A Shift in Trump’s Self-Control?
“Something is changing with Trump,” Dan P. McAdams, a professor at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy, told The New York Times. “Trump seems to be losing some of his powers of self-regulation, which have never been all that strong for him anyway.”
In later adulthood, McAdams continued, “regulatory powers of cognition and speech may wane somewhat. For example, when older people tell stories about their personal experiences, they often digress in unexpected ways and engage in what researchers call ‘story asides.’”
McAdams, one of the nation’s foremost researchers in narrative psychology, is the author of several books, including “The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological Reckoning.”
He was recently named a fellow at Boston College’s Center for the Psychological Humanities and Ethics, a community of scholars and intellectuals conducting cutting-edge research on the basic questions of human life.
“A truly authentic fake”
McAdams has long asserted that Trump may be the rare person who lacks any inner story, something most people develop to give their lives unity, meaning and purpose.
A life story provides a moral frame of reference because it grounds your experiences in basic values and beliefs, according to McAdams, a narrative psychologist who pioneered the study of lives.
But Trump can’t form a meaningful life story because he is the “episodic man” who sees life as a series of battles to be won. There is no connection between the moments, no reflection and no potential for growth when one is compulsively in the present, McAdams argues.
Trump is a “truly authentic fake,” McAdams wrote in his book. “Trump is always acting, always on stage — but that is who he really is, and that is all he really is.”
McAdams, the Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Psychology and a professor of human development and social policy, has received three lifetime achievement awards, including the International Society for Self and Identity’s 2025 Distinguished Lifetime Career Award.
He is the principal investigator and director of the Study of Lives Research Group, which brings together graduate and undergraduate students across disciplines at Northwestern with a shared interest in the scientific study of human lives.
His research has been supported by major grants from the Spencer Foundation and the Templeton Foundation. He also directed the Foley Center for the Study of Lives at Northwestern from 1997 to 2019, a project funded by the Foley Family Foundation.
- Read the full New York Times opinion piece by Thomas B. Edsall.
- Read The Mass Psychology of Trumpism by Dan McAdams, New Lines Magazine