Folio Spotting

Maybe the Trollope collection behind Mary Trump

I can't see 'Can You Forgive Her?'.

TDS leaking onto FSD? Yeesh.

I can also spot what seems like “In Search of Lost Time” in the background.

The fact that she owns a book at all highlights the immense gulf between her and the more famous Trump.

I’m sure she appreciates how Trollope identified the character of her uncle with eerie precision in Augustus Melmotte, The Way We Live Now.

>6 DanielOC:

I doubt she reads Trollope. Those are 99% likely placed arbitrarily as decor. Listening to a bit of their conversation... It'd be like saying Trump actually read the constitution. These are not studious people.

>7 CobbsGhost: From Wikipedia, just a few keystrokes away: “Mary Lea Trump graduated from the Ethel Walker School in 1983. She studied English literature at Tufts University, earned a master's degree in English literature at Columbia University, for which she studied the works of William Faulkner and his dysfunctional fictional Compson family, and holds a PhD in clinical psychology from the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University.”

>8 BangkokYankee: OT, but how do you convince a PhD admissions committee in psych to admit you when you have an undergrad and master's in English lit? How do you even pass quals in a field no way related to one you studied before, not to mention producing a programme of research?

>7 CobbsGhost: I think you will find that Mary is cut from different cloth to Donald , Don J, Ivanka & Eric

>9 ubiquitousuk:

Aside from the possibility that she completed other studies not mentioned, in the US undergrads have far more flexibility in choosing what courses to take than (IME) their counterparts in Europe. (For example, one of my colleagues in grad school had "majored" in chemistry, with a "minor" in classics. He wasn't sure which way he'd go rather late.) It's likely that she took enough qualifying courses to satisfy grad school entry requirements.

I also note that analysing Faulkner's characters calls upon psychology quite a bit. An impressive MA thesis could have done it too.

>9 ubiquitousuk: Nice example of shifting the goalposts.

I don't know what she wrote or said in interviews to get admitted but (again from Wiki):

'Trump worked for one year at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center while working on her PhD research.6 She is a contributor to the book Diagnosis: Schizophrenia, published by Columbia University Press in 2001.32 She has taught graduate courses in developmental psychology, trauma, and psychopathology.'

She seems to have persuaded a good many relevant people that she knows whereof she speaks.

This discussion inspired a comical picture in my mind. Imagine the more famous Trump sitting down and reading a book. Literally any book. It is not an easy thing to imagine.

>8 BangkokYankee:

Guess you can't judge a Trump by its cover. I will admit, I do not believe a degree in anything proves a lot, but it certainly suggests she has an interest in literature. Her conversation was inimpressive, but I concede she at least knows Trollope and therefore lands on the 1% odds.

I'll reserve my right to believe she has read much though...

>13 L.Bloom: I can easily visualize the more famous Trump sitting in front of pile of FS Marvel Superheroes comic series alongside hamburgers, nuggets, pizzas and many many french fries... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmUaKg-K-TI

But I think you mean a more serious read like here..



Source: https://radnorite.com/4734/the-radish/donald-trump-caught-reading-how-to-start-a...

>10 SimB:

She's the same, just playing the other side.

>15 mr.philistine: Ha! I stand corrected.

>11 LolaWalser: yes, good points. I just had flashbacks to my own PhD experience when even those seasoned in the field were dropping like flies so I was a bit surprised to see people crossing such a big discipline boundaries. But then I know nothing about Trump and maybe she discovered that she had some latent genius for psychology.

>9 ubiquitousuk: "How do you even pass quals in a field no way related to one you studied before"

This is actually not that uncommon. Undergrad education is rarely directly useful to graduate work beyond conscientiousness and follow-through. There are exceptions of course, and doing something like an honors thesis as an undergrad with a serious researcher can give you a leg up on the applications process in that it shows you have had some exposure to the process of actually doing research (also the connections help).

Producing knowledge is a considerably different endeavor than learning some existing ideas (and perhaps applications, depending on the field).

>20 abysswalker: “Undergrad education is rarely directly useful to graduate work beyond conscientiousness and follow-through.”

And it depends on the field or fields of study. Mathematics is largely sequential, so you would be lost if you tried to take graduate calculus without first having studied undergrad calculus. But there is no reason a literature major couldn’t transfer to history, although some catch-up reading might be useful.

Way, way back when I was in high school, I thought I wanted to be an astronomer. So I wrote to the department head of a university asking how I should plan my study, and he replied that I should get a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a master’s degree in physics, and only then specialize in astronomy for a Ph.D.