Justin A. Frank MD: Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President

Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President – Justin A. Frank, MD – Avery – 304 pages – Hardcover – 9780735220324 – $26.00 – September 25, 2018 – ebook editions available at lower cost.

Inside the mind of this president is a scary place to be, as Dr. Justin Frank aptly tells us in this frightening and compelling book. In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Dr. Frank said: “Yes, we should be scared,” Frank, a clinical professor of psychiatry at George Washington University, told the Guardian. “We have to accept that he is the president and we also have to accept that he’s never going to change because he can’t. Once we accept those things, we can then figure out what to do with our fears.”

Almost everyone I know has thought about the psychology of Donald Trump. So in some ways he might be the most analyzed person in the history of the world. Ironically, that appears to be exactly what he wants. Funny how whether one loves or despises Donald Trump, he wins, because his narcissistic, empty soul requires the full attention of the entire world and still cannot be satisfied.

In this book, like his two previous books on Obama and Bush, Dr. Frank has applied the principles of applied psychoanalysis, which allows him to at least somewhat clearly understand the mind of Donald Trump. While it is true that the American Psychiatric Association’s Goldwater Rule prevents psychiatrists from offering diagnoses on public figures who are not their own patients, Frank has invoked the moral responsibility that compels him to speak out, something which all of us can understand and appreciate. So much is at stake and so much is in the hands of someone who is demonstrably unstable, and as Dr Frank shows in this book, someone who is riddled with pathologies, and quite evidently, deeply disturbed.

From his close study of Trump’s patterns of thought, action, and communication, and an analysis of his personal life story, Dr. Frank uncovers a personality deeply distorted by mental health problems. His work reveals many insights about Trump and his behavior, including some highly disturbing glimpses into his childhood, his family, his business dealings, and Trump’s unique way of literally inventing his own reality.

While most of us can see for ourselves that our president is wildly unhinged, Dr. Frank’s more clinical description and analysis of Trump’s narcissism, misogyny, racism, and untruthfulness are highly useful in helping us to understand more fully the reasons and causes behind Trump’s pathologically disturbed behavior. Whether it can help us prevent him from leading us into disaster is unclear. But this book should be required reading for anyone, supporters and opponents alike. It might also help us to better understand his appeal to those who do find him compelling. At least for me, it made me want to turn off the television and stop giving him the attention he craves. I wish the news media would do the same.

I very much enjoyed the opportunity to talk about this book with Dr. Frank, and to learn so much from a professional analyst.

Read more about the book at the author’s website.

“I’ve known Trump a long time and I have even tried my own hand at psychoanalyzing him on television. But, Dr. Frank has shown a more complete picture inside our 45th President’s mind than I ever dared to consider. Behind all Trump’s tough guy theatrics, his petty cruelties and bloated ego is a tangled knot of pathologies that should terrify us all. Trump on the Couch is a great first step to sizing up the President’s inner demons.”
—Donny Deutsch, Co-Host on MSNBC’s Morning Joe

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Colin G. Calloway: The Victory with No Name

The Victory With No Name: The Native American Defeat of the First American Army – Oxford University Press – paperback – 214 pages -978-0190614454 – $16.95 (ebook versions available at lower prices)

I think it’s safe to say that most Americans have not given much thought to the very early history of the United States. During the first decades after the country was formed, there was much concern about the survival of the new nation. The British were still well established in the north, the Spanish were in the south and southwest, and large numbers of Indians inhabited the vast area to the west. Pressure was being exerted on the federal government to open these western lands to settlement, putting the US on a collision course with the natives who lived there.

This area was known as the Northwest Territory – comprising what are now the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and parts of Minnesota. Almost all Americans dismissed the land claims of the Native Americans. These tribes they saw simply as impediment to American growth. While some American leaders preferred to purchase the Indians’ land, the need for the government to pay its debts by selling (Indian owned) land overwhelmed all other concerns, and led ultimately to a war of extermination with the tribes.

Historian Colin G. Calloway is exceptionally perceptive and knowledgeable about the early history of the United States of America. This short, well written book focuses on a single unnamed battle that took place in late 1791 in what is now Fort Wayne, Indiana. In this period, before there was a standing army, President George Washington ordered Arthur St. Clair, the governor of the Northwest Territory, to direct a military campaign aimed at defeating the tribes that had refused to accept the unfair land deals the United States had proposed to them.

Calloway shows that the Native Americans were well organized and well-led, both politically and militarily. This surprised St. Clair as much as it may surprise us today. The American Indians were led by Little Turtle of the Miamis, Blue Jacket of the Shawnees and Buckongahelas of the Delawares (Lenape). Their war party numbered more than one thousand warriors, and included a large number of Potawatomis from eastern Michigan, a broad confederacy presaging similar Indian efforts to come in later years.

As Calloway points out: “Indians fielding a multinational army, executing a carefully coordinated battle plan worked out by their chiefs, and winning a pitched battle—all things Indians were not supposed to be capable of doing—routed the largest force the United States had fielded on the frontier.” It’s useful to note that the American army was poorly organized, included a large number of ill-trained militia, and was also victimized by crooked suppliers, starting a longstanding American tradition of private gain by military purveyors we recognize all too well today.

Unfortunately for the Native Americans, their victory was short lived. The stunning American defeat led directly to a number of changes in the way the new government operated. The House of Representatives initiated the first investigation of the executive branch, Congress established a standing army and gave the president authority to wage war. A liquor tax was created to finance the Army (which led to the Whiskey Rebellion that ironically, President Washington used the tax-financed militia to put down). The Indian confederacy did not last, and in 1794, General “Mad Anthony” Wayne built Fort Recovery and defeated another Indian war party at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, ultimately bringing an end to Northwest Territory Indian resistance and opening the way for the first stage of westward growth of the new American nation.

There is so much interesting history that relates directly to the story told in this book. It’s a compelling read for anyone interested in the early period of the American republic. My conversation with Colin Calloway reflects the stirring nature of his book, and the breadth of his knowledge. This book is an important American story, well told, and I highly recommend it.

Colin Calloway is the author of a number of excellent works, including one of my personal favorites, One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark. He is the John Kimball, Jr. 1943 Professor of History and Professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth, where he has taught since 1990. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Leeds in England.

Length note – this interview is slightly longer than average at about 35 minutes. 

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Andrew Coe: Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States

978-0195331073 – Hardcover – Oxford University Press – $24.95

Andrew Coe is a very fine writer indeed – his experience as a journalist shows.   Like Mark Kurlansky (Cod, still one of my favorite books among many others he has written), Andrew takes deeply researched historical information and presents them smoothly, telling stories that are packed with fascinating details to bring a subject we think we know into much clearer perspective.

In Chop Suey, Coe takes us on a long journey, beginning in 1784 with the earliest contacts between Americans and China.  Throughout, it is hard not to be surprised and sometimes embarrassed by the incredible self centered and disrespectful Americans.  At times they were better at understanding and working with the absolute foreignness of Chinese culture and experience than were the Europeans, but only marginally so.  At the time the first wave of Chinese immigrants came to America in the mid-19th century, only a few Americans knew anything meaningful or substantive about China and the Chinese, and much of what they did “know” was untrue or seriously exaggerated.  And later, American xenophobia reached astonishing heights, as Coe documents, with the now forgotten banning of citizenship to Chinese people who had as much right to be here as any other immigrants.

The gulf of understanding between Americans and Chinese had a great deal to do with the way Chinese food was received in this country, but Coe documents in compelling detail, the way that Chinese cuisine came to become the integral part of the American cuisine that it is today, with over 40,000 Chinese restaurants of many different kinds.  With the gradual Chinese migration to the East Coast, eventually New York “Bohemians” discovered Chinese restaurants, and made wildly popular, the seemingly new dish, chop suey.  In fact, according to Coe, it was a peasant cuisine from one part of China that came to dominate Chinese-American restaurants.

There are many great stories along the way to where we are today.  Coe talks about how American Jews fell in love with Chinese restaurants and in particular makes a great story of President Richard Nixon’s 1972 trip to China and how it opened minds and palates across America.  This was a particularly fun part of the book for me.  For anyone who loves food of any kind, and especially the intersection of food and culture, this book will be a pleasure to read.

Talking to Andrew was a pleasure.  He gives a terrific interview – fully in command of his subject, and really fun to talk with.  I think that hearing our discussion will encourage readers to seek out this wonderful book.  I am certainly looking forward to his next book.

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