Donald Trump, in poetic terms, reminds one of the Green Knight in the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The Green Knight storms into King Arthur's Castle of aristocratic sophistication. He represents unruly, unkempt nature, and the crudeness of nature untempered by other forces. Donald Trump's personality is a complex combination of natural forces, many of which have a psychopathological edge to them. From the point of political psychology, he is the quintessential illustration of the power-oriented and directed personality. There is nothing necessarily bad about a leader seeking power. However, the methods he uses to get power may disclose complex personality traits, some of which are infused with latent psychopathologies. If he gets  power, these pathologies may even express themselves in forms of lethal leadership behavior. The idea of a political personality that is oriented to power is expressed in scholarly terms as the "private motives of the actor displaced on public objects and rationalized in the public interest." Clearly, Trump displaces something on public objects and provides garrulous justifications such as "Make America Great Again," "Beware of Outsiders," We are Under Threat and I have a Solution." Trump's wedge into the political process has been to focus on the shock and awe of a minority of white voters that the United States had elected a black president. We have probably underestimated the psychological effect of this change in American politics. Not only was President Obama black, but he was also intellectually skilled and politically competent, matters which severely affected the collective eco-structure of the lower class, economically deprived white electorate. This minority considered that whatever their depressed socio-economic status was, at least in the status hierarchy they were not black. That last refuge of security, whiteness, was now threatened by a change in national leadership to a black president. Trump, who notwithstanding his economic status, has a perspective that is largely lower class and laced with crude vulgarity, probably felt his own whiteness threatened. Thus was born the idea that the president, elected by the American people, did not carry a real authority mantle. The way to bring this out was the birthirism issue and the idea that the president could be humiliated by demanding he produce his pass to legitimacy, his birth certificate. The interesting question is why this lie had such staying power. The answer probably lies with the administration of President Bush II, whose advisors suggested that political truths are largely contingent and can actually be minimized if not obliterated by the repetition of a lie if you have the resources to flood the media with the lie. In this case, truth will be compromised and the lie, if it is not extinguished by the truth, will ride side-by - side with the truth, undermining the veracity of the principle of public life. Trump used birthirism with relentless tenacity to tarnish or obscure the truth. He did this intentionally, which indicated that he is not only trying to exploit low class racism in others but as a deep pathology to do it to gratify himself. Trump has taken this idea, namely the repetition of a lie and the management of the airwaves, as a central feature of his campaign. Lie after lie so overwhelms the media that there is virtually no discussion of the central issues in this campaign. It would be tedious to recount all the lies and the strategies of using lies to obscure political truths relevant to the body politic. But he has done this with success. The lies he proclaims are shameless, the lies which contradict the lies simply do not affect him. The lies about his opponents are assessed only as a matter of political advantage. There is no minimal ethics or morality in his utterances.

So, what kind of a personality is Donald Trump? The technical literature tells us that the human perspective of the mind reflects a multitude of tendencies or perspectives. For example, although a person's principle traits may be indicative of personality development, that person may have elements of narcissism in his perspective of personality. In a more extreme form, narcissism may be a psychopathic disorder, but in general it straddles the line between egregious behavior and tempered behavior. The same personality may exhibit an obsessive compulsive outlook. This could be reflected in the obsession with denigrating others who are deemed "outsiders" and a compulsive concern with Muslims as real dangerous outsiders. This too is a psychopathic disorder and Trump exhibits some of these qualities. Further pathology would be the Machiavellian outlook, this is a radically manipulative form of personality; leaders need some form of this to be successful. But in extreme forms manipulation can be done for the sake of manipulation and can represent a form of psychopathology. The normal personality may also have a paranoid streak. In a sense, Trump's impatience with criticisms or challenging questions from the media are an indication that there is a small level of paranoia in his political style. Two final perspectives of personality that may have some residual presence in Trump are the orientation of the authoritarian personality and the totalitarian personality. Trump has shown a tendency toward authoritarianism, but in this campaign he has not been able to utilize this outlook with great effect. He has subdued. It is difficult to see him in totalitarian mode, but this is possibly a latent feature of his outlook. What is clear is that his personality has a number of traits that are pathological in some degree and would appear to be incompatible with what a real democracy requires. Indeed,  it is very possible that should Trump win, the restraints on these pathologies will diminish and the American people could be in for a real nightmare.