Really good article about Ayn Rand (who many hardline Republicans seem to emulate, including many in Trump’s cabinet), Donald Trump, narcissism, and psychopathy. Was Rand a psychopath? Many people think she was, but there’s just as good an argument made by the author of this article (who is a psychopath) that she was really a narcissist. In my opinion, she was both.   As for Trump, he’s clearly a narcissist, but he’s so high on the spectrum his behavior and actions seem sociopathic (a word I prefer to use over psychopathy in most cases, because it’s a behavior pattern associated with malignant or high-spectrum NPD — while psychopathy is a condition one is born with and is not caused by early trauma).   In any case, lack of empathy is a feature of both narcissists (especially those as high on the spectrum as Donald Trump) and psychopathy.   You can think of psychopathy as “bad seed syndrome,” except a psychopath can actively choose to do good things or even be altruistic, if it suits them to do so.

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