‘On Trump, Trauma and Tyranny’

Judith Herman's Interview with Ms. Magazine

No one draws parallels between the personal and the political like world-renowned trauma expert and Harvard psychiatrist Judith Herman. “Autocracy: Rules for Survival” author Masha Gessen called her and Robert Jay Lifton, “possibly the greatest living American thinkers in the field of mental health.” Herman’s courageously writing, with our dear colleagues Nanette Gartrell and Dee Mosbacher, to President Barack Obama that the then-president-elect needed a full neuropsychiatric evaluation—and my reconnecting with her after thirteen years—is what fatefully influenced my own decision to come forward. We authored together our prologue to The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.

Herman’s 1992 landmark book, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, is a seminal gift for humanity in depicting deep psychological similarities between domestic abuse and political oppression. Its concepts gave me—and no doubt many—an unequivocal ethical sense that we needed to speak up as mental health experts best suited to recognize the looming fascism (what I call, “mental pathology in politics”). She recently offered her insights in a luminous interview with a Harvard Divinity School alumnus, of which I excerpt a portion here:

Alexander Price: Is there a relationship between the way a powerful male leader like Trump or Putin thinks about boundaries and their sense of entitlement to take whatever they want?

Dr. Judith Herman: I frequently start my talks about psychological trauma with … the rules of tyranny…. The strong do what they please because they can. The weak submit because they have no other choice. And the bystanders are either complicit or too terrified to intervene, or just don’t care.

These are the same rules whether we are talking about international relations or whether we’re talking about intimate personal relations.

Price: In 2017 during Trump’s first presidency, there was a book in which you and many other psychologists discussed the psychological profile of Donald Trump. I wonder if you think the insights from this book have held up?

Herman: It was called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump…. We saw this man as a classically dangerous person because of his grandiosity, his sense of entitlement, his tendency to perceive people either as supporters or enemies, and his general admiration for violence…. What we warned was that when such dangerous people are put in positions of power, their dangerousness is amplified.

There was a lot of wishful thinking back then that once he was in a position of power and responsibility, he would modify his behavior—but in fact he amplified it and found a way to go after anyone who tried to restrain him….

Price: One of the contributors to this book was Robert Jay Lifton who did pioneering work on trauma in World War II. At the 2025 Munich Security Conference, many European political leaders began comparing Trump’s attitude of appeasement towards Vladimir Putin to Western appeasement of Hitler in 1938. I’m curious if you have any feelings about how the present moment in history fits with that historical background?...

Herman: What you see in the rise of fascism is a population that is suffering from a loss of status—loss of economic security. And a leader who promises that he will magically restore them to the greatness they deserve. And that he alone can … be the retribution for their grievances. And he promises this by finding a scapegoat to blame for their loss….

I think basically we check all of those boxes….

Price: Trump seems to have come fully into his personality in the 1980’s … as a sort of Hugh Hefner-Playboy type…. Do you think this attitude of viewing women as property might be related to his attitudes about how powerful states have the right to behave?

Herman: Once again, if you are the dominant person, then you have no boundaries. You have the right. You own other people…. So he treats women in general as subordinates that he has the right to treat however he pleases.

But he also views his generals that way. “My generals,” he called them. “Why don’t I have generals like Hitler’s generals?”

It’s basically an instrumental view of all other human beings….

Price: Today we face alternatives between liberal democracy on one side and then what leaders like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are offering on the other side. What is the nature of the attraction towards Putinism and MAGA—why do people choose it?

Herman: [I]f you are running an oligarchy then you’re transferring wealth upwards from the general public to the very few, the oligarchs at the top, you don’t really want to offer people freedom or prosperity, so what you offer them is hate. You offer them the fantasy of lost glory to which you are entitled and … give them someone to blame and to feel superior to.

It’s no accident that authoritarian movements are always misogynist. They’re always anti-Semitic. They’re always racist—because this is what they offer their population….

Price: … Donald Trump was convicted of sexual assault against E. Jean Carroll, but it didn’t affect his reelection…. How has this not had a more negative impact on his political career?

Herman: Well, of course, he projected it as persecution.

There’s an acronym called DARVO that … stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender, and that’s what perpetrators generally do when anybody tries to hold them accountable: deny, deny, deny, and attack anyone who’s trying to hold them accountable, by saying “I’m being so victimized!” This is what you heard Trump saying to Zelenskyy about how poor Mr. Putin had been so victimized. [“Russia, Russia Russia!”]

So I think some of his supporters accept his denial. Some of his supporters feel that he’s entitled … and that just makes him more of a man….

Price: I am wondering if you have any thoughts on what role women might play in the present global political environment where we are seeing a rise of authoritarian patriarchal leaders?

Herman: Women have a very important role to play because women’s rights are human rights. So women organizing for our rights, that’s half the population…. [A Turkish colleague said:] “You see, in 1980, we had a coup d’état, so all the progressive men were either in exile or in prison.” But they didn’t bother the women, because they thought the women were of no consequence. So the women organized and they spearheaded the peace movement…. So there are certain advantages to being underestimated. [My mother’s] advice was: “Activism is the antidote to despair.”

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Dr. Lee is a forensic and social psychiatrist who became known to the public through her 2017 Yale conference and book that emphasized the importance of fit leadership. In 2019, she organized a major National Press Club Conference on the theme of, “The Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” In 2024, she followed up with another major Conference, “The More Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” She published another book on fit leadership (now privately expanded), in addition to a volume on how unfitness in a leader spreads and two critical statements on fit leadership. Dr. Lee warned that journalists and intellectuals are the first to be suppressed in times of unfit leadership, and it is happening here; she continues, however, to be interviewed or covered abroad, such as in France, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Italy, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Canada (with notable articles in Polish, Turkish, and Korean). She authored the internationally-acclaimed textbook, Violence; over 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters; and 17 scholarly books and journal special issues, in addition to over 300 opinion editorials. Dr. Lee is also a master of divinity, currently developing a new curriculum for public education on “One World or None.