It’s also important to note that people with ASPD generally have experienced significant abuse as children, often from neurotypical people. According to this study, “childhood emotional abuse and neglect are broadly represented among personality disorders, and associated with indices of clinical severity among patients with borderline personality disorder. Childhood sexual and physical abuse are highlighted as predictors of both paranoid and antisocial personality disorders.” Narcissism also has links to childhood emotional neglect. While people with personality disorders are not necessarily dangerous to society, given their different neurology it could be assumed that they learn differently from others and respond to abuse in different ways. However, their actions are not divorced from what society and those around them are teaching them. They act differently in different contexts, and these contexts are largely the responsibility of the rest of us. Given his family background, it’s probably safe to assume that Trump was actively taught to consider himself better than minorities, women and poor people (maybe not in words, but in the way that his family did business, for example). Grandiosity may have been in his neurology too, but it was reinforced externally. (Incidentally, many people wouldn’t consider this to be emotional neglect. I think it’s a different kind of neglect – Trump has to trumpet his supposed wealth and external achievements because he has learned that without them, he is worthless).
Another thing to point out is that people with ASPD are an extreme minority among the population. Trump is a horrible person and may well have a personality disorder, but that doesn’t explain why he’s so popular, or why people with personality disorders that harm other people are so successful. Many people with ASPD may be extremely focused, but in Trump’s case it looks like a veneer. He isn’t that successful at running a business, making money or even forming a cohesive argument, yet he’s been presented as the archetypal successful businessman for decades. For all the talk about psychopathic cunning, Trump is fairly transparently crooked and abusive. I have to come to the conclusion that many people like the image he presents.
