth again because it is so important to understand.
One thing I wanted to add. Fundamentally this is psychological warfare, and I think we need psychologists to help us out not just with diagnosis and describing the problem, but guiding us in keeping our own minds grounded and safe from this “infection”. Because even when you see the abuse, your response can be affected in all sorts of ways you don’t realise by the nuttiness narcissist abusers draw you into.
Victims of emotional abuse by narcissists who are stuck in these relationships get help from therapists. We need to be asking psychologists for the this help from a victims perspective now.
There are playbooks for narcissists but there are also traps and patterns that victims of narcissists fall into, even the ones that realise it’s abuse (such as Trump opposition), and we all need to be educated on those traps now so we can mount an effective resistance.
Republicans in Congress may be a lost cause, but I think Democrats in Congress should seriously be talking to narcissistic abuse experts that help victims to figure out effective responses and even how to stay sane in this madness. I hope they are.
dear psychometrically rigorous Claire. I've still to get the drop on Substack's internal search function What i need to find right now is that post- was it from your good chum Judith? - on the complacent male superiors who dissuaded the gals on watch at the Gaza border from reacting to what they were seeing, immediately prior to Oct 7 ? Can you link me to that? Pretty please?
I've written a few things about this. I don't remember whether Judith did. Could you be thinking of a podcast I did with her? If you search under the terms "Gaza" and "IDF," do you see it? (Did you know that you can do a search of everything we've ever published on CG? Use the little magnifying glass on the upper right, if you're at a desktop--I'm not sure about how to do it in the app, but I'm sure it's possible.)
I'm wondering if you might be thinking of a post by Vivian Bercovici? Try searching for her posts on CG and see if one of them is the one you're thinking of. Or perhaps it was in Global Eyes? If you can remember anything else about it, it might help me narrow it down.
When I was young before the movies newsreels were shown. More often than not they contained reminders of atom bombs, the horrible mushrooms were very popular and often shown in slow motion.
If for younger ones the fear hasn't gotten engraved so thoroughly I share this pic that popped up in my alerts today:
Claire, there's a solution here no one has considered: make your kittens president.
Hear me out. We could wire up some elaborate contraption with buttons and tuna to express their carefully considered policy decisions. They would be far less susceptible to Russian or Chinese interference (Russian cat food is inferior and Chinese cat toys are flimsy.) Even a total random output of the tuna machine would be better than the intentional malevolent chaos spewing from the White House right now. As they don't have opposible thumbs they can't open the nuclear code thingie and destroy the world in a tantrum. And the American public would love them. The cat half at least (and really, do we trust the judgement of the dog people??) They can't really complain that they are unserious candidates after electing Donald Trump.
Desperate times call for creative ideas. Just sayin'
Every time you write something this long, I know its going to be good, and I have to find time to read it. Excellent piece, well sourced and exceedingly well argued. I even learned two new words, “ululate” and “effete.” I am going to be quoting the paragraph below, it should become a meme, and therein lies the real tragedy. There are lots of people who are willing to support him and refuse reality.
An example of submission to the powerful leader in an act of symbiosis and identification. As you can see, Grok offered him the opportunity to learn more about the reality of these achievements. He presumably didn't take it. The reason it seems that so many of his supporters are idiots is not necessarily that they're unintelligent. It's that their desire to merge with their idealized image is overwhelmingly more powerful and primal than their desire to think carefully about trade policy.
(Sorry on length.) From Ryan's review....It was Freud who said that “love and work” were the ingredients of happiness, but it was Marx whose “Notes on James Mill” gave an exalted picture of work in which each person worked to satisfy the human needs of the other and valued what they received just because it embodied that mutual concern.
Although Fromm seemed so well suited to the Frankfurt School, things did not go smoothly. The rise of Hitler meant that the institute’s resources were first transferred to Geneva, then, thanks to Fromm’s own negotiations, the institute itself moved to Columbia University. Fromm was the first member of the institute to go, in 1934. It was a highly productive move, even though his relationship with Horkheimer and the institute began to fray soon after. The problem was Theodor Adorno. Whether, as Friedman surmises, Adorno was eager to supplant Fromm as Horkheimer’s favorite collaborator or not, Adorno certainly thought that Fromm was rejecting far too much of Freud’s view of human nature. Like Herbert Marcuse two decades later, Adorno thought that once Fromm rejected Freud’s theory of instinctual sexual and aggressive drives, he had thrown out something essential.
Adorno seems to have suspected what Marcuse articulated more sharply: that Fromm was not a revolutionary who thought that only with the overthrow of the current social order could we expect human happiness, but a meliorist. He thought he could show his patients in his psychotherapeutic practice, and later the readers of his many best sellers, how to be happy and useful on the basis of their own inner resources even if consumer society provided little help.
The conflict with Horkheimer and Adorno, which ended with Fromm being dismissed from the institute, was dispiriting, but New York gave him exactly what he needed. He became close friends with the Columbia social scientists, and widened his horizons. Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict found him more than receptive to the insights of the new cultural anthropology. Simultaneously, he became a close colleague of neo-Freudians such as Harry Stack Sullivan and Karen Horney. His emotional life was not neglected; his attractiveness to women much older than himself was still strong, and he had a long affair with Horney (whose daughter he analyzed in defiance both of orthodoxy and common sense), as well as with the African-American dancer and choreographer Katherine Dunham.
The outcome was his first and in many ways best book, Escape from Freedom. His studies in working-class political attitudes had revealed that many working- and lower-middle-class Germans had unexpectedly authoritarian attitudes. Today, we are unsurprised by the conservative moral, religious, racial, and political views of many white working-class Americans. Eighty years ago, the same attitudes came as a surprise to investigators. Escape from Freedom has a simple explanation:
It is the thesis of this book that modern man, freed from the bonds of pre-individualistic society, which simultaneously gave him security and limited him, has not gained freedom in the positive sense of the realization of his individual self; that is, the expression of his intellectual, emotional and sensuous potentialities. Freedom, though it has brought him independence and rationality, has made him isolated and, thereby, anxious and powerless. This isolation is unbearable and the alternatives he is confronted with are either to escape from the burden of his freedom into new dependencies and submission, or to advance to the full realization of positive freedom which is based upon the uniqueness and individuality of man.
That striking dichotomy—total submission and quest for dependency or confident self-assertion—is characteristic of Fromm, and a good part of his appeal to many of his readers. But the heart of Escape was Fromm’s exploration of the different ways in which we evade the anxieties of freedom.
He was associated with them, but I'm not entirely sure why. I think they drew on his work, but I don't think he drew on theirs.
I'd say it's more accurate to call him a neo-Freudian than it is to call him a member of the Frankfurt school. I suspect he's lumped in that category because he knew them, because he wrote about psychoanalysis and Marxism, and because he was associated with a number of leftist causes. But the Frankfurt clique thought him insufficiently politically radical, and his views about economics are the least interesting aspect of his work. They're kind of naïve and tedious, actually. His best work was in the domain of psychology, where he was truly insightful and original.
Sheds light on this, from Alan Ryan's review of Friedman's The Lives of Erich Fromm in NYRB. the crucial event was his attachment at the end of the decade to the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, founded in 1923 under Carl Grünberg, an adherent of Soviet-style Marxism, but directed from 1930 by Max Horkheimer, who created what subsequently became known as “the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School.”
Fromm was a natural recruit. He was a Freudian and a Marxist, in neither case a rigidly orthodox adherent to the faith. He was unusual among practicing analysts in having no medical training, a fact that undermined his credibility with analysts in New York when he came to the United States a few years later. Nor was he taken with the deterministic, almost mechanical view of social and economic life that attracted so many Marxists. Marx’s early writings, which Fromm translated into English in the 1960s, were discovered in the late 1920s, and revealed a humanist Marx whose thoughts on the self-estrangement of both workers and capitalists within the market economy provided the basis for a critique of modern society that need not attach itself to an increasingly implausible story about the inevitability of proletarian revolution.
There was a strongly commonsensical aspect to Fromm’s position, one of the things that accounts for his extraordinary success as a popular writer. So far as contriving to unite the insights of Freud and Marx was concerned, his view was that Freud focused too narrowly and too exclusively on the individual. For Fromm, the individual’s character was the result of both the inbuilt psychological drives that Freud described and the cultural setting within which individuals had to make their way. The scientific, materialist Marx made individuals not much more than cogs in a machine operating blindly according to its—or his—own iron laws; the Marx concerned with the ethical disasters of a world in which we sacrifice everything to the dictates of the marketplace was a much more natural complement to Freud. It was Freud who said that “love and work” were the ingredients of happiness, but it was Marx whose “Notes on James Mill” gave an exalted picture of work in which each person worked to satisfy the human needs of the other and valued what they received just because it embodied that mutual concern.
Although Fromm seemed so well suited to the Frankfurt School, things did not go smoothly. The rise of Hitler meant that the institute’s resources were first transferred to Geneva, then, thanks to Fromm’s own negotiations, the institute itself moved to Columbia University. Fromm was the first member of the institute to go, in 1934. It was a highly productive move, even though his relationship with Horkheimer and the institute began to fray soon after. The problem was Theodor Adorno. Whether, as Friedman surmises, Adorno was eager to supplant Fromm as Horkheimer’s favorite collaborator or not, Adorno certainly thought that Fromm was rejecting far too much of Freud’s view of human nature. Like Herbert Marcuse two decades later, Adorno thought that once Fromm rejected Freud’s theory of instinctual sexual and aggressive drives, he had thrown out something essential.
Adorno seems to have suspected what Marcuse articulated more sharply: that Fromm was not a revolutionary who thought that only with the overthrow of the current social order could we expect human happiness, but a meliorist. He thought he could show his patients in his psychotherapeutic practice, and later the readers of his many best sellers, how to be happy and useful on the basis of their own inner resources even if consumer society provided little help.
I read "Impeach Him" for the 3rd time now, each time learning something more than my previous read-through. A few remarks...
01. Claire fucking gobsmacks me. She researched, strategized, wrote, edited, and proofread this magnum opus in 5 days since her prior magnum opus? In 3 days, I am only on my 3rd read-through! Unsure how she does it, but perhaps Claire is superhuman?
02. "Impeach Him" strikes me more as a Taxonomy of Fear, a Taxonomy everyone not willing to genuflect before his supreme deity, DJT, should fear. The ankle-biters will nip and snarl, and do, but Claire, I believe, is extraordinarily brave. I applaud her. (Although I am ready to pony up to cover her costs in hiring a private security detail. I sure do not want her 'disappeared.')
And, finally
03. Thanks to "Impeach Him" I want to understand more... More about the logistics of what occurs + the repercussions and reverberations that will occur in financial markets first and later in our lives, professional and private. (Well, formerly private.)
I share three links in a reply below (rather than here, to avoid the phenomena in which the links consume the page and displace my text). Read them in sequential order to obtain a better, deeper understanding.
One truth, however, is self-evident: Musk and DOGE do NOT operate with transparency, but occultly. Their hidden efforts and objectives, not just the ostensible, might delight the MAGAts in their broad outlines - no understanding required! - but the rest of us should pay heed.
Interesting analysis of Donald Trump's psyche. It really gets to the heart of what makes Trump tick. Maybe all presidential candidates should undergo a full psychological examination before they are allowed to run, to weed out the psychologically abnormal or disturbed so we don't end up with another psychopathic president like Trump. Just an idea.
“While Trump’s support remains anywhere near its current levels, [impeachment] is inconceivable. And there’s no point shouting inconceivable scenarios to the heavens.
"This is it. We’re stuck with this man, this administration, this party for (at least) the next four years."
According to Damon Linker on Substack
I agree that at this point, it is inconceivable that Congress will act...
Yet, we must struggle to make inconceivable scenarios, conceivable.
The case against the madness must be tried and argued in the court of public opinion, it can be won.
So a la Churchill...
"[We must have] full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, ...we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our [Constitution], to ride out the storm of [rabid DOGes], and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.
...we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in [the executive branch], we shall fight [i]n the [courts] and [Congress], we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength [o]n the air[waves and Substack], we shall defend our [Democracy], whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the coasts, we shall fight [Musk's] landing [teams], we shall fight in the [red heartland] and in the [blue cities], we shall fight in the hills [and the purple mountain states]; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our [friends] beyond the seas [or to the north and south], ... would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the [Old] World, with all its [history] and [humility], steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the [not so new]."
Sorry to get so poetic and lofty, but the analysis of what is possible must be informed not simply by what is realistic today, but what is realistic over time with committed, courageous leadership.
From National Review-"Trump has always wanted to develop a crime-infested, corrupt, dangerous strip of land by the sea. But enough about Atlantic City . . ."
Claire's dismay is both insufficient and slightly displaced. Of course Trump is insane; we knew this; people increasingly are overall, including him. But the bigger problem is that the power and scope of his amply manifest insanity is redefining sanity downward. Mental health is a construct, duh: it's the professionally adjudicated gap (if any) between personal reality maps and public ones. And this guy is redrawing the public ones. Grant him sufficient success in that, and he stops being crazy by definition. Fear THAT.
Great piece, Claire. In an everyday world, what the orange doofus has done so far would be sufficient to invoke Article 25. I am all for impeaching the lunatic. My only concern is that we will end up with JD Vance, who is Peter Theil's monkey. Hard choice!
Claire this is an excellent analysis though I'm afraid your pleas to Congress and (implicitly) anyone who can do something will prove fruitless. There is however more to say. Trump is as you describe but he is not entirely stupid. He's cunning. He's had a lifetime of getting away with stuff and he's doing it as I write. There is a method in his madness, to put it another way, and so far no one seems to know how to counter it. Whatever happens, he can adjust. He throws "grenades", waits for the smoke to clear and then figures out a way to "win" out of the ensuing chaos. It is frequently not winning at all - vide Canada and Mexico but he claims it and it works for him. Is there a "tipping point"? So far not. Understanding why this has happened is beyond your analysis in this instance and must go beyond psychology. It seems to me that the title on top of what you write is the key: globalisation is unnerving people all over the world and into this uncertainty step monsters promising ice cream if only they are allowed to pull up drawbridges they promise provide security. What they and their acolytes don't get is that globalisation is an unstoppable process over any reasonable period, that it always works itself out in the ongoing search for getting more out of less on every level. That can happen in lots of ways and is the place where leaders should be active, but that is not what the authoritarian demagogue offers. In the end such people destroy what they think they are going to save. The Reagan clip you included in this piece is very apposite. In this term, Trump has managed to secure himself against removal by the 25th amendment by appointing lickspittles to his administration, and it seems extremely unlikely that Congress will do what you urge it to do. As you say, Trump means to rule for life. We live in dark times. Thanks Claire for all you do.
It's never possible to predict the future, and it's even less possible when dealing with a situation is volatile as this one. You never know when someone who has been a coward all his life will suddenly discover the unexpected pleasure of courage. You never know what outrage will, for some reason, resonate with the public in a way none of the previous ones have. I'm not making any predictions. The only prediction in which I feel absolutely confident is that Trump will never, ever change; his pathology will only get worse; and he will arrogate to himself as much power as we allow him to take, steal from us as much as we allow him to steal, and grow more authoritarian by the day. That's a constant. The question is how the rest of us will react to it.
Claire with all due respect you make numerous predictions in your piece. It's natural that you should do so. All predictions are open to falsification by events. At the mo many of Trump's more wild actions are not only held up in court but in the process of getting "walked back". It's part of his technique. He gets away with what he can, and he gets away with a lot. The best analysis I've seen of how he does it is by James D Zirin, *Plaintiff in chief*. This does not in any way contradict your analysis of who he is.
Sorry, I wrote that carelessly. I was (in my mind) responding to the specific prediction you made: "Trump has managed to secure himself against removal by the 25th amendment by appointing lickspittles to his administration, and it seems extremely unlikely that Congress will do what you urge it to do." I agree that I made numerous predictions in my piece. I also agreed that what you say is more likely than not. I just can't say I know for sure what's going on in the souls and the conscience of his entourage and of the members of Congress. So I don't rule out the possibility that this will simply become too much for a few GOP representatives to bear--and we only need a few.
This very much accords with the way I've been thinking about the collective mental health crisis we find ourselves in.
For what it's worth, here is something I posted on it a few months back:
A conservative friend whose respectfully contrarian positions have inspired a fair amount of discussion during the Trump era, posted a comment about voters who simply compared their economic status and well-being during the Trump and Biden presidencies and cast their votes accordingly. But being the spawn of a psychologist and of a culture of psychology that flourished once upon a time in the mid- and late 20th century, I have to squint at this through another lens.
It was asked, why former center-left Democrats like Joe Rogan and Elon Musk would come out for Trump.. When it comes to people like Rogan, Musk, RFK Jr., Bret Weinstein, etc., I think it's less a rational calculus of life under a Trump administration vs. life under Biden as it is a spreading condition among certain voters--straight white males in particular, but also women like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Candace Owens and a howling babel of influencers and followers. It's called narcissistic woundedness.
There's a gaping wound in the center of many men--women too but men in the extreme--a sense that the world is rigged against them in a culture defined by diversity and multiculturalism, and that it threatens the ground of their being.
The gateway drug is finding themselves overwhelmingly passionate about niche issues and niche remedies--anti-vaxing, anti-abortionism, anti-regulation, anti-aging, anti-endocrine-blockers, testosterone replacement therapy, child sex trafficking, trans athletics, gun rights, fracking, climate change denialism, and on and on. It's not that these issues don't have their quotient of validity, at least in terms of reasoned dialectic, but that the hysterias they arouse can generate great billowing smoke screens of self-righteous anger around that gaping wound--smoke screens that simultaneously obscure it and reveal its proximity.
Above any and every issue, there is something about Trump that triggers an identification with the narcissistic wound, because he embodies it He is a walking, talking, ceaselessly braying avatar of narcissistic woundedness He is the gaping white hole in the soul that sucks a huge proportion of the national psyche into himself.
Thanks, Claire, for the exhaustive amplification of this thesis.
Joseph Sobol
Amazing article, that profiles the roots and characteristics of NPD, Trump, and Musk so well. I have been searching for articles on this topic recently and most of them are from the first go round with Trump, so I applaud you for bringing it forth again because it is so important to understand.
One thing I wanted to add. Fundamentally this is psychological warfare, and I think we need psychologists to help us out not just with diagnosis and describing the problem, but guiding us in keeping our own minds grounded and safe from this “infection”. Because even when you see the abuse, your response can be affected in all sorts of ways you don’t realise by the nuttiness narcissist abusers draw you into.
Victims of emotional abuse by narcissists who are stuck in these relationships get help from therapists. We need to be asking psychologists for the this help from a victims perspective now.
There are playbooks for narcissists but there are also traps and patterns that victims of narcissists fall into, even the ones that realise it’s abuse (such as Trump opposition), and we all need to be educated on those traps now so we can mount an effective resistance.
Republicans in Congress may be a lost cause, but I think Democrats in Congress should seriously be talking to narcissistic abuse experts that help victims to figure out effective responses and even how to stay sane in this madness. I hope they are.
dear psychometrically rigorous Claire. I've still to get the drop on Substack's internal search function What i need to find right now is that post- was it from your good chum Judith? - on the complacent male superiors who dissuaded the gals on watch at the Gaza border from reacting to what they were seeing, immediately prior to Oct 7 ? Can you link me to that? Pretty please?
I've written a few things about this. I don't remember whether Judith did. Could you be thinking of a podcast I did with her? If you search under the terms "Gaza" and "IDF," do you see it? (Did you know that you can do a search of everything we've ever published on CG? Use the little magnifying glass on the upper right, if you're at a desktop--I'm not sure about how to do it in the app, but I'm sure it's possible.)
I'm wondering if you might be thinking of a post by Vivian Bercovici? Try searching for her posts on CG and see if one of them is the one you're thinking of. Or perhaps it was in Global Eyes? If you can remember anything else about it, it might help me narrow it down.
When I was young before the movies newsreels were shown. More often than not they contained reminders of atom bombs, the horrible mushrooms were very popular and often shown in slow motion.
If for younger ones the fear hasn't gotten engraved so thoroughly I share this pic that popped up in my alerts today:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DF8nb2SzcD6/?igsh=bXkyZTRyb3c5bmEz
Claire, there's a solution here no one has considered: make your kittens president.
Hear me out. We could wire up some elaborate contraption with buttons and tuna to express their carefully considered policy decisions. They would be far less susceptible to Russian or Chinese interference (Russian cat food is inferior and Chinese cat toys are flimsy.) Even a total random output of the tuna machine would be better than the intentional malevolent chaos spewing from the White House right now. As they don't have opposible thumbs they can't open the nuclear code thingie and destroy the world in a tantrum. And the American public would love them. The cat half at least (and really, do we trust the judgement of the dog people??) They can't really complain that they are unserious candidates after electing Donald Trump.
Desperate times call for creative ideas. Just sayin'
Every time you write something this long, I know its going to be good, and I have to find time to read it. Excellent piece, well sourced and exceedingly well argued. I even learned two new words, “ululate” and “effete.” I am going to be quoting the paragraph below, it should become a meme, and therein lies the real tragedy. There are lots of people who are willing to support him and refuse reality.
An example of submission to the powerful leader in an act of symbiosis and identification. As you can see, Grok offered him the opportunity to learn more about the reality of these achievements. He presumably didn't take it. The reason it seems that so many of his supporters are idiots is not necessarily that they're unintelligent. It's that their desire to merge with their idealized image is overwhelmingly more powerful and primal than their desire to think carefully about trade policy.
Thanks for the kind words. I'm very glad it was useful to you.
(Sorry on length.) From Ryan's review....It was Freud who said that “love and work” were the ingredients of happiness, but it was Marx whose “Notes on James Mill” gave an exalted picture of work in which each person worked to satisfy the human needs of the other and valued what they received just because it embodied that mutual concern.
Although Fromm seemed so well suited to the Frankfurt School, things did not go smoothly. The rise of Hitler meant that the institute’s resources were first transferred to Geneva, then, thanks to Fromm’s own negotiations, the institute itself moved to Columbia University. Fromm was the first member of the institute to go, in 1934. It was a highly productive move, even though his relationship with Horkheimer and the institute began to fray soon after. The problem was Theodor Adorno. Whether, as Friedman surmises, Adorno was eager to supplant Fromm as Horkheimer’s favorite collaborator or not, Adorno certainly thought that Fromm was rejecting far too much of Freud’s view of human nature. Like Herbert Marcuse two decades later, Adorno thought that once Fromm rejected Freud’s theory of instinctual sexual and aggressive drives, he had thrown out something essential.
Adorno seems to have suspected what Marcuse articulated more sharply: that Fromm was not a revolutionary who thought that only with the overthrow of the current social order could we expect human happiness, but a meliorist. He thought he could show his patients in his psychotherapeutic practice, and later the readers of his many best sellers, how to be happy and useful on the basis of their own inner resources even if consumer society provided little help.
The conflict with Horkheimer and Adorno, which ended with Fromm being dismissed from the institute, was dispiriting, but New York gave him exactly what he needed. He became close friends with the Columbia social scientists, and widened his horizons. Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict found him more than receptive to the insights of the new cultural anthropology. Simultaneously, he became a close colleague of neo-Freudians such as Harry Stack Sullivan and Karen Horney. His emotional life was not neglected; his attractiveness to women much older than himself was still strong, and he had a long affair with Horney (whose daughter he analyzed in defiance both of orthodoxy and common sense), as well as with the African-American dancer and choreographer Katherine Dunham.
The outcome was his first and in many ways best book, Escape from Freedom. His studies in working-class political attitudes had revealed that many working- and lower-middle-class Germans had unexpectedly authoritarian attitudes. Today, we are unsurprised by the conservative moral, religious, racial, and political views of many white working-class Americans. Eighty years ago, the same attitudes came as a surprise to investigators. Escape from Freedom has a simple explanation:
It is the thesis of this book that modern man, freed from the bonds of pre-individualistic society, which simultaneously gave him security and limited him, has not gained freedom in the positive sense of the realization of his individual self; that is, the expression of his intellectual, emotional and sensuous potentialities. Freedom, though it has brought him independence and rationality, has made him isolated and, thereby, anxious and powerless. This isolation is unbearable and the alternatives he is confronted with are either to escape from the burden of his freedom into new dependencies and submission, or to advance to the full realization of positive freedom which is based upon the uniqueness and individuality of man.
That striking dichotomy—total submission and quest for dependency or confident self-assertion—is characteristic of Fromm, and a good part of his appeal to many of his readers. But the heart of Escape was Fromm’s exploration of the different ways in which we evade the anxieties of freedom.
If I'm not mistaken, Fromm was a "Frankfurt School Guy," right Claire?
He was associated with them, but I'm not entirely sure why. I think they drew on his work, but I don't think he drew on theirs.
I'd say it's more accurate to call him a neo-Freudian than it is to call him a member of the Frankfurt school. I suspect he's lumped in that category because he knew them, because he wrote about psychoanalysis and Marxism, and because he was associated with a number of leftist causes. But the Frankfurt clique thought him insufficiently politically radical, and his views about economics are the least interesting aspect of his work. They're kind of naïve and tedious, actually. His best work was in the domain of psychology, where he was truly insightful and original.
As far as I know, the biography on Wikipedia is is accurate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Fromm
Sheds light on this, from Alan Ryan's review of Friedman's The Lives of Erich Fromm in NYRB. the crucial event was his attachment at the end of the decade to the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, founded in 1923 under Carl Grünberg, an adherent of Soviet-style Marxism, but directed from 1930 by Max Horkheimer, who created what subsequently became known as “the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School.”
Fromm was a natural recruit. He was a Freudian and a Marxist, in neither case a rigidly orthodox adherent to the faith. He was unusual among practicing analysts in having no medical training, a fact that undermined his credibility with analysts in New York when he came to the United States a few years later. Nor was he taken with the deterministic, almost mechanical view of social and economic life that attracted so many Marxists. Marx’s early writings, which Fromm translated into English in the 1960s, were discovered in the late 1920s, and revealed a humanist Marx whose thoughts on the self-estrangement of both workers and capitalists within the market economy provided the basis for a critique of modern society that need not attach itself to an increasingly implausible story about the inevitability of proletarian revolution.
There was a strongly commonsensical aspect to Fromm’s position, one of the things that accounts for his extraordinary success as a popular writer. So far as contriving to unite the insights of Freud and Marx was concerned, his view was that Freud focused too narrowly and too exclusively on the individual. For Fromm, the individual’s character was the result of both the inbuilt psychological drives that Freud described and the cultural setting within which individuals had to make their way. The scientific, materialist Marx made individuals not much more than cogs in a machine operating blindly according to its—or his—own iron laws; the Marx concerned with the ethical disasters of a world in which we sacrifice everything to the dictates of the marketplace was a much more natural complement to Freud. It was Freud who said that “love and work” were the ingredients of happiness, but it was Marx whose “Notes on James Mill” gave an exalted picture of work in which each person worked to satisfy the human needs of the other and valued what they received just because it embodied that mutual concern.
Although Fromm seemed so well suited to the Frankfurt School, things did not go smoothly. The rise of Hitler meant that the institute’s resources were first transferred to Geneva, then, thanks to Fromm’s own negotiations, the institute itself moved to Columbia University. Fromm was the first member of the institute to go, in 1934. It was a highly productive move, even though his relationship with Horkheimer and the institute began to fray soon after. The problem was Theodor Adorno. Whether, as Friedman surmises, Adorno was eager to supplant Fromm as Horkheimer’s favorite collaborator or not, Adorno certainly thought that Fromm was rejecting far too much of Freud’s view of human nature. Like Herbert Marcuse two decades later, Adorno thought that once Fromm rejected Freud’s theory of instinctual sexual and aggressive drives, he had thrown out something essential.
Adorno seems to have suspected what Marcuse articulated more sharply: that Fromm was not a revolutionary who thought that only with the overthrow of the current social order could we expect human happiness, but a meliorist. He thought he could show his patients in his psychotherapeutic practice, and later the readers of his many best sellers, how to be happy and useful on the basis of their own inner resources even if consumer society provided little help.
Yes, this is a thorough and helpful explanation of his relationship to the Frankfurt theorists.
I read "Impeach Him" for the 3rd time now, each time learning something more than my previous read-through. A few remarks...
01. Claire fucking gobsmacks me. She researched, strategized, wrote, edited, and proofread this magnum opus in 5 days since her prior magnum opus? In 3 days, I am only on my 3rd read-through! Unsure how she does it, but perhaps Claire is superhuman?
02. "Impeach Him" strikes me more as a Taxonomy of Fear, a Taxonomy everyone not willing to genuflect before his supreme deity, DJT, should fear. The ankle-biters will nip and snarl, and do, but Claire, I believe, is extraordinarily brave. I applaud her. (Although I am ready to pony up to cover her costs in hiring a private security detail. I sure do not want her 'disappeared.')
And, finally
03. Thanks to "Impeach Him" I want to understand more... More about the logistics of what occurs + the repercussions and reverberations that will occur in financial markets first and later in our lives, professional and private. (Well, formerly private.)
I share three links in a reply below (rather than here, to avoid the phenomena in which the links consume the page and displace my text). Read them in sequential order to obtain a better, deeper understanding.
One truth, however, is self-evident: Musk and DOGE do NOT operate with transparency, but occultly. Their hidden efforts and objectives, not just the ostensible, might delight the MAGAts in their broad outlines - no understanding required! - but the rest of us should pay heed.
Which leave me with the banal comment...
Thank you, Claire.
You're kind. I appreciate it.
01. 'Reboot' Revealed: Elon Musk's CEO-Dictator Playbook
https://www.thenerdreich.com/reboot-elon-musk-ceo-dictator-doge/
I must research this article more closely and validate the author's claims. If even half-true...
02. Elon Musk Weaponizes the Government
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/elon-musk-weaponizes-the-government
Henry Farrell is a treasure; his article (the best of the three) is eye-popping
03. The Government’s Computing Experts Say They Are Terrified (gift link)
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/02/elon-musk-doge-security/681600/?gift=j9r7avb6p-KY8zdjhsiSZy7QL_MKf415gEafUyOkbmM
The least good article of the three shared, this Atlantic article definitely is worth reading
Interesting analysis of Donald Trump's psyche. It really gets to the heart of what makes Trump tick. Maybe all presidential candidates should undergo a full psychological examination before they are allowed to run, to weed out the psychologically abnormal or disturbed so we don't end up with another psychopathic president like Trump. Just an idea.
Maybe people need to be more careful about who they elect to Congress. The fundamental failure here was the unwillingness of Congress to do its job.
“While Trump’s support remains anywhere near its current levels, [impeachment] is inconceivable. And there’s no point shouting inconceivable scenarios to the heavens.
"This is it. We’re stuck with this man, this administration, this party for (at least) the next four years."
According to Damon Linker on Substack
I agree that at this point, it is inconceivable that Congress will act...
Yet, we must struggle to make inconceivable scenarios, conceivable.
The case against the madness must be tried and argued in the court of public opinion, it can be won.
So a la Churchill...
"[We must have] full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, ...we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our [Constitution], to ride out the storm of [rabid DOGes], and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.
...we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in [the executive branch], we shall fight [i]n the [courts] and [Congress], we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength [o]n the air[waves and Substack], we shall defend our [Democracy], whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the coasts, we shall fight [Musk's] landing [teams], we shall fight in the [red heartland] and in the [blue cities], we shall fight in the hills [and the purple mountain states]; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our [friends] beyond the seas [or to the north and south], ... would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the [Old] World, with all its [history] and [humility], steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the [not so new]."
Sorry to get so poetic and lofty, but the analysis of what is possible must be informed not simply by what is realistic today, but what is realistic over time with committed, courageous leadership.
From National Review-"Trump has always wanted to develop a crime-infested, corrupt, dangerous strip of land by the sea. But enough about Atlantic City . . ."
Claire's dismay is both insufficient and slightly displaced. Of course Trump is insane; we knew this; people increasingly are overall, including him. But the bigger problem is that the power and scope of his amply manifest insanity is redefining sanity downward. Mental health is a construct, duh: it's the professionally adjudicated gap (if any) between personal reality maps and public ones. And this guy is redrawing the public ones. Grant him sufficient success in that, and he stops being crazy by definition. Fear THAT.
I believe that is what Claire covers well in her discussion of Caligula et al...
This may be the best thing I’ve read on Substack. I’m glad I paid to subscribe.
That's very kind of you, and believe me, it's rewarding to hear that.
Great piece, Claire. In an everyday world, what the orange doofus has done so far would be sufficient to invoke Article 25. I am all for impeaching the lunatic. My only concern is that we will end up with JD Vance, who is Peter Theil's monkey. Hard choice!
Impeach them both.
It will come to that Jan 2027
Claire this is an excellent analysis though I'm afraid your pleas to Congress and (implicitly) anyone who can do something will prove fruitless. There is however more to say. Trump is as you describe but he is not entirely stupid. He's cunning. He's had a lifetime of getting away with stuff and he's doing it as I write. There is a method in his madness, to put it another way, and so far no one seems to know how to counter it. Whatever happens, he can adjust. He throws "grenades", waits for the smoke to clear and then figures out a way to "win" out of the ensuing chaos. It is frequently not winning at all - vide Canada and Mexico but he claims it and it works for him. Is there a "tipping point"? So far not. Understanding why this has happened is beyond your analysis in this instance and must go beyond psychology. It seems to me that the title on top of what you write is the key: globalisation is unnerving people all over the world and into this uncertainty step monsters promising ice cream if only they are allowed to pull up drawbridges they promise provide security. What they and their acolytes don't get is that globalisation is an unstoppable process over any reasonable period, that it always works itself out in the ongoing search for getting more out of less on every level. That can happen in lots of ways and is the place where leaders should be active, but that is not what the authoritarian demagogue offers. In the end such people destroy what they think they are going to save. The Reagan clip you included in this piece is very apposite. In this term, Trump has managed to secure himself against removal by the 25th amendment by appointing lickspittles to his administration, and it seems extremely unlikely that Congress will do what you urge it to do. As you say, Trump means to rule for life. We live in dark times. Thanks Claire for all you do.
It's never possible to predict the future, and it's even less possible when dealing with a situation is volatile as this one. You never know when someone who has been a coward all his life will suddenly discover the unexpected pleasure of courage. You never know what outrage will, for some reason, resonate with the public in a way none of the previous ones have. I'm not making any predictions. The only prediction in which I feel absolutely confident is that Trump will never, ever change; his pathology will only get worse; and he will arrogate to himself as much power as we allow him to take, steal from us as much as we allow him to steal, and grow more authoritarian by the day. That's a constant. The question is how the rest of us will react to it.
Claire with all due respect you make numerous predictions in your piece. It's natural that you should do so. All predictions are open to falsification by events. At the mo many of Trump's more wild actions are not only held up in court but in the process of getting "walked back". It's part of his technique. He gets away with what he can, and he gets away with a lot. The best analysis I've seen of how he does it is by James D Zirin, *Plaintiff in chief*. This does not in any way contradict your analysis of who he is.
Sorry, I wrote that carelessly. I was (in my mind) responding to the specific prediction you made: "Trump has managed to secure himself against removal by the 25th amendment by appointing lickspittles to his administration, and it seems extremely unlikely that Congress will do what you urge it to do." I agree that I made numerous predictions in my piece. I also agreed that what you say is more likely than not. I just can't say I know for sure what's going on in the souls and the conscience of his entourage and of the members of Congress. So I don't rule out the possibility that this will simply become too much for a few GOP representatives to bear--and we only need a few.