A psychological‑philosophical approach to Trump‑type behaviors and to politics in general.
What would Freud, Arendt, and Nietzsche say today?
Dear friends,
We don’t need psychiatric interpretations to recognize that:
• politics is psychology,
• identity is psychology,
• polarisation is psychology,
• leadership is psychology,
• collective behavior is psychology.
The influence of a leader — any leader — is always a blend of politics, society, and psyche.
As for us, the people, we take on what resonates with us and turn it into our own personal “belief system.”
Since Mr. Trump took the reins, we hear, read, and watch his endless, tragicomic theatrics every single day… like a TV series that, unfortunately, does not belong to the realm of fiction. Every public appearance of his feels like a display of arrogance and showmanship.
At the recent annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, he spoke for a full 70 minutes—or rather ranted—his neurotransmitters seemingly disconnected, with no cognitive coherence. In brief:
He repeatedly confused Iceland with Greenland.
He called wind turbines “windmills.”
He invented the claim that each rotation of the blades costs 1,000 dollars. He called them a Green New Scam…
He asserted that China makes all the windmills… and builds ghost wind farms that do nothing… purely for decorative purposes!
He threatened Canada.
He insulted Europe while standing on European soil.
He threatened Greenland, this time using the correct name, with military intervention.
He blackmailed allies.
He claimed that NATO leaders call him “daddy.”
He lied about the economy… stating that he achieved the fastest and most dramatic economic recovery in history and that inflation had been defeated.
He complained that he wasn’t honored with the Nobel Peace Prize.
In the end… absolute silence! And then his Minister of Finance went on TV, almost begging Europeans to “sit down” and “take a deep breath” before reacting.
I won’t comment on his latest statement about the video that depicts Obama in a dehumanizing way: “I condemn the video, but I haven’t done anything wrong to apologize for”, he said!
Observing his erratic behavior, I tried to decode his complex and
troubled character and concluded that this man displays elements of a highly fragmented public persona, almost as if he adopts different roles depending on the moment and the audience.No diagnosis is needed to describe the behavior of these individuals. It’s enough to observe how effortlessly they shift their tone, style, and posture, and the audacity with which they demand to be believed each time, as if you had no memory. It’s as if they have a wardrobe full of masks, arranged according to the audience standing before them.
Mr. Trump, who changes his persona in every appearance and expresses himself differently each time, often contradicting what he previously said.
He constructs the identity of the “forgotten American,” someone who has been ignored by the elites, harmed by globalisation, and feels that his country is changing to his disadvantage.
He presents himself as an outsider, someone who does not belong to the political establishment, someone who “tells it like it is,” an anti‑system figure.
He uses aphoristic language, simple phrases, strong self‑confidence, and an image of decisiveness.
He does not communicate through policy details. He communicates through stories — and these stories follow a specific structure. With the narrative of threat, he frequently introduces external enemies, internal opponents, and forces that want to destroy America. He places himself at the center: the only one who sees the truth, the only one who can protect the country, the only one unafraid of confrontation.
He uses short phrases, repetitions, strong slogans—easily reproduced by his supporters. The identity of “us” and the narrative “they threaten us” create a collective we. He himself becomes the central hero of the story: the protector, the warrior, the outsider fighting for the people. He constructs an opponent—the political establishment, his party rivals, the media, or external forces—and turns politics into drama, into a struggle for survival.
He draws on historical models but blends them in a way that makes them more intense, more theatrical, and more adapted to the modern media age. Everything he does takes place within the environment of social media, so that conflict becomes spectacle. Politics becomes almost a television episode; the dramatization is constant, not occasional.
He uses the media more aggressively and more crudely. He does not seek “unity” but “mobilisation,” turning every post into a political event. His audience functions like a “digital tribe.”
Mr. Trump is not a copy of any historical model. He is a hybrid of populism (Perón), polarisation (McCarthy, Nixon), political theater (Roosevelt, Reagan), and digital communication (Obama, Modi).
He is a mirror—not only of American culture but also of the global transition into an era in which identity, emotion, and narrative hold more power than arguments.
Psychology, philosophy
Let us approach Trump’s influence, as with any powerful political phenomenon, by touching something deeper: the way societies imagine themselves. Specifically:
1. Existential Reading
He stands as a mirror of an age afraid of losing itself amid rapid change, technological upheaval, cultural fluidity, and economic insecurity. People long for stability, simplicity, meaning — and Trump offers these, or at least they believe he does.
Philosophically, this recalls humanity’s ancient impulse to restore order to chaos. The leader becomes a symbol of the yearning for stability, not merely a political choice but an existential anchor.
2. Mythological Reading
Every society fashions heroes and antiheroes to narrate its own story. For those who feel abandoned by the world, Trump becomes a hero; for those who see in him a threat to democracy, he becomes an antihero. In either case, he turns into an archetype. An archetype of the “warrior” battling a system perceived as corrupt, hostile, or hollow. Whether the leader is “good” or “evil” matters less than the fact that he becomes the vessel of a collective narrative.
3. Cultural Reading
Trump is both a product and an accelerant of an era that has lost faith in grand narratives. Traditional sources of meaning — religion, community, work, national identity — have weakened. In their place, politics emerges as spectacle. He is not merely a politician but a character in an unfolding story that the public watches, comments on, imitates, reproduces. Politics becomes performance, brand identity, digital ritual. The politician is a brand because the citizen is a consumer of identity. This is neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’. It is the spirit of the times.
On a deeper level, politics functions as a religion without a god, where the leader becomes a priest, the party becomes a parish, the narrative becomes dogma, the timeline becomes liturgy, the viral becomes a miracle, and the opponent becomes a demon.
Politics does not degenerate on its own. It reflects our existential hunger in a world where:
Community has dissolved.
Truth has become relative.
Attention is a commodity.
Loneliness is structural, meaning the feeling of isolation does not arise from temporary circumstances but is embedded in the organisation of modern society, in our way of life and relationships. It is an invisible condition in which a person may be surrounded by others yet feel internally empty due to the absence of meaningful communication.
Identity is fluid, meaning a person’s self‑definition—especially regarding gender or personality—is neither static nor permanent but changes and evolves over time. It is a continuous, non‑linear process in which an individual may move between different expressions or roles, influenced by personal and social factors.
Performance politics is the stage on which we play ourselves.
When politics becomes performance, branding, and ritual, it no longer represents reality, it produces it.
The narrative precedes the event.
The image precedes the essence.
Emotion precedes truth.
Identity precedes experience.
Politics is the mirror. We are the reflection.
Mass psychology in Freudian terms — The Freudian reading does not concern individuals, it concerns mechanisms. And these mechanisms are activated every time a society rallies around a leader, whether that leader is called Trump, Putin, or anything else. When people form a mass, the Ego is weakened, critical thinking diminishes, the need for guidance increases, and emotion dominates. The mass seeks a figure that will function as a substitute for the paternal superego.
For Freud, the leader is not merely a political figure. He is a psychic object. The mass identifies with the leader as the Ideal Ego, who embodies strength, confidence, decisiveness, simplicity, and certainty, and also with the paternal figure from whom the mass seeks protection, guidance, meaning, and boundaries. The leader becomes the person who allows the mass to feel unity and safety.
When the mass identifies with the leader, the individual surrenders part of their autonomy, personal judgment is replaced by collective emotion, doubt disappears, complexity is simplified. Freud describes this as a libidinal bond with the leader, not in the erotic sense, but as a form of psychic investment.
Philosophically speaking, Freud might say today that the influence of a leader in a time of crisis is not accidental. It is the result of:
collective anxiety,
the loss of stable reference points,
the need for paternal protection,
fear of change,
the desire for simplicity.
The leader becomes the psychic symbol that organises chaos.
An approach in the terms of Hannah Arendt (less known to the general public, she was a German‑American political theorist and columnist. Her Jewish heritage, which she regarded as a central part of her identity, and her experience of persecution under the Nazi regime shaped her way of thinking and her commitment against totalitarianism).
According to Arendt, mass politics is not born out of hatred but out of loneliness. Loneliness is not simply being alone. It is an existential form of disconnection.
The simplification of reality
Arendt points out that the masses are drawn to narratives that:
simplify the world,
offer clear enemies,
provide easy explanations,
turn chaos into a story.
This is not naivety. It is a psychological need in times of destabilisation.
If Arendt were alive today, she might say that:
the digital age intensifies loneliness,
economic insecurity dissolves trust,
cultural fluidity generates fear,
social media produce masses without physical presence,
politics becomes a spectacle that promises meaning.
In this context, the rise of strong, divisive, or anti‑systemic leaders is not a paradox. It is a symptom of loneliness.
Let us also pass briefly by Friedrich Nietzsche, so he doesn’t feel neglected. Nietzsche is not interested in persons, but in forces, forms, and styles of power.
The Will to Power (Wille zur Macht)
Leaders who emerge in times of crisis express a collective will to power.
It is not only their own drive; it is the drive of the society that elevates them.
The masses seek someone who will embody the energy they themselves cannot express.
The leader becomes the face of the power that society lacks.
If Nietzsche were observing contemporary politics, he might say that we are living in an age of…
the weakening of old values,
the search for new forms of meaning,
the aestheticisation of politics,
the collective desire for power,
the need for excess and spectacle.
The rise of strong, theatrical, or divisive leaders is not an anomaly. It is the aesthetic expression of a society searching for a new form of power.
A comprehensive Nietzschean reading
Political influence — of any leader — is not explained by their personality. It is explained by:
the society’s will to power,
the need for an aesthetic form,
the search for transcendence,
the desire for intensity,
the need for symbols.
The leader is form. The masses are force. And politics is the theatre where the two meet.
If you’ve made it this far, I’m glad I was able to share these thoughts with you. The conclusions are yours to draw. Thank you for your time and attention.
Iannis Arvanitakis
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