{"id":2012,"date":"2019-03-01T23:37:57","date_gmt":"2019-03-01T21:37:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.AVNER-FALK.NET\/?page_id=2012"},"modified":"2019-03-13T14:34:39","modified_gmt":"2019-03-13T12:34:39","slug":"trump-and-kim","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.AVNERFALK.NET\/?page_id=2012","title":{"rendered":"Trump and Kim"},"content":{"rendered":"

[First Draft]<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s Desperate Quest for Love
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U.S. President Donald J. Trump and the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have had what seems to be a very bizarre relationship. In 2017 they vilified one another in the strongest terms, calling each other mad, idiot, \u201clittle rocket man\u201d and \u201ccrazy old man\u201d. In mid-2018 they had a summit meeting in Singapore at which they became bosom friends. In late September 2018, at an election rally before the mid-term elections, the autocratic Trump, who had repeatedly incited to violence against his opponents, said of the violent tyrant Kim, who had brutally murdered many of his countrymen, \u201cHe wrote me beautiful letters. And they\u2019re great letters. We fell in love.\u201d (see https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/politics\/2018\/09\/30\/trump-north-koreas-kim-love-beautiful-letters\/1478834002\/<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

Kim’s beautiful letters had gratified Trump’s narcissism. Five months later, after their second summit meeting had fallen though, Trump still described Kim as \u201cquite a guy and quite a character and very strong.\u201d In a talk with Sean Hannity of Fox News<\/em> Trump said, \u201cHe\u2019s a character. He\u2019s a real personality. And he\u2019s very smart. He\u2019s sharp as can be. He\u2019s a real leader. He\u2019s pretty mercurial. He likes me, I like him.\u201d \u00a0(see https:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/news\/politics\/ny-news-trump-hannity-interview-vietnam-20190228-story.html<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump and Kim seem very different from one another, yet, psychologically, they are very much alike. Both of them are malignant narcissists (see https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Malignant_narcissism<\/a>) who have little or no empathy for anybody else\u2019s feelings. Each of them unconsciously sees himself in the other as in a mirror, just like the mythical Narcissus in ancient Greek myth, who falls in love with his own image in the water, thinking that it is another person. Both Trump and Kim love to fire: they fire \u201ctweets,\u201d people, missiles, threats, insults, bullets, rockets, anything. Kim has even been known to burn people alive with flamethrowers. (see https:\/\/www.thesun.co.uk\/news\/8512970\/kim-jong-un-burnt-north-korea-officials-defector-claims\/<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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Shame and Humiliation<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Like Kim, Trump dreads the unbearable feelings of shame and humiliation, and has a compulsive need to shame and humiliate his opponents. The obverse of this psychological coin is his own terror of being humiliated himself. In his White House speech of June 1, 2017, announcing his decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords of 2015, Trump said, \u201cThey won\u2019t be laughing at us any more, believe me.\u201d Being laughed at, shamed, or humiliated is his deepest fear. His destructive decision was self-destructive as well. CEOs of major U.S. corporations withdrew from his business advisory council, other business leaders and billionaires attacked him for putting our children\u2019s future at risk, and he alienated most of the world\u2019s other leaders. (see http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/business\/news\/paris-agreement-withdrawal-bob-iger-disney-ceo-donald-trump-elon-musk-advisory-council-tech-climate-a7768346.html<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

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Projective Identification<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The Trump-Kim \u201clove affair\u201d had been preceded by a \u201chate affair,\u201d fueled by unconscious splitting (see https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Splitting_(psychology)<\/a>) and projective identification (see https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Projective_identification<\/a>) on both sides, in which each of them had seen the Devil in the other.\u00a0 Neither Trump nor Kim can tolerate any public threat or insult, which both experience as personal shaming and humiliation, nor any expression of superiority by someone else, which makes each of them feel powerless. They see one another as in a mirror: each sees the evil in the other, but not in himself. This psychological situation makes for the most dangerous pair of political leaders today, and perhaps ever, if they cause a nuclear war to break out that could wipe out our species.<\/span><\/p>\n

Due to their massive unconscious splitting, both Trump and Kim see their world in black and white. Other people to them are either good (allies) or bad (enemies). There is nothing in between. Hate can easily turn into love, and vice versa, if the other person is no longer perceived as the ally or enemy he or she had been.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Fire and Fury<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

On Tuesday, August 8, 2017, the anniversary of the dropping of the U.S. nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, as the tension between Trump and Kim reached its peak, Trump told U.S. reporters, \u201cNorth Korea best not make any more threats to the U.S. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen […] he has been very threatening beyond a normal state. They will be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.\u201d Trump has repeated this threat several times since. Trump was threatening North Korea with nuclear bombing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s inflammatory comments were sharply criticized by many U.S. politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, yet three days later, on Friday, August 11, in the wee hours of the morning, a sleepless Trump tweeted, \u201cMilitary solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!\u201d When Trump spoke to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2017, he had threatened to \u201ctotally destroy\u201d North Korea (see https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2017\/sep\/19\/donald-trump-threatens-totally-destroy-north-korea-un-speech<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Twinship and Mirror Transferences<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Why did Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un make all these terrible threats, which were likely to provoke a Third World War and destroy our entire species? And why did they become such close friends later?<\/span><\/p>\n

The psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut (1913-1981) coined the term \u201ctwinship transference\u201d to describe a psychotherapeutic situation in which the patient experiences the therapist as very similar to himself or herself, thereby sustaining the patient\u2019s sense of self-worth (see https:\/\/dictionary.apa.org\/twinship-transference<\/a>). This occurs in everyday life as well, and certainly between Trump and Kim.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is also the \u201cmirror transference\u201d by which Trump and Kim have seen madness in one another, as if in a mirror (see https:\/\/www.encyclopedia.com\/psychology\/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases\/mirror-transference<\/a>). Kim Jong-un, the North Korean despot, had called Donald Trump \u201cmad,\u201d and Trump had called him a \u201ccrazy rocket man.\u201d While Kim had threatened a military attack on \u201cthe waters near Guam,\u201dthe U.S. military base in the Pacific Ocean, Trump was threatening a massive military attack, if not a nuclear one, on a nuclear-armed state equipped with super-sophisticated long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles built by Russian and Chinese experts, whose leader had threatened to bomb South Korea, Japan, and the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n

A CBS News opinion poll had found that nearly three out of every four Americans were \u201cuneasy\u201d about North Korea and doubted Trumps ability to handle the dangerous situation. The world was facing a catastrophe in which hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, could be killed. (see http:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2017\/08\/08\/politics\/north-korea-cbs-poll-donald-trump\/index.html<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

Kim had been equally threatening. On November 8, 2017, during Trump\u2019s trip to Japan and South Korea, he announced that the United States must remove the \u201clunatic old man\u201d Donald Trump or face the \u201cabyss of doom.\u201d Kim said that the United States \u201chad better make a decisive choice [\u2026] if it does not want a horrible nuclear disaster and tragic doom.\u201d In other words, Kim was threatening the U.S. and the world with a Third World War, in which nuclear weapons would be used. Such a war could mean the death of millions of people in North Korea, South Korea, Japan, possibly Guam, and even the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n

In response, Donald Trump had said \u201cDo not underestimate us and do not try us […] North Korea is a country ruled by a cult […] The weapons that you are acquiring are not making you safer, they are putting your regime in grave danger. Every step you take down this dark path increases the peril you face.\u201d After saying he would not fall victim to intimidation, which to him means humiliation, Mr. Trump added: \u201cAnd we will not let the worst atrocities in history be repeated here, on this ground we fought and died to secure. The world cannot tolerate the menace of a rogue regime that threatens it with nuclear devastation.\u201d (http:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/news\/world\/876961\/world-war-3-north-korea-latest-donald-trump-USA-nuclear-war-south-korea<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

Like Kim Jong-un, Donald Trump loved to fire. He fired people, and he fires \u201ctweetstorms.\u201d On Monday night, June 3, 2017, after North Korea had tested a ballistic missile that it claimed to be capable of hitting the United States, Donald Trump derogated the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, on Twitter as \u201cThis guy.\u201d The U.S. president tweeted, \u201cNorth Korea has just launched another missile. Does this guy have anything better to do with his life? Hard to believe that South Korea and Japan will put up with this much longer. Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What Trump failed to see was that \u201cthis guy\u201d was just as addicted to firing his missiles as Trump himself was addicted to firing his “tweets,” and that the question he asked about Kim Jong-un could be asked about him as well. Trump fires his tweets in much the same way Kim fires his missiles. No day passes without the U.S. president tweeting, usually in the wee hours of the morning or late at night, at times firing several tweets in one say. In July 2017 Julia Gillard, a former Australian prime minister, predicted that Trump\u2019s tweets would trigger public discussions of his mental health. <\/span><\/p>\n

The debate about Trump\u2019s mental health has been going on for years (see http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2017\/07\/04\/donald-trumps-tweets-will-trigger-talk-mental-health-says-former\/<\/a>). As he had several times before, b<\/span>y early February 2019 Trump seemed on the verge of a psychotic breakdown. <\/span>The Yale psychiatrist Dr. <\/span>Bandy Lee attributed this to his dread of the forthcoming report by Special Prosecutor Bob Mueller on his criminal activities (see https:\/\/www.rawstory.com\/2019\/02\/trumps-presidency-mental-crisis-engulfing-nation-yale-psychiatrist\/<\/a>). Yet Trump seemed to have an emotional resilience (and paranoid defenses) that kept him from falling apart.
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Losing Kim’s Love<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

What seemed like an incomprehensible relationship between Trump and Kim could be understood if we realized the unconscious processes of splitting and projective identification in both Trump and Kim that underlie it, and the powerful unconscious twinship and mirror transferences that power their mutual attraction. Unfortunately, we unconsciously tend to deny Trump\u2019s mental illness.<\/em> <\/span><\/p>\n

Trump unconsciously experienced the failure of his second summit meeting in Hanoi with his beloved Kim in late February 2019 as a loss of love and an abandonment, and it precipitated a grave emotional crisis in him. Right after Trump\u2019s return to Washington he gave a rambling, incoherent, irrational, psychotic-like, 140-minute speech at the annual Conservative Public Action Conference (CPAC), saying, \u201cI\u2019m in love, and you\u2019re in love. We\u2019re all in love together. There\u2019s so much love in this room, it\u2019s easy to talk. You can talk your heart out. You really could. There\u2019s love in this room.\u201d (see https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/trumps-cpac-speech-was-full-of-love-its-been-a-successful-formula-for-him\/2019\/03\/05\/6047df16-3f7e-11e9-9361-301ffb5bd5e6_story.html?utm_term=.96e69cc7a101<\/a>).
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

In his book Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President<\/em> (New York, Avery, 2018), the psychoanalyst Justin Frank showed how deeply everything <\/span>Donald <\/span>Trump did had its unconscious roots in his disturbed early relationship with his mother, who could not love him, and from whom he struggled in vain to separate. <\/span>Trump\u2019s <\/span>mother had almost died in childbirth when he was a toddler (see Gwenda Blair, The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate,<\/em> New York, Simon & Schuster, 2015, p. 227). Upon returning home from the hospital, she was depressed, cold, and remote, and <\/span>rejected the little Donny\u2019s desperate attempts to cling to her.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

By early March 2019 Trump seemed to be falling part emotionally. His ab<\/span>andonment by Kim had unconsciously thrown him back to his early rejection by his mother, whose lost love he had unconsciously sought in Kim. After losing it, he unconsciously sought that love in his CPAC audience, telling them how much love the room was filled with. Dr. Bandy Lee warned the world again of his dangerous mental deterioration and of our unconscious denial of this danger (see https:\/\/www.salon.com\/2019\/03\/05\/psychiatrist-on-trump-the-president-deserves-medical-standard-of-care-and-he-is-not-getting-it_partner\/?fbclid=IwAR1xlcut_oJOh-xOkSxIj-ZRbJ2zqfnHpfojoH6KPoOAMNhAx1ftuYjWJtI<\/a>). So did Dr. Justin Frank (see https:\/\/www.salon.com\/2019\/03\/11\/author-of-trump-on-the-couch-trump-should-be-quarantined-michael-cohen-should-fear-for-his-lif\/<\/a>).
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Would Trump take revenge on Kim for the withdrawal of his love by bombing his country, unconsciously rationalizing his decision by citing America’s national security? Are our world, our planet and our species in danger of being annihilated by a man who was emotionally ill and who could destroy himself and our civilization along with him?<\/span><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[First Draft]   Trump\u2019s Desperate Quest for Love U.S. President Donald J. Trump and the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have had what seems to be a very bizarre relationship. In 2017 they vilified one another in the strongest terms, calling each other mad, idiot, \u201clittle rocket man\u201d and \u201ccrazy old man\u201d. In mid-2018 they […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2012","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.AVNERFALK.NET\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.AVNERFALK.NET\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.AVNERFALK.NET\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.AVNERFALK.NET\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.AVNERFALK.NET\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.AVNERFALK.NET\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2012\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.AVNERFALK.NET\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}