On June 12, 2016, writing for the blog Real Clear Politics, Carl M. Cannon, the Washington Bureau Chief for that website, wrote a blog about the recently elected primary Republican candidate for president of the United States, Donald Trump, entitled Trump Is Looking for a Way Out. He cites many examples to support his opinion. 

Cannon couldn’t be more right!

Frankly, I’ve believed that Trump was looking for a way out for many months now—starting about the time when he and others believed he might be able to pull it off and beat his other 16 rivals and win the Republican primary presidential nomination. It was then that his unconscious—which is below the level of conscious realization—was telling him he wasn’t suited to become president of the United States. The fact that he wasn’t aware he wasn’t equipped to be our next president caused him to overtly behave in just the opposite way, presenting himself as though he was quite able and ready to be the country’s next president.

In our book Political Straight Talk, Kathryn and I spend much time discussing the importance the unconscious plays in our character development and overt behavior. The cardinal principle of dynamic psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, where the therapist or analyst helps the patient bring the unconscious into the conscious part of the mind, is so the person, let’s say Donald Trump, can take control of his life in a way he couldn’t before. The only trouble with that paradigm in this case is that the Donald doesn’t recognize he needs therapy! Consequently, he’ll be the last person to acknowledge he has a problem. Instead, he acts out his unconscious anxieties in the real world before he can experience them at a conscious level.

Cannon says he doesn’t “usually cotton to journalists who psychoanalyze their subjects. But I believe that Donald Trump, the man who famously disparages ‘losers,’ knows deep down he isn’t equipped to be president.”

Cannon suggests we call “this more reflective subconscious [unconscious] entity ‘Don Trump’,” pointing out, “Donald Trump loves winning and hates losing, while Don Trump knows that running a smart campaign and beating Hillary Clinton means he’d inherit a job he has neither the qualifications nor the temperament to perform successfully. Don Trump wants to lose. He wants this campaign to be over so Donald Trump can go back to doing what he’s good at: promoting his personal brand and counting his money.”

Cannon feels the best explanation “for the loony ‘Mexican’ judge comments and other unforced errors Trump has made since clinching the Republican presidential nomination” were made by the Don Trump who doesn’t want to be president, the more reflective and even perhaps rational Trump, because a “man who wanted to win this election wouldn’t make these mistakes.”

One example stands out in Cannon’s view. “Don Trump’s most transparent sabotaging of Donald Trump’s campaign to date” was his “infamous slander of the San Diego–based federal ‘Mexican’ judge handling the lawsuit by disgruntled former Trump University students.” Cannon suggested if Trump was really interested in becoming president of the United States, because of his economic resources, “he would have settled this case before it made news. He could afford to refund the tuition of every former student who complained.”

Cannon goes on to describe other means Don Trump uses to sabotage Donald Trump’s campaign, but I think this is sufficient to illustrate Cannon’s and my point that Mr. Trump feels very ambivalent in running for president of the United States.

Mr. Trump’s ambivalence continues because he appears not to be reflective enough to appreciate the forces in each of our minds that work in opposition to one another. Kathryn and I discuss at length the importance of periodic reflection to continue to better understand the place our unconscious plays in making thoughtful and goal-directed decisions—both in making political as well as everyday decisions that enhance our sense of selves.

Cannon suggested there might be a second possibility: that being that “Don Trump doesn’t really exist, and Trump is the Donald all the way down to his subconscious.” If that’s the case, Cannon believes that Trump “simply cannot help himself: He’s so narcissistic and needy and thin-skinned that he must lash out at those he perceives are against him—while thinking he can be president anyway.”

I suggest there’s a third option: not only does Mr. Trump unconsciously believe he’s not up to the task of being president of the United States (and Don Trump is alive and well and politically inept), he is also certifiably out of touch. His displays of neediness and self-adulation point to narcissism, but it is his pathological insensitivity to the feelings of others, complete absence of empathy, his knee-jerk anger when people don’t agree with him, and his support of violence as a means to enforcing his view that justify a textbook diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. What’s more, Donald Trump can’t seem to consciously control when such personality traits will appear, and with these characteristics in the fore, both Mr. Trumps, Don and Donald, lack the character and temperament to be president of the United States.

The Twitter feed is broadly diagnosing him in just these terms in the aftermath of the Orlando massacre and Trump’s using it to toot his own horn as a predictor of such an event. Find that at time.com.

Clearly, even without a bona fide diagnosis, he’s a man who lacks personal and public integrity, empathy, hence compassion, and is not the least bit other-centered or committed to service, the primary traits needed in a president. So should we leave it to Don Trump to get Donald Trump out of the pathway toward the presidency?

Aren’t we all looking for people with character in the world of politics? Shouldn’t we expect it of not just our loved ones but those who look after the country’s business for all of us? These are the traits we feel that everyone, politician and private citizen alike, need to possess and display if we will survive as a nation in the years to come. The truth is, we each need to look within our own unconscious places to shine a light on what we’re really wanting for our nation and not let hidden hatreds and shadow desires for power and control take over our behavior. Only by bringing the unconscious thoughts and feelings to light can we really choose our way forward. Kathryn and I touch upon all of these factors in our book Political Straight Talk.