Psychologists From The United States

"Homosexuality might be the most striking unresolved paradox of human evolution."

"When most people hear “environment,” they automatically think of the social environment, such as how children are raised or what kind of interpersonal experiences they have. But to a geneticist “environment” means anything not encoded in DNA, and this includes biological factors as well as social factors: diet, germs, and random biological events might also affect development. For example, when one identical twin is born with a major brain defect such as anencephaly (lack of a cerebral cortex, or outer brain) or microcephaly (a very small cortex), the other twin is usually normal. Only environment can cause identical twins to differ, but the environmental problem in this case is biological."

"Another environmental hypothesis that has received some enthusiasm on the political right is the idea that gay people seduce and recruit. I have never understood how this is plausible. A boy with no interest in homosexual activity wouldn't find it pleasant even if he agreed to it. How is this supposed to turn him gay?"

"The bad trend is that scientists and laypeople both think that there is something more impressive about biological markers—a trait that one can measure with a ruler or a blood test or complicated electronic equipment (I'm serious, there is no better definition of “biological marker”)—than there is about psychological or behavioral markers. This is a mistake."

"Nobody ever gave Danny Ryan a dress before he asked for one, and he was punished much more than rewarded for his gender nonconformity. If he grows up to be a gay man, as I expect he will, it will be despite the most obvious influences in his social environment, not because of them. In the short term, Danny will receive no more encouragement from others to become gay than he did to wear dresses. Behavior that emerges with no encouragement, and despite opposition, is the sine qua non of innateness. Boys like Danny are poster children for biological influences on gender and sexuality, and this is true whether or not we measure a single biological marker."

"...femininity in boys and homosexuality in men are probably caused by incomplete masculinization of the brain during sexual differentiation."

"“Social constructionism” (or “social constructivism”) is a term that might be familiar to anyone who has taken a humanities course at an American or European university since 1990, but it might otherwise sound odd. It is difficult to explain social constructionism in a way that satisfies social constructionists. They think this is because they are profound and people like me simplistic. I think it is because they aren't very clear, and to the extent they are clear, they are incorrect."

"Corruption and misuse of power are widespread phenomena. They are one of the major, if not the major, threats to democratic government and the rule of law. But at the lower ends of the power hierarchies as well, in society as well as organizations, the abuse of power is a major obstacle in the way of many people's pursuit of happiness. Moreover, the diversion of official organizational power for the selfish ends of the powerholder is necessarily detrimental to the aims and goals of the organization or society."

"Donald has always been protected and continues to be protected from his inadequacies... incompetence... lack of knowledge, from his failures... [H]e's always had support from more powerful people... protecting him from his mistakes, or from people who would try to hold him to account; and he's always been amply financed."

"Outside of New York I don't think people really... understood the truth behind his business record, and his financial failures, which are legion and serial."

"How do we gauge this man's ability to function in the real world, as he's never really had to. ...[T]hat ... is quite terrifying."

"If I can do anything to change the narrative, and to tell the truth, I need to do that because I don't believe the American people had the entire truth 4 years ago."

"[T]here are so many parallels between the circumstances in which my family operated, and in which this country is now operating. I saw... what focusing on the wrong things, elevating the wrong people, can do... the collateral damage that can be created by allowing somebody to live their lives without accountability... continuing now, on a much grander scale."

"I realized there literally was nothing that I could say at the time. Nothing stuck. ...He insulted a Gold Star family... a second amendment defense against Hillary Clinton, and... by the time the Access Hollywood tape came around, I knew that if I had said anything I would have been painted as a disgruntled, disinherited niece..."

"He's utterly incapable of leading this country, and it's dangerous to allow him to do so."

"Unfortunately for Donald, he could be of use... Donald had many years of watching my father be the wrong one. ...Clearly he learned the lesson from watching his almost 8 year old brother be punished for being kind... generous... sensitive, for having interests outside of what my grandfather thought was acceptable. ...[H]ang out with his friends... boat and fish and fly... He was not a killer."

"In my father's case, tragically, he was not of use."

"Donald... had to sacrifice whatever goodness there may have been in him once, whatever capacities of experiencing the full range of human emotions, to my grandfather... at the cost of all of us."

"While [hundreds of] thousands of Americans die alone, Donald touts stock market gains. As my father lay dying alone, Donald went to the movies. If he can in any way profit from your death, he'll facilitate it... then he'll ignore the fact that you died."

"[] had no empathy. He was... driven in a way that turned other people, including [family]... into pawns to be used to his own ends. If somebody could be of service... he would use them. If they couldn't be, he excised them."

"He learned to become the killer... who needs to succeed at all costs, who recognizes that other people are expendable, who does not need to take responsibility, who will do anything to get attention, financial rewards and "to win.""

"One of the unforgivable things that my grandfather did to Donald... he severely restricted the range of human emotion that was accessible to him. ...[C]ertain feelings were not allowed: sadness... the impulse to be kind... generous... Those things that my grandfather found superfluous, unmanly... a stupid waste of time... were punished; ruthlessly punished."

"Donald's need for affirmation is so great that he doesn't seem to notice that the largest group of his supporters are people he wouldn't condescend to be seen with outside of a rally."

"Donald today is much as he was at three years old: incapable of growing, learning, or evolving, unable to regulate his emotions, moderate his responses, or take in and synthesize information."

"His deep-seated insecurities have created in him a black hole of need that constantly requires the light of compliments that disappears as soon as he's soaked it in. Nothing is ever enough."

"In Donald's mind, he has accomplished everything on his own merits, cheating notwithstanding. How many interviews has he given in which he offers the obvious falsehood that his father loaned him a mere million dollars that he had to pay back but was otherwise solely responsible for his success? It's easy to understand why he would believe this."

"By 2004, when The Apprentice first aired, Donald's finances were a mess (even with his $170 million cut of my grandfather's estate when he and his siblings sold the properties), and his... "empire" consisted of increasingly desperate branding opportunities such as , , and . That made him an easy target for Burnett. Both Donald and his viewers were the butt of the joke that was The Apprentice, which, despite all evidence to the contrary, presented him as a legitimately successful tycoon."

"Nobody has failed upward as consistently and spectacularly as the ostensible leader of the free world."

"This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism; Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be. He knows he has never been loved."

"His ability to control unfavorable situations by lying, spinning, and obfuscating has diminished to the point of impotence in the face of the tragedies we are currently facing. ...His egregious ...mishandling of the current catastrophe has led to a level of pushback and scrutiny that he's never experienced before, increasing his belligerence and need for petty revenge as he withholds vital funding... from... governors who don't kiss his ass sufficiently."

"I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist—he meets all nine crieria outlined in the ' (DSM-5)—but the label gets us only so far. ...A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial disorder... [which] can also refer to chronic criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others. ...Donald may also meet some of the criteria for dependent ...an inability to make decisions or take responsibility ... He may have a long undiagnosed ..."

"To hedge his bets he enlisted Joe Shapiro, a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker, to take his s for him. That was much easier to pull off in the days before photo IDs and computerized records. Donald, who never lacked for funds, paid his buddy well."

"Donald was to my grandfather what the border wall has been for Donald: a vanity project funded at the expense of more worthy pursuits. Fred didn't groom Donald to succeed him; when he was in his right mind, he wouldn't trust Trump management to anybody. Instead, he used Donald, despite his failures and poor judgment, as the public face of his own thwarted ambition. Fred kept propping up Donald's false sense of accomplishment until the only asset Donald had was the ease with which he could be duped by more powerful men. There was a long line of people willing to take advantage of him. In the 1980s, New York journalists and gossip columnists discovered that Donald couldn't distinguish between mockery and flattery and used his shamelessness to sell papers. That image, and the weakness of the man it represented, were precisely what appealed to ."

"In order to get Donald, his psychopathologies, and the meaning of his dysfunctional behavior, we need a thorough family history."

"The full-page screed he paid to publish in the New York Times in 1989 calling for the Central Park Five to be put to death wasn't about his deep concern for the rule of law; it was an easy opportunity for him to take on a deeply serious topic that was very important to the city while sounding like an authority in the influential and prestigious pages of the Gray Lady. It was unvarnished racism meant to stir up racial animosity in a city already seething with it. All five boys... were subsequently cleared, proven innocent via incontrovertible DNA evidence. To this day, however, Donald insists that they were guilty—yet another example of his inability to drop a preferred narrative even when it's contradicted by established fact."

"[M]y dad couldn't change who he was, so he was... dismantled over time."

"He's a clown," my aunt Maryanne said during one of our regular lunches at the time. "This will never happen." I agreed. We talked about how his reputation as a faded reality star and failed businessman would doom his run. "Does anyone even believe the bullshit that he's a ? What has he ever accomplished on his own?" I asked. "Well," Maryanne said, as dry as the Sahara, "he has had five bankruptcies."

"We thought the blatant racism on display during Donald's announcement speech would be a deal breaker, but we were disabused of that idea when Jerry Falwell, Jr., and other white evangelicals started endorsing him. Maryanne, a devout Catholic since her conversion five decades earlier, was incensed. "What the fuck is wrong with them?" she said. "The only time Donald went to church was when the cameras were there. It's mind boggling. He has no principles. None!""

"Nothing Donald said during the campaign—from his disparagement... to his mocking... —deviated from my expectation... I was reminded of every family meal I'd ever attended during which Donald talked about... ugly fat slobs or... losers... [C]asual of people was commonplace at the Trump dinner table. What did surprise me was that he was getting away with it."

"Donald tried his very best not to be destroyed in the way my dad was... so he ended up with a very narrow range in which he could safely operate as a human being; so it's created this quite dangerous situation."

"After a decade during which Donald floundered, dragged down by bankruptcies and reduced to fronting for... failed products... The Apprentice traded on Donald's image as a brash, self-made deal-maker, a myth that had been the creation of my grandfather... that astonishingly, considering the vast trove of evidence disproving it, had survived into the new millennium... [I]n 2015, a significant percentage of the American population had been primed to believe..."

"[[Lying|[L]ies]], misrepresentations, and fabrications are the sum total of who my uncle is..."

"When Donald announced his run for presidency on June 16, 2015, I didn't take it seriously. I didn't think Donald took it seriously. He simply wanted the free publicity for his brand. He'd done that sort of thing before. When his poll numbers started to rise and he may have received tacit assurances from... Vladimir Putin that Russia would do everything it could to swing the election in his favor, the appeal of winning grew."

"When Maryanne's turn came, she said, "... We've come a long way since that night when Freddy dumped a bowl of mashed potatoes on Donald's head because he was such a brat." Everybody familiar with the legendary mashed potato story laughed- everyone except Donald, who listened with his arms crossed tightly and a scowl on his face, as he did whenever Maryanne mentioned it. It upset him, as if he were a seven-year-old boy. He clearly still felt the sting of that long-ago humiliation."

"My grandfather was an adherent to Norman Vincent Peale's doctrine of positive thinking. ...It allowed room for nothing else, and there are times in our lives when we are legitimately distressed... sad... in pain. ...[T]o be prevented to feel those feelings honestly and openly is a form of torture."

"What causes the lunatic to demand that ideas not be subject to scrutiny—and in particular that they not be contradicted? No one knows. It may be part of a deliberate campaign to maintain power, an implicit admission of some semiconscious fear that the ideas might not be good, or just a common aspect of types of behavior that we associate with historical monsters. At least, the correlation is there."

"If we reject the idea of the “intrinsic rationality of whatever we do” (at least if we are not some sort of superb expert or monstrous political leader), then we must value scrutiny, which brings me to my final point: the necessity and value of a free society. When we scrutinize arguments, we often do so in a collective way…. If disagreement can lead to the presentation of one’s remains in a body bag to one’s spouse, this type of scrutiny is horribly constrained. Such constraint in turn implies that irrational conclusions will go unchallenged, and again because irrationality implies impossibility, that lack of challenge in turn implies belief in false conclusions. Such belief harms both societies and individuals."

"The realpolitik view of the individual human—that we are slaves to our desires and attitudes and that knowledge and rationality are necessarily secondary to these other factors—is simply wrong. We have the competence to be knowledgeable and rational, especially when we interact freely with each other. We can indeed change our minds. We can “bend over backward to be defense attorneys against our own pet ideas.” We can reconsider. We can be rational."

"The world as postulated by the recovered-memory theorists is not an impossible one—just an extraordinarily unlikely one."

"Again, irrationality can hurt, and here we have evidence that a particular form of it is widespread. The people accused around hurt, and the clients—be they children or grown adults—are hurt. Irrationality is not simply an amusing diversion provided by tarot cards or Ouija boards."