I’ve often wondered what it must be like to BE Donald Trump. In 2017, I turned to Freudian personality structure and drew the two images above. I saw Trump as someone with almost no superego — the part of a person that acts as a conscience. But he was surrounded by forces that bolstered him and protected him from the world, strengthening his ego. The ego plays an important role in reality testing and in a sense of self. It lets us negotiate a path through the world. Trump’s world was so hemmed in with sycophants and wealth that he was able to maintain some functional ego.
At that time I feared that moving into the larger arena of life such as happens when one is president instead of owner of a nonpublic corporation, Trump’s ego would be quickly eroded. Then all that was left would be the id — the infantile, impulsive part of the personality that has no contact with reality, only with a push to satisfy one’s desires. When frustrated, impulses of the id are angry, primitive, and irrational.
I just came across these rough drawings from over three years ago and looked at the image of Trump I had predicted. A person with no moral compass, with no ability to do reality testing — an uncontrolled id is scary. I am not really a Freudian, but this helped me see why invoking the 25th amendment is so important.