ABSTRACT
To understand Donald Trump’s type of populism, we must go straight to the source and examine how he uses splitting and projective identification in nearly every aspect of his life. He is the premier populist example of someone who exhibits these defense mechanisms, and there is no shortage of material to illustrate these phenomena. This chapter will serve as a barometer by which the populists described in subsequent chapters will be measured, since Trump, I believe, exemplifies the Kleinian definition of projective identification.
