We asked a psychiatrist if Donald Trump is as much of a narcissist as everyone thinks

It is impossible to predict Donald Trump’s constantly changing policies, let alone his personality. From contradictory and offensive tweets about the Orlando shootings and guns in clubs that even had the NRA pushing back, banning media outlets from his conferences, and we can’t forget when he said he wanted to criminalize women who have abortions after a gruelling half an hour of him once again dancing around the question- it is utterly impossible to keep track of where he stands regarding absolutely anything. Except for that damn wall that will never be built.

You couldn’t plot him on a personality chart- the man defies all conventional understanding or behavior that any normal human could interpret. So we put it to an expert who gave us an insight into why Trump’s behavior is so erratic.

I spoke with Mark Fisher, a Professor of Neurology, Political Science, Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the University of California Irvine, to get a deeper look into what is really going on in Donald Trump’s mind that gives him the personality that seems to be fascinating the masses.

Professor Fisher obviously cannot diagnose an individual without a formal evaluation, but he informed me of a possible diagnosis called narcissistic personality disorder.

“The primary (characteristics) are a combination of grandiosity, an insatiable need for admiration, a lack of empathy, and extreme sensitivity to criticism and when criticized. These folks evolve into narcissistic rage and a very high level of anger that they exhibit when they are criticized.”

Just recently Donald Trump has banned select media outlets from attending his events after a long and public brawl with most of them. The news sources that are on Trump’s blacklist are The Washington Post, Buzzfeed, Univision, Politico, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, and Des Moines Register. The criticism that he has received from the media about his controversial and debatable comments was not taken well by the Republican candidate.

Professor Fisher admitted that narcissistic personality disorder is typically not positive, but then the question arises about why so many people are following him.

“Charismatic political figures have kind of a unique relationship with their followers, so you can look at the relationship between charismatic leaders and followers where the leaders have this tremendous hunger for admiration and combined with grandiosity. At the same time the followers are looking for some kind of idealized figure to kind of fulfill a certain void in their own life.”

This excessive amount of charisma that is displayed by Trump’s personality is not always a bad thing, but his “aggressive behavior, paranoia, and lack of conscience” is what makes this relationship potentially destructive.

The decision making process that Trump has exhibited is not the most reliable since he is always contradicting himself. When I asked the reasoning behind him taking back most of his statements, he said, “There really is this phenomena of this alteration in decision making capability or executive function which tends to decline with age, and we have that with both political candidates since both are over the age of 65, so decision making capability of both candidates is going to be an issue.”

If his erratic behavior and loose judgment cannot be directly pinned by anything specific then this is may mean that this is the personality that he has grown into and exudes into the world on purpose.

When I asked Professor Fisher why people are so quick to jump on his bandwagon he explained: “There are a lot of important figures in the area of political psychology that are looking at how fear and anxiety impact political choice. There are several views on this, one of the most important is the notion that fear or anxiety will cause a voter to reevaluate their choice. You have political attitudes that are deeply ingrained and people kind of function on automatic pilot.”

If Trump does have narcissistic personality disorder then there may be reasonable fear to be had for his potential presidency.