When Donald Trump denies saying something that he has said, has he forgotten what he previously said? Has he perhaps convinced himself that he never said it? My sense is that Trump is not an amnesiac. Rather, he has an inability or unwillingness to acknowledge that he does anything wrong or says anything wrong. His psychological development is arrested at around the age of eight or nine years old — the age when the parent points out that the son has tracked dog crap into the house and the son responds like Bart Simpson, saying, “It wasn’t me.” I remember lying like that. My dread of the shame I would feel upon admitting that I tracked dog crap into the house was so great that I felt I had to lie.
Fortunately, in my case, I learned that lying actually created more personal pain and problems for me than admitting the truth did. The guilt I felt about lying was a very bad feeling and the amount of work it took to fabricate more lies in order to support the original lie was more labor than I was willing to do. I liked playing basketball, running around in the woods by Lake Michigan and riding my bike with my friends too much to spend my all my time and energy concocting falsehoods.
Telling the truth about errors I made or even bad things I knowingly did allowed me to gradually learn to feel less shame about my mistakes and foibles, about being human. In other words, I learned to screw up, admit it and not be crippled by shame. I think this is a crucial milestone in the development of a person. It can happen earlier or later in life, but it must happen or the person will remain trapped by fear of embarrassment and shame in a castle made of their own lies. And that grim castle, with the walls slowly pressing in, is where the president dwells.
Pity the child raised by a parent who suffers from perfectionism. They are made to feel that screwups and failures are not acceptable. We know from accounts of Trump’s life that Fred Trump was such a parent: a rigid and avaricious fellow who would tolerate nothing but the most superficial type of success from his ne’er do well son, Donald. Trump learned to lie early and he found it a hard habit to break. Learning to admit one’s gaffes is like learning to swim. If you do not learn it at a young age, you do not know that being in the water can be a comfortable place, even a soothing place. You must go through those early days of flailing about in the water to be able to learn to relax and ultimately find grace in your movements in the water.
I have taught immigrants English as a Second language for twenty years and more than once I’ve found myself in front of the class, at the crossroads between admitting I didn’t know something and pretending I did. A language is a living organism, always changing, morphing slightly to take in new vocabulary or alter syntax, to adjust punctuation or reconstruct grammar. Consequently, I can sometimes find myself telling my students something incorrect about the language. Inevitably when this happens, a smarty pants student (or just me) will catch the mistake and then I must admit in front of a room full of people that there are things about my native language I’m not clear about. The first time did this was excruciating; sweat pooled down my back and my voice cracked. Nineteen years later, admitting that I have told the class something stupid is practically effortless. I even enjoy it! I can joke about it with the students and experience the satisfaction that comes with learning something new.
Tragically, the president cannot enjoy such small graces. And because he lives the most public of lives, we must witness him sledgehammer the truth daily, spitting out non-sequiturs and twisting reality into absurd and grotesque forms. We have all had the opportunity to chat with a world class bullshitter perched on a bar stool, waiting beside us for a train or sitting next to us on an airplane. During such encounters, we think, “Poor guy. Doesn’t he know that he needn’t lie like that in order to have people like him?” And then we exit the bar, catch the train or plane and start to put some distance between us and the fabulist. Would that we could with the president.
