COLUMN: Boris Cyrulnik Weighs In — Trump Isn’t Crazy; He’s a Psychopath

The Washington Post kept a tally during his first term: 30,573 lies or misleading statements in four years—about 21 per day. Not mistakes. Not approximations. Lies—documented, verified, and repeated even after being debunked.

An ordinary person who lies feels uncomfortable. Their body gives them away. Their voice changes. Trump, on the other hand, lies as effortlessly as he breathes. Because for a psychopath, as Cyrulnik explains, lying is not a moral transgression—it’s a tool. Nothing more.

And what about the truth in all this?

Truth does not exist in the psychopath’s mental universe. There is only what serves a purpose and what does not. What advances his interests and what hinders them. The rest—facts, science, history, human dignity—is mere scenery that can be repainted at will.

Trump describes himself as a very stable genius, the least racist person in the world—better than Lincoln. He claims to have ended eight wars, saved millions of lives, and reinvented the global economy. None of these claims are true. All are made with absolute certainty.

This isn’t ego. Ego allows for nuance. It isn’t pride. Pride is ashamed of its excesses. It is a clinically identified trait: narcissistic grandiosity, a direct cousin of psychopathy in the constellation of personality disorders.

Six thousand Mexicans called rapists in his 2015 campaign kickoff speech. No apology. Thousands of families separated at the border, children locked in cages. No apology. On January 6, 2021, his supporters stormed the Capitol; five people died. No apology. On the contrary: he pardoned them all as soon as he returned to power.

Never, ever admit a mistake

This is one of the golden rules of the psychopath described by Hare. Admitting a mistake means admitting a flaw. Admitting a flaw means becoming vulnerable. And vulnerability, for a psychopath, is intolerable. So they lie, they deflect, they blame others, they change the subject. But they never apologize.

Look at how Trump treats his allies. Zelensky, humiliated live on air in the Oval Office in February 2025. Trudeau, nicknamed “Governor” as if Canada were a U.S. state. Macron, patted on the hand like a child. Merkel, whom he refuses to shake hands with.

Every gesture is calculated. Every public humiliation is a test of dominance. This is exactly what the clinical literature describes: the psychopath does not see others as equals. He sees them as obstacles, tools, or prey.

It’s often said that Trump is impulsive. That’s a misinterpretation. His outbursts are performative. They serve a strategy. Threatening Greenland on a Monday diverts attention from Friday’s scandal. Insulting an ally today sets the stage for negotiations tomorrow.

The intelligent psychopath—and Trump is one, whatever his detractors may say—uses chaos as a weapon. He knows that amid the noise, no one follows the money trail, no one reads the executive orders signed in silence, and no one notices the appointments to key positions in the Department of Justice.

And despite all that, Trump is popular. Seventy-seven million Americans voted for him in November 2024. How? Because the psychopath has a formidable weapon: superficial charm. This ability to say exactly what each person wants to hear, to project total confidence, to give the illusion of strength.

The illusion of strength versus the fear of the void

In an era of widespread doubt, cascading crises, and climate and economic turmoil, the man who says “only I can fix this” is reassuring. It doesn’t matter that he’s lying. It doesn’t matter that he’s dangerous. He offers certainty. And certainty—even if it’s false—is a drug.

Boris Cyrulnik is 88 years old. He has nothing left to prove, nothing left to fear, and nothing left to sell. That is precisely why his words carry so much weight. When, at this age, he chooses to publicly label a sitting head of state a psychopath, it is because he considers the danger serious enough to justify breaking the taboo.

American psychiatrists have long been bound by the Goldwater Rule, adopted in 1973, which prohibits them from remotely diagnosing public figures. But Cyrulnik is not American. He is not bound by any code of ethics that would apply to Trump. He is French, European, and he speaks on the basis of sixty years of clinical experience.

Calling things by their name is not the same as insulting. Calling things by their name allows society to see things clearly. As long as we talk about Trump as an eccentric, divisive, unconventional politician, we remain within the realm of normal democratic debate. We can negotiate with a politician. We can reason with an opponent. We can contain a populist.

But you don’t negotiate with a psychopath

We isolate him. We contain him. We secure our institutions. We protect the checks and balances. We prepare for the aftermath. Because a psychopath in power will only stop when he encounters a wall stronger than himself. Never before.

In the United States, dozens of psychiatrists have been trying to break the Goldwater rule since 2016. The anthology The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, published in 2017 and edited by Bandy Lee, was condemned by the American Psychiatric Association. Bandy Lee lost her job at Yale. The message was clear: don’t touch this man.

Meanwhile, the man who could not be diagnosed was returning to power. And with him came everything clinicians feared: the purge of civil servants, the militarization of Democratic cities, threats against judges, and the collapse of standards.

Cyrulnik isn’t just talking about Trump. He’s talking about an era—an era in which democracies elect men whom clinicians recognize immediately: Bolsonaro in Brazil; Duterte in the Philippines; Orbán in Hungary; Milei in Argentina; and tomorrow, perhaps, right here at home.

The mirror no one wants to look into

When a society elects a psychopath by a majority vote, it is not the psychopath who is sick. It is society. This is what Cyrulnik, with the gentleness of the very old sages, is trying to help us understand. Trump is a symptom before he is a cause. The diagnosis does not concern just one man. It concerns the era that brought him to power twice.

At the very least, we owe it to him to read it. To listen to him. To stop pretending the question doesn’t exist. Words carry weight. “Psychopath” isn’t just an insult hurled on social media. It’s a clinical diagnosis made by a man who has spent his life healing shattered souls—and who recognizes when a soul has never truly taken shape.

It took the West years to call Stalin by name. Decades to call Mao by name. An entire generation to face the reality of who Hitler truly was before it was too late. Each time, clinicians had seen it coming. Each time, they were mocked, ignored, and silenced.

Boris Cyrulnik is probably right. And if he is right—and he is right—then we are living in a historic era in which a psychopath controls the most powerful nuclear weapon in the world, humiliates his allies, negotiates with fellow dictators, and systematically dismantles the checks and balances that should keep him in check.

Looking the beast in the eye

This cannot be negotiated through treaties. It cannot be reasoned away with editorials. It can only be contained by strong institutions and clear-thinking people. Cyrulnik holds up a mirror to us. It is up to us to decide whether we dare to look into it.

On set, in this video that’s now circulating on TikTok and racking up millions of views, Cyrulnik concludes with this sentence that everyone should learn by heart: A madman can be understood. A psychopath can only be stopped.

He didn’t say it angrily. He said it sadly. Like a man who knows the cost of failing to stop in time those who must be stopped. Like a man who has seen what happens when we confuse madness with evil, when we mistake calculation for insanity, when we let superficial charm mask the absolute coldness of the heart.

Boris Cyrulnik has spoken. History will judge those who chose not to listen to him.

Signed, Jacques PJ Provost