Is Something Wrong Mentally with Donald Trump?

The Main Stream Media (MSM) has recently focused on mental illness as an explanation for Donald Trump’s behavior that many political analysts find is bizarre for someone seeking to win a Presidential election.  Part of the impetus for this focus has been driven by pundits who concluded that many of Trump’s actions in his campaign were inconsistent with winning the election and therefore, irrational.  These pundits have speculated that Trump suffers from either narcissistic personality disorder or sociopathy, although the traits associated with these disorders overlap.  Traits of inflated sense of self, lack of empathy, deceitfulness and manipulativeness are associated with both narcissism and sociopathy. 

Trump has exhibited examples of these traits on many different occasions.  For example, he has proven himself to be a perennial liar and distorter of facts—Politifact found 60 percent of his statements to be “false” or “pants on fire” lies.   He has mocked and demeaned those with whom he has disagreed—he attributed remarks Meghan Kelley made to him to her menstrual cycle and mimicked the neural tremors of a handicapped reported with whom he disagreed.  And, he has callously disregarded others--when introducing his Vice President, Mike Spence, Trump spoke more about himself than Spence.     
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Neither narcissism nor sociopathy, however, is necessarily associated with irrational or dysfunctional behavior.  A few members of the media have noted that focusing on Trump obscures what is really important: the attractiveness of his white nationalist theme to 40 percent of U.S. voters.  It seems highly unlikely that 40 percent of U.S. voters are mentally ill in any clinical sense.  Much of the distortion of the right is not due to mental illness, but rather stems from isolation from certain experiences and groups within U. S. society.  The MSM may have seized on this psychological explanation for Trump’s behavior to distance itself and us from having to deal with the implications of our social structure shaping a part of the electorate that finds someone like Donald Trump so attractive.