The mother behind the man…
The son’s policy began April 19. Children — eventually over 2,000 of them — separated from parents seeking asylum at the U.S. border. Babies, toddlers, preteens, and teens.
What kind of an individual puts such a policy in place? What kind of parent raises such an individual?
Mary MacLeod Trump was the 10th of ten children. Born in a remote and desolate part of northwest Scotland (making her son Donald a first-generation American), she grew up poor. Her father was a fisherman. Along with the rest of the family, Mary engaged in subsistence farming to make ends meet.
Backed by an eighth grade education, Mary traveled to the United States looking for a better life. Once here, she found work as a nanny with a wealthy family and eventually found her ticket to a better life — Fred Trump. They married in 1936. Between 1937 and 1948, Mary gave birth to five children. Freddy, the oldest, died of alcoholism at 41.
Donald was 2 ½ when his brother Robert was born. While in the hospital, Mary developed an abdominal infection that kept her there for weeks — away from home and away from Donald. What would that mean to a burgeoning child?
As recently as June 15, Dr. Colleen Craft, President of the American Academy of Pediatrics, observed, “We know that family separation causes irreparable harm to children. This type of highly stressful experience can disrupt the building of children’s brain architecture. Prolonged exposure to serious stress – known as toxic stress – can lead to lifelong health consequences.“
While Dr. Craft was speaking about the children presently separated from their parents at our southern border — not Donald Trump — her comments are universal and echoed by both psychologists and psychoanalysts.
According to available Information, Mary Trump was more deeply involved with charity projects and collecting coins from family-owned laundry machines than with her children. She loved the trappings of wealth, and enjoyed riding around in a Rolls-Royce to collect the coins. As per at least one of Trump’s childhood friends, Mary rarely interacted with Donald or his friends while they were at the house. Instead, the family’s live-in maid tended to the children.
What emerges about Mary Trump is a mother who was physically absent during a crucial time in young Donald’s life and emotionally absent for the duration. Psychoanalyst Prudence Gourguechon observes that feelings of empathy, an ability to trust, and a sense of security are some of the character traits that develop through a person’s relationship with his or her mother.
Today, the most obvious connection between mother and son is their hair. Certainly not Mary’s maiden name, which Trump misspelled in his book Think Like a Champion.
In 1990, when Trump was divorcing Ivana, philandering with model Marla Maple, and drowning in debt, Mary wondered, “What kind of son have I created?”
She should only know.
Well said.
Inter generational trauma and its impacts are very real. As Freud said long ago, we have a compulsion to repeat what we have experienced.
The inability to experience guilt or to feel empathy are hallmarks
of pathology. That this is
manifest in the leader of the US is a nightmare to behold.