Is Too Much and Never Enough a Darwinian tale of survival of the unfittest?

“He is Frankenstein without conscience,” writes Mary Trump of her uncle in her book Too Much and Never Enough, and she is certainly his Mary Shelley.

Mary Trump’s father died of a heart attack caused by alcoholism at the age of 42 when Mary was 16, and her memoir surely serves as a cathartic divesting of a lifetime’s compounding of a 16 year old’s wounded soul from the profound rage and sense of powerlessness triggered by such a loss and the failure of the extended family to safeguard the interests of her immediate family, sacrificial lambs in a perceived deathbed asset grab. 

The book is authored in a terse, perfunctory voice, often reading like a clinical report crammed with diagnostic terms written by the clinical psychologist she is. It is largely a final accounting of the high cost of being born into a family that creates great financial wealth, parented by individuals seemingly ill equipped for the job, by virtue of a combination of personal childhood experiences and blind ambition. This emotional debt is carried forward into successive generations, a heartbreaking, ever widening ripple of collateral damage. 

The author makes clear the financial empire currently underpinning the entire family was by rights her father’s heritage; as his father’s namesake and the oldest, he was being groomed for the job. But Fred Jr. had aspirations other than real estate, and like most scions who chose a destiny other than the one dictated by the patriarch, received condemnation, suffering severe consequences for it. He goes out into the world to seek his fortune and perhaps, ultimately, his father’s approval. His own accomplishments are never celebrated, and in despair he descends into addiction, ultimately robbing him of life and his children of his love and focus. His story becomes the “anti-prodigal son,” a cautionary morality play where not fitting in becomes a death sentence. As can often happen, when an heir dies before his parent without adequate estate planning protection (often intentional to maintain control of assets), his progeny’s legacy can be at risk. 

To me, the most interesting unexplored psychological forensic story is how the remaining Trump siblings rose above their childhoods in so many outstanding ways. The implication here is, similar to a litter of kittens, the most vulnerable sibling is pushed away by the others vying for the financial teat, and deprived of sustenance, the runt is sacrificed for the financial well-being of others. It is a painful story to witness, and I’m sure emotionally eviscerating to endure.  

I can not help but observe if we all lived our lives as though a disaffected relative would later write a “tell all” book with details filtered through their angst, the world would likely be a much better place.