A Necessary Dream.

I give my card to the assistant to the secretary of Donald Trump. “Department of Sociopathic Affairs?” she enquires. “Head of” I say importantly, “Tim Seaglitz.” “Government?” she enquires again. “Yep. “What is this regarding?” “We’re beginning a study of the special characteristics required to be a successful entrepreneur. It’s a new initiative to kick start us out of this slump. I hear it’s straight from Obama. And who has them more than Mr Trump,” I smile. I get the shrug off, leave my card and wait. A week or so later I get a meeting, Mr Trump will see me for fifteen minutes the day after next. I enter, smile, we shake hands and I sit down. “Sociopathic Affairs?” he opens, “Sounds ominous.” I laugh, “I’m a research psychologist. Everything we do sounds ominous. We’ve the only office I know where the sign says, ‘You do have to be crazy to work here.’” This shmoozing goes on. The only purpose of this meeting is to get the door open a little further. It’s agreed we can have a further session for me to identify his special characteristics. After three sessions my notebook is full and I have everything on my voice recorder, ‘for reference.’ Back in the office I convene a meeting, me, my boss and three other eminent psychologist, professors from Harvard, Stanford and MIT. I hand out my transcripts with various responses sharpied to save time. There’s a silence. Jim from MIT breaks it. “You’re making a case for Trump being a sociopath?” “Well what do you think, what do you all think?” “Well take away the name and this person is hundred percent sociopath.” I look at Michael. “True, no doubt about it.” “Dangerous?” I ask. They nod. I conclude, “So four eminent psychologist would give evidence as expert witnesses that Donald Trump is a sociopath right?” They nod again rather reluctantly. “So what do we do?” As you can guess this is a long story so I’ll cut to the chase. We put in an application to have Trump questioned with a view to having him sectioned. He had his layers crawling all over us but this wasn’t a legal matter it was mental health. We had him pulled in for appraisal, he went ballistic and he ended up in a straight jacket, that’s right a straight jacket! It took three male nurses and a shot of sedative to get him in it. Well the media had a field day, “Trump diagnosed insane”, and I was 24/7 trying to put them right. Sure he was mentally ill but it was a condition brought on by years of being a wealthy oligarch. It can happen to anybody, possibly everybody put in that position. Suddenly these powerful people in finance, commerce and politics were being judged on whether they were sane or not, not how much power and money they had. And I and other psychologists and psychoanalyst had the professional expertise to diagnose it. The lawyers were powerless, the movers and fixers in management couldn’t get a handle on it, in fact they were more interested in going into therapy to prove they were sane than saving their bosses. Of course they came out of therapy with something they weren’t expecting; like personal growth you know. I tell you in one year this whole thing advanced the human race more than inventing the wheel. There are now more people in care institutions than there are in prison. Even Trump’s responding to treatment but I don’t think they’ll ever let him out.