New York Times columnist David Brooks argued Tuesday that Donald Trump “continues to display the symptoms of narcissistic alexithymia,” and that the Republican’s campaign is causing him some feelings of depression.
Brooks’ latest op-ed said he believes Trump is an isolated and lonely man with an inability to “understand, relate or attach to others” in his life.
“Trump’s emotional makeup means he can hit only a few notes: fury and aggression,” he said. “In some ways, his debate performances look like primate dominance displays — filled with chest beating and looming growls. But at least primates have bands to connect with, whereas Trump is so alone, if a tree fell in his emotional forest, it would not make a sound. It’s all so pathetic.”
Brooks said that he often finds himself “experiencing feelings of deep sadness and pity.”
This isn’t the first time he has played psychologist throughout the 2016 campaign.
“It’s hard to know exactly what is going on in that brain, but science lends a clue,” he wrote of Trump in July. “Psychologists wonder if narcissists are defined by extremely high self-esteem or by extremely low self-esteem that they are trying to mask. The current consensus seems to be that they are marked by unstable self-esteem. Their self-confidence can be both high and fragile, so they perceive ego threat all around.”
In 2012, an actual psychologist, Duke University Professor Allen Frances, called on Brooks to “stop being an amateur psychologist.”
“What Brooks doesn’t know about psychology is a lot,” Frances wrote in the Huffington Post. “Everything he says about it has a shallow ring, is misinformed, and displays the same bias and ulterior motive.”
