I wrote the Art of the Deal with Trump. His self-sabotage is rooted in his past

The article describes a classic narcissist or someone with a similar personality disorder. And I don't mean the popular culture caricature of a narcissist. And I don't mean it in any hyperbolic, rhetorical or judgmental sort of way.

Such a severe disorder doesn't come about because of a domineering father or a brother's suicide late in life, though those things obviously provide yarn for spinning overly complex explanations, and a familiar narrative for empathetic people to sympathize with. As the article explains, Trump's personality traits were distinctly evident and exhibited as a small child. I find it odd that the author doesn't put 2+2 together. The author says in one paragraph that Trump's worldview was profoundly shaped by his father, but everything else related by the author either conflicts with that assessment or is more easily explained by an intrinsic (at birth) personality disorder.

The most generous interpretation is that the author means that Trump's sense of his own worldview was shaped by his father--that is, Trump used his relationship with his father as the foundation for building a narrative about the world and why he felt compelled to behave in certain ways.

Trump is who he is because of biology. People who don't see that are projecting way too much of themselves. Which, BTW, is precisely how narcissists and psychopaths are so adept at manipulating people within their sphere: they may lack empathy but they become skillful, intentionally or unintentionally, at manipulating others' empathy.

Empathy is the ability to see yourself in others. You look at Trump and you see another human being like yourself, and you try to understand him by contemplating how you'd feel in his shoes. Someone without empathy looks at you and sees a walking, talking piece of meat. The difference between an extreme psychopath and an extreme narcissist is that the narcissist, for some reason he doesn't understand, still measures his self-worth by others' attention. In that sense you're less a piece of meat and more like a potential point in some grand game.

Personally, I think this is highly relevant to HN because psychopathy and narcissism are both predicated by and explainable in game-theoretic, evolutionary terms. Theoretically you can even work out an equilibrium rate of non-empathic people in a population and test it. Extremes like this (and Trump's personality is almost absurdly extreme) are gold mines for genetic and behavioral research, just as extremes are gold mines in other fields of research. People like Trump provide invaluable insight, directly and indirectly (i.e. how people respond to him), into the nature and biological basis of empathy, consciousness, and cooperative group behavior.