It is not hard to notice that many of these terribly anxious people are Jews.
One could argue that Jews are more emotional or that they are more sensitive to seismic shifts in society or that they are paranoid and more prone to mental illness.
To the catalogue of anxieties her patients explore during therapy — marriage, children, and careers — psychologist Alison Howard is now listening to a new source of stress: the political rise of Donald Trump.
In recent days, at least two patients have invoked the Republican front-runner, including one who talked at length about being disturbed that Trump can be so divisive and popular at the same time, said Howard, who practices in the District.
What had happened to Trump during his childhood, the patient wanted to know, to make him such a “bad person?”
“He has stirred people up,” Howard said. “We’ve been told our whole lives not to say bad things about people, to not be bullies, to not ostracize people based on their skin color. We have these social mores and he breaks all of them and he’s successful. And people are wondering how he gets away with it.”
Hand-wringing over Trump’s rapid climb, once confined to Washington’s political establishment, is now palpable among everyday Americans who are growing ever more anxious over the prospect of the billionaire reaching the White House….
Judith Schweiger Levy, a psychologist in the neighborhood, has noticed a recent uptick in Trump references among her patients, including a middle-aged businesswoman who blurted out this week that her sister is supporting the billionaire.
“She was so upset and worried that she could have a sister — someone so close to her — who would have zero problem with Trump,” Levy said. “Another patient — also a woman — all she could talk about was Trump and how he’s crazy and frightening.”
Ruminating on Trump’s effect, Levy said, “Part of the reason he makes people so anxious is that he has no anxiety himself. It’s frightening. I’m starting to feel anxious just talking about him.”
Another psychologist, Paul Saks, who practices in Greenwich Village, said Trump’s recent refusal to immediately disavow David Duke, the Ku Klux Klan’s former Grand Wizard, has riled one of his patients who is the grandson of Holocaust survivors.
“This is really resonating with him, and troubling him,” Saks said. “Just that Trump has survived and that there’s such a cataclysmic shift in the Republican Party — an institution that’s part of our way of life even if you’re not a Republican — is going to disturb a lot of people.”
Mary Libbey, a psychologist on Central Park West, isn’t hearing about Trump from her patients. But she finds herself expressing her own anxiety about him to friends and colleagues.
“It helps me to talk about it,” she said. “I’m terrified that he could win. His impulsivity, his incomplete sentences, his strange, squinty eyes — to my mind, he’s a loosely held together person.”
…What makes Trump distinct now is that he’s “a demagogue who has become a vessel for peoples’ anxiety and anger,” said Michael Kazin, a Georgetown University history professor. But Kazin likes to remind anxious friends that Trump’s slice of the Republican pie is 35 to 40 percent, and Republicans in general account for perhaps a third of the population.
“Half of his own party is against him,” Kazin said. “And even if he is elected, he’s not a hardened right-wing ideologue. Above all, he’s a great entertainer. He’s a con man who cons himself.”
…Ken Goldstein, a Los Angeles-based author and businessman who is a Democrat, recalled meeting with a business associate recently and feeling astounded when the man said he thought Trump would “be great for America.”
“You just realize you have nothing more to say to that person,” he said.
Goldstein finds small comfort imagining Trump’s defeat, if only because his followers “are still there.”
“Who are these people?” he asked. “Are they at the grocery store, are they sitting next to me at Dodger Stadium? That makes me nervous.”
