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Trump on the Couch

Inside the Mind of the President

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Trump on the Couch

By: Justin A. Frank
Narrated by: Fred Sanders, Justin A. Frank
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About this listen

"A great public service - critical for our time." (Bandy X. Lee, M.D., M.Div., Yale psychiatrist, expert on violence, and editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump)

The New York Times best-selling author of Bush on the Couch shows that Donald Trump is mentally and emotionally unfit to execute the duties of president.

No president in the history of the United States has inspired more alarm and confusion than Donald Trump. Questions and concerns about his decisions, his behavior, and his qualifications for office only seem to multiply with time. How can he behave so callously and irresponsibly? Does he pose a true danger to our country? How could he even have been elected?

In answer, noted psychoanalyst Justin A. Frank takes a deep dive into the psyche of our president. Using observations gained from a close study of Trump's patterns of thought, action, and communication, Dr. Frank gives us a full portrait of the personality we saw on display during his remarkable campaign and helps us understand what has driven the decision-making during his first years in office. The result is filled with important revelations about our nation's leader and disturbing insights into his childhood, his family, his business dealings, and his unusual relationship with alternative facts, including how:

  • The absence of a strong maternal force during childhood has led to Trump's remarkable lack of empathy and disregard for women's boundaries (as well as his unusual hairstyle);
  • His compulsion to polarize America has grown out of the way he perceives the world as full of deceitful and destructive persecutors;
  • His inability to tolerate the pain of frustration has triggered his belief that omnipotence will finally remove it;
  • His idiosyncratic use of language points to larger issues than even his tweets might suggest.

With Dr. Frank's penetrating examination of how we as a nation got here and, more importantly, where we are going, Trump on the Couch offers a candid assessment of the man who is arguably the most psychologically damaged president we have yet had.

©2018 Justin A. Frank (P)2018 Penguin Audio
Political Science Politicians Presidents & Heads of State Psychology United States

Critic Reviews

"I've known Trump a long time and I have even tried my own hand at psychoanalyzing him on television. But, Dr. Frank has shown a more complete picture inside our 45th President's mind than I ever dared to consider. Behind all Trump's tough guy theatrics, his petty cruelties and bloated ego is a tangled knot of pathologies that should terrify us all. Trump on the Couch is a great first step to sizing up the President's inner demons.” (Donny Deutsch, cohost on MSNBC’s Morning Joe)

"Trump on the Couch has spared me the extra grief of hoping against hope that our President will change. Dr. Frank’s analysis helps explain the genesis of Trump’s bullying, cruelty, dismissiveness, sexism, sadism, narcissism and more to help us understand that very sick man. Now I can brace myself in a more efficient way - not teetering between disbelief and denial but accepting what is, and continuing to resist." (Joan Baez)

“A breathtaking book! While I have maintained that a full psychological analysis is not possible from a distance, Dr. Frank has convinced me that there can be an exception. A rare convergence of top-tier clinical prowess and rigorous research into high-quality data, Trump on the Couch is thoughtful, accurate, and responsibly informative in ways that make it a great public service - critical for our time.” (Bandy X. Lee, MD, MDiv, Yale psychiatrist, expert on violence, and editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump)

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One screwed up guy!

This book leans towards people with a background in psychology or psychotherapy, like myself, but it’s presented and written well. I think it could be a struggle constantly hearing about psychotherapy and how childhood experience shaped Trump. It is, however, very enlightening about why he speaks and behaves the way he does. We all better hope he loses because he’s becoming more wreckless and unhinged. Four more years of him will be the end of American democracy and global cooperation.

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