The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump A Psychological Reckoning

The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump provides a coherent and nuanced psychological portrait of Donald Trump, drawing upon biographical events in the subject's life and contemporary scientific research and theory in personality, developmental, and social psychology.

Dan P. McAdams, renowned psychologist who pioneered the study of lives, examines the central personality traits, personal values and motives, and the interpersonal and cultural factors that together have shaped Trump's psychological makeup, with an emphasis on the strangeness of the case--that is, how Trump again and again defies psychological expectations regarding what it means to be a human being. The book's central thesis is that Donald Trump is the episodic man. The chapters, structured as stand-alone essays each riffing on a single psychological theme, build on each other to present a portrait of a person who compulsively lives in the moment, without an internal story to integrate his life in time. With an emphasis on scientific personality research, rather than political rhetoric, McAdams shows that Trump's utter lack of an inner life story is truly exceptional. This book is a remarkable case study which should be of as much interest to psychologists as it is to readers trying to reckon with the often confounding behavior and temperament of the 45th President of the United States.

Dan P. McAdams is the Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Psychology, and Professor of Education and Social Policy, at Northwestern University. He is the author of nearly 300 scientific articles and chapters and seven books on personality development and psychological biography. He is a recipient of the Jack Block Award for career contributions to personality psychology, the Henry A. Murray Award for excellence in the study of lives, and the William James Award for his book, The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By (Oxford University Press, 2006). He is the author most recently of The Art and Science of Personality Development (Guilford Press, 2015). His work has been featured in many media outlets, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today, as well as CNN, NPR, and other television and radio venues.