Easily moved: Why do some find Trump’s aggression appealing?
During Donald Trump’s 4 years in the White House, his supporters appeared to remain loyal while the President generated social friction, unrest and incitements, to negatively influence many Americans, emotionally and psychologically. His intention? To create a highly charged political environment, motivate others to take what they believed to be matters into their own hands, i.e., into his hands. And to a certain extent his strategy succeeded, much to the dismay of many onlookers. Trump divided his country by encouraging his supporters to rise up. And yes, some were encouraged to openly express anger even if it meant being violent. Such stirrings could only serve to exacerbate preexisting (and potentially new) cycles of trauma. An example of such political violence aimed at undermining democracy was a statement by former White House chief strategist in Trump’s administration, Stephen Bannon. He called for the dismissal of two key American officials: (1) the director of the FBI, and (2) the nation’s top infectious-diseases expert — in the middle of a deadly pandemic. He wanted the heads of these two individuals to be then “put on pikes … [at] two ends of the White House as a warning … either get with the program or you’re gone”(Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Planet America’s Fireside Chat, 6th Nov, 2020). Bannon was one of Trump’s megaphones.
Bannon, like many Trump supporters, declared outrage that Trump did not win re-election. Somehow, he along with others, identified with the President Trump, a man who has repeatedly been understood as an aggressor (e.g., Trump, 2020). Perhaps one doesn’t have to have an aggressive personality or even to identify with the aggressor to display aggression. Maybe there is a ‘contagious’ element whereby one has to communicate in the style of the aggressor in order to connect or be heard? For example, according to respected historical journalist Bob Woodward, his wife was alarmed that her mild-mannered husband shouted at Donald Trump; to which he replied: “If you deal with Trump you’ve got to shout” (ABC, Planet America’s Fireside Chat, 6th Nov, 2020).
The attempt to erode a shared space where straight facts, such as deaths due to Covid-19, are simply not debatable may be Trump’s legacy. But in trying to make sense of why so many Americans have developed a self-created illusion that Trump is and always will be there for them, even if that is not the case (Misrachi, 2020), may be reflective of another important side of trauma worth considering, termed “identification with the aggressor” (Festinger, 1957). This additional trauma-informed concept, apart from helping those who work in the mental-health sector, may also help further comprehend the seemingly incomprehensible appeal of Trump’s aggression.
What is “identification with the aggressor”?
This concept first entered Sándor Ferenczi’s clinical diary in 1932 (Dupont, 1995). Later, in 1949, he developed the idea that the abused child becomes captivated or somewhat hypnotised and deprived of its senses. That is, having been traumatically overwhelmed, the vulnerable victim becomes mesmerised by the aggressor’s demands and actions, automatically identifying with the aggressor as a natural survival mechanism. Rather than anything intentional, it is a kind of impersonation of the aggressor’s character. Perhaps in the minds of Trump’s supporters “putting America first” was interchangeably understood with putting them, as individuals who may have been deprived of their own earlier developmental needs, “first”. That is, they interpret “America first” as “Me first”, something they may never have previously experienced.
Ferenczi (1949) taught us that when humans feel overpowered by an imminent threat they cannot escape from, they inevitably identify with the aggressor. When asked to account for Trump’s “strong personal approval”, one lifelong Republican who worked on five presidential campaigns voiced his belief that Trump’s base will never leave him. They will follow, impersonating Trump’s opinions of others, no matter how unfounded.
In 2002, Frankel described identification with the aggressor as the traumatised person striving for survival and instinctively “growing into” exactly what the aggressor expects. This process involves emotions, thoughts, perceptions and behaviours. Identification with the aggressor is intimately organised and regulated with other reactions to trauma, particularly dissociation. For those wishing to dig deeper into this topic, I recommend Middleton, Sachs & Dorahy’s (2017) article “The abused and the abuser: Victim–perpetrator dynamics”. Apart from various trauma-informed insights, they also outline: (1) the idiosyncratic relationship between abusers and their victims; (2) why victims remain silent and acquiesce to their perpetrator; and (3) the various elements that contribute to why trauma survivors are at risk of becoming “a powerless underclass” (p.252).
Frankel (2002) also notes that specific occurrences, such as “emotional abandonment or isolation, and being subject to a greater power not generally considered to constitute trauma are often experienced as traumatic”. This implies that identification with the aggressor may not be readily viewed in terms of the person having suffered any severe trauma. Yet that person is in a weakened position due to having been traumatised, all while participating in customary daily social interactions. This descriptive account speaks directly to well-camouflaged individuals who may be viewed by society as competent, non-disordered, hard-working citizens, yet may be carrying untreated trauma and grief potentially playing out in other ways. Although this includes less favourable ways involving psychological injury and the law (e.g., Bailey & Brown, 2020), early adverse life experiences, which include abuse and neglect, can and do involve well-camouflaged individuals (Misrachi, 2012).
There are many varieties of Trump supporters. But just as Covid-19 unites us all, irrespective of our reasons for approving or disapproving of Trump, so trauma knowledge and science unite us all. A person who is educated, sophisticated and votes for Trump, and someone unsophisticated, uneducated, also voting for Trump, could both be suffering trauma. The impact and effects of trauma are neurobiological — irrespective of social standing, beliefs or life trajectory — and if left unrecognised and untreated it often spells trouble (Misrachi, 2012).
At this point, it may be worth adding that, according to Donald Trump’s niece, Mary L. Trump (Trump, 2020), her uncle himself experienced “loss of connection to his mother at a crucial developmental stage… [This] was deeply traumatic” (p.25). And, in parallel with that emotional abandonment, he was subject to consistent manipulative and bully-like behaviours by his father which he also witnessed happening regularly to others. This may later have been interpreted by Trump as the correct recipe for becoming productively powerful. I mention this not necessarily to encourage empathy for Donald Trump but to make the point that a society needs to embrace a trauma-informed health system that recognises and treats trauma early as a critical preventative measure (Kezelman & Stavropoulos, 2019a; 2019b). There may even need to be legislative improvements for such people, just as there are for those who served in the military (e.g., McGrane, 2011). Otherwise, the world may get more leaders acting out their aggression, like Trump, while appealing to others with similar trauma histories. Unless proper trauma treatment is given, psychological, emotional and moral injuries can manifest in unpredictable and undesirable ways, such as acquiring a mental illness, entering the prison system, or both (e.g., Maschi, Viola, Morgen, Koskinen, 2015).
It is feasible that Trump’s style, propelled by his own earlier unmet developmental needs (Trump, 2020), automatically resonated with his supporters on a personal level. Motivated to stick with him as the aggressor, they maintained total loyalty to the extent of imitating his preferences; for instance, the wearing of red caps (Goodin, 2020) or being disrespectful and abusive towards people of colour (Giroux, 2018). Unchecked and untreated, identification with the aggressor in combination with habitual trauma features, such as emotional numbing, can become etched into the traumatised brain (Kezelman & Stavropoulos, 2019a; 2019b). This in turn can lead to chronic behaviours, personality issues, harm of self or others, as illustrated in a recent Israeli study conducted by Lahav, Allende and Talmon (2020). This brings us to the next question.
Do people who identify with the aggressor want to hurt others?
In the abovementioned Israeli study, there were 306 Israeli tertiary students, reporting on a history of childhood abuse. Those who identified most with the aggressor had higher levels of the urge to hurt others via violent acts “above and beyond the effects of gender and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms”. They effectively: (1) gave up their agency, replacing it with that of the perpetrator; (2) identified with the aggressor; and (3) adopted their aggressor’s know-how thus re-enacting past abusive dynamics, which eventuated in aggression towards themselves or others. We see this occurring with Trump inciting violence by what I call “remote control”. That is, inciting violence indirectly by employing staff to ensure, for instance, the encouragement of white supremacists to re-emerge (Clark, 2020). And directly, with Trump being openly violent on an emotional level through his constant humiliation of people whom he perceives as a threat to his toxic power and control and overall dominance — as in publicly mocking his son-in-law Jared Kushner (Foer, 2020) or calling the Vice President-elect of the US, Kamala Harris, a “monster”.
Would identification with the aggressor involve a false self?
Other issues which could compound and reinforce loyalty to the aggressor include the individual’s capacity to socially morph into a false self (Jones & Wells, 1996; Misrachi, 2018). Through habituation, Trump supporters might end up socially morphing into false selves in the service of someone like Trump, whom they care about more than they care about themselves or the next generation. This in turn is reinforced by Trump, who expects others to conform to his mindset (Trump, 2020). Trapped in an anticipated ‘conformity vortex’ would mean victims perceive themselves as having no choice, no independence, just blindly complying with the demands of their anointed ‘master’. Earlier in their life, their ‘master’ may have been their abusive primary attachment figure, but now it’s Trump. This most unfortunate but well-documented dynamic between victim and perpetrator has been researched over decades by a variety of well-regarded authors since Bowlby (1977), and even earlier (e.g., see Dorahy, van der Hart, & Middleton, 2010).
Is identification with the aggressor an essential ingredient for the “traumatic bonding” process to occur?
Traumatic bonding happens as a consequence of ongoing cycles of abuse in which intermittent reinforcements of punishment and reward generate powerful emotional bonds which are quite impervious to change (Dutton & Painter, 1981). Understanding this abusive give-and-take is a must if we are to appreciate its influence, whether at an individual or a socio-political level, including how it impacts on a victim’s reaction, non-reaction or unusual responses (Sanderson, 2008). Law-enforcement personnel sometimes refer to “traumatic bonding” as “Stockholm syndrome”, after bank tellers in Stockholm taken hostage by bank robbers developed loving feelings towards them. Both processes are described by Cohen, Mannarino and Deblinger (2006) as containing: “Identification with the aggressor…[that] involves both modeling of inappropriate behaviors and maladaptive attachment dynamics” (p.10). We saw such a dynamic playing out in the US between an aggressive President Donald Trump and the more vulnerable segments of the population he governed. He did this with “soft despotism” in which he gave the illusion that much of what he was saying was truth while cultivating uncertainty, doubt and anxiety into the hearts of those Americans who believed (or wanted to) that everything was under control. Perhaps French political scientist de Tocqueville’s analysis of American politics is as alive today as it was in the mid 1800s when he observed “soft despotism” there.
Trump’s attempts at attacking the engine of US democracy and creating fear and unpredictability are reminiscent of what happened historically just prior to Ferenczi (1949) developing the notion of identification with the aggressor. Perhaps the timing of his concept was no coincidence. Ferenczi originally conceived his idea in 1932 (Dupont, 1995), at the start of Hitler’s rise to power and near the height of the Great Depression. He developed the concept further in 1949, when Europe was still emerging from the upheavals of the Second World War. Many were understandably traumatised at a time when trauma was barely understood (Dorahy, van der Hart, & Middleton, 2010). There are some parallels between then and now. Currently the world is experiencing an economic recession with ever-rising unemployment and the continuous “war” against the Covid-19 pandemic. However, unlike Covid-19, the “enemy” during the two world wars was tangible and often visible. Giroux (2017) notes that Trump is (or was) “Not Hitler, but dangerous nonetheless”, and some refer to Trump’s legacy as an attempt at “a tin-pot dictatorship”.
Trump supporters found Trump’s messages, regardless of their veracity, appealing. Whether his supporters were loudly angry or quietly impassioned, they were easily moved, i.e., he psycho-emotionally aroused them. Although trauma features, such as identification with the aggressor (associated also with traumatic bonding), are more readily observed on an individual level, for instance, in the therapist’s room, here it appears to be playing out on a grand scale, i.e., at a sociopolitical level, but questions remain:
- Will a segment of vulnerable yet well-camouflaged traumatised Americans continue to identify with aggressors, like Trump, who model inappropriate behaviours?
- Are these same vulnerable Americans looking to individuals, like Trump the aggressor, as the answer to their woes, just as the Germans looked to Adolf Hitler?
- With Biden’s election denying Trump a second term in the White House, did America manage to prevent a tinderbox from igniting?
Such questions will need further scrutiny. But suffice to say, when faced with complex scenarios like the one still operating in the US, we should never be shy of looking at trauma knowledge and related scientific research to at least begin our quest for sound legitimate answers. We need this to help guard against any further fuelling of the flames of misplaced traumatic reaction. The US experience offers us lessons. It may be time to put trauma-informed interventions firmly in place within our institutions, at a legislative level.
This article was originally published in Mind Cafe, Nov, 2020, Issue 66.
Suzette Misrachi, Master of AdvSW (Research). Consultant, international presenter, therapist and professional supervisor specialising in trauma and grief. Research: “Lives Unseen: Unacknowledged Trauma of Non-Disordered, Competent Adult Children of Parents with a Severe Mental Illness”.
Other articles
References
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