Trump & Learned Helplessness — Letters that should have been in the new york times

6.21.19

To the editor:

While Michelle Goldberg (Trump bets we’ll stop caring about migrant kids, NYT, 6.21.19) writes persuasively about the various reasons public outrage to President Trump’s (mis)conduct repeatedly wanes, I think two psychological phenomena have come together in a toxic brew.

The first is ‘learned helplessness’ which occurs when one repeatedly fails to effect change to an aversive situation. This can be a cause of clinical depression and is a useful way to understand the impact of constantly hitting a brick wall. Looking to 2020 paradoxically worsens this problem as President Trump can be given a free pass until then.

But ‘learned helplessness’ could not happen without ‘Trump’s people’ supporting him every step of the way. Those people who know better but turn a blind eye or whose self-interest leads to an abdication of responsibility cultivate the ‘malignant normalization’ of the abnormal – a term introduced by Robert Jay Lifton to describe the conduct of Nazi doctors.

As one of many mental health professionals who has given voice to President Trump’s evident mental instability, the silence among those who know better is deafening. Or worse, we are deemed unethical for speaking out. Meanwhile millions of people laugh as late-night comedians are overflowing with material as if laughter is the only medicine we have.

Respectfully submitted,

Larry S. Sandberg MD

The writer is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical Center and psychoanalyst.