If, as Alison Gopnik says, “4-Year-Olds Don’t Act Like Trump,” then perhaps he acts like pseudo-child alternate personalities common in multiple personality.

For the sake of discussion, I will assume that Prof. Gopnik does not present an overly idealized view of children in her New York Times article (1). She implies that New York Times columnists and others have been mistaken to compare some of President Trump’s behavior to that of real children.

But that raises the question of whether Trump’s behavior is like some sort of unreal children.

Unreal children are commonly found in adults with multiple personality. The most common kind of alternate personality is the child-aged alter, because multiple personality starts in childhood.

According to DSM-5 (the psychiatric diagnostic manual), clinical multiple personality (a nonpsychotic, dissociative disorder) is more common than schizophrenia (a well-known psychosis). I argue in this blog that a normal version of multiple personality is probably present in 90% of novelists, and possibly 30% of the general public. And as previously discussed, the latter might include Trump.

1. Alison Gopnik. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/opinion/sunday/4-year-olds-children-trump-gopnik.html