Donald Trump remains one of the most divisive figures in global public life. For some, he is a truth-telling outsider who challenges elite hypocrisy; for others, a dangerous narcissist whose disregard for truth, decency, and democratic norms undermines the very fabric of civic life. But rather than rehash familiar condemnations or rally around partisan affirmations, we might ask more difficult, potentially healing questions:
What kind of inner world produces such a person, and how might we respond from a place of care rather than condemnation?
What kind of society elects such a person as its leader?
To look for clues, I turn to two frameworks: personal construct psychology (Kelly, 1955) and the ethic of care (Gilligan, 1982; Noddings, 1984; Tronto, 1993). Together, they help me interpret Trumpâs behaviour not merely as aberrant, but as the outcome of a particular configuration of personal meaning, and to consider a form of resistance that retains ethical integrity.
The Winner-Loser Binary: A Core Construct
At the centre of Trumpâs personality appears to be a rigid binary construct: âwinner vs. loser.â This is not just rhetorical flourish, it functions as a core psychological filter through which people, situations, and events are understood and evaluated. And in which identity as ‘a winner’ must be conserved. In business, golf, media, politics, and even family life, success and dominance are equated by Trump with worth, and loss or compromise with irrelevance or contempt. And when there is a loss, it is portrayed as a ‘steal’.
Personal construct psychology, developed by George Kelly, helps us see how such binaries operate. We do not simply observe reality; we interpret it through personal templates and filters shaped by past experiences. If Trumpâs formative world taught him that only the dominant survive, then his worldview, however distasteful or destructive to others, has internal coherence. It explains his allergy to humility, his need for applause, and his inability to accept defeat without declaring fraud.
Business Failures, Risk-Taking, and Narrative Control
Trumpâs business record is strewn with failed ventures, multiple bankruptcies, lawsuits, unpaid workers, and exaggerated claims. Yet these rarely damage his self-image or standing with loyal supporters. He reframes failures as strategic exits, deflects blame onto others, and doubles down on grandiosity.
This is what Kelly calls “construct protection“: the re-making of events to preserve the integrity of core meanings. In Trumpâs case, the identity of âwinnerâ must be protected at all costs, even if that means denying apparently obvious facts. And from within that system, truth is always subordinate to controlling the narrative.
His high tolerance for risk, legal, financial, sexual, political, is also shaped by this construct system. Risk-taking, even cheating, can be interpreted as strength, cleverness, or dominance. In such a worldview, ethical boundaries are soft, non-existent, or invisible, if crossing them reinforces self-image.
Sexual Promiscuity and the Politics of Entitlement
Trumpâs sexual conduct, his affairs, boastful misogyny, and serial objectification of women, cannot be dismissed as merely private matters.
They reflect more than mere libido. They suggest a worldview in which other people, especially women, exist as instruments of gratification and affirmation. The pursuit of sexual conquest becomes another arena for dominance, a performance of virility and power, tinged with risk and reward. Those harmed by it are made invisible.
This is not incidental to Trumpâs political ethos; it mirrors it. In both realms, the ethic is not mutuality but utility. What use is this?
What Kind of Ethics Are at Work?
The ethics at play in Trumpâs world are perhaps best described as utilitarian self-centredness with a Darwinian accent. There is little sense of moral responsibility beyond the self, and no ethic of interdependence. This worldview celebrates not virtue but efficacy; the ability to win, persuade, extract, or dominate.
This is an ethic in which cheating is clever, truth is flexible, loyalty is instrumental, and empathy is weakness. It is amoral, structured by spectacle and driven by survival.
Attending with Care: A Difficult Discipline
How should we respond to this?
Not with indulgence. Trump has done harm, and care does not mean looking away. But nor should we respond with scorn or dehumanisation. An ethic of care begins not with outrage but with attentiveness.
- What is this person defending?
- What fear lies beneath this performance?
- What relational wound cries out through these public acts?
Care, as Tronto reminds us, is a political practice rooted in moral clarity. It is not naĂŻve. But it refuses to surrender to cynicism. It holds the tension between accountability and empathy.
The Trump in All of Us
To speak meaningfully about Donald Trump requires more than analysis. It requires self-examination. His prominence may reflect not just a cultural sickness, but a psychic one, a shadow made visible.
- Where do we ourselves cling to power, status, or control?
- Where do we treat others as means to ends?
- Where do we fear irrelevance, shame, or failure?
Trump does not arise from a vacuum. He is a projection of something latent in the culture, something latent in all of us, perhaps?
Resisting Trumpism is not just a political act, it is a spiritual one. It asks us to do our own inner work, to resist the binaries and ego-structures that shape us too. To meet force not with force, but with a stronger fidelity to truth, humility, and relationality.
Other Ways of Seeing: From Myth to Metaphysics
Trump may also be seen mythically, as a figure not merely of politics but of archetype. He resembles the Trickster of mythology: disruptive, rule-breaking, both generative and dangerous. Like Hermes or Loki, he reveals what polite society hides.
From a Jungian perspective, Trump might represent a collective shadow, a figure who externalises our cultural fears, disowned desires, and unintegrated drives. He carries our daemonic energy, but unredeemed unabsorbed.
From a process philosophy lens Trump represents a resistance to relational becoming. Where process thinkers see reality as interwoven, dynamic, and co-creative, Trump stands for stasis, control, and separation. MAGA longs not for a future of emergence, but a return to an imagined past of dominance and simplicity.
To deepen our response, then, is to enter these alternative logics, not merely to diagnose, but to see differently. To resist not only what Trump does, but what Trump means, in myth, in psyche, in system.
Conclusion: A Different Kind of Strength
To be Donald Trump, it seems, is to live inside a fortress of constructs;
- winner vs. loser,
- strong vs. weak,
- loyal vs. disloyal.
These protect a self that cannot risk doubt, vulnerability, or interdependence. Yet in defending this self, Trump closes off the very qualities, love, truth, connection, that make life meaningful.
But Trump is also a mirror. He reveals the shadow of a culture built on performance and power. He shows us what happens when we lose our capacity to relate, reflect, and repent.
Our task is not merely to oppose him, but to become different, to resist with care, to hold truth with tenderness, to make room for a future not built on winners and losers, but on participants and co-creators.
Care is not weak. It is the quiet strength that endures beyond applause. It is the ethic that survives when the spectacle has faded.
And it may be, in the end, our only way home.
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References
- Carroll, E. J. (2019). What Do We Need Men For? St. Martinâs Press.
- Forbes. (2016). Donald Trumpâs Business Failures Are Very Real.
- Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice. Harvard University Press.
- Jung, C. G. (1959). Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. Princeton University Press.
- Kelly, G. A. (1955). The Psychology of Personal Constructs. Norton.
- Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. University of California Press.
- Tronto, J. C. (1993). Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. Routledge.
- Washington Post Fact Checker. (2021). Trumpâs false or misleading claims total 30,573 over 4 years.
- Whitehead, A. N. (1929). Process and Reality. Macmillan.