B X Lee -- ‘Psychiatrists do Not Diagnose from Afar. But Trump’s Latest Messages were Too Dangerous to Ignore’
‘Psychiatrists do Not Diagnose from Afar. But Trump’s Latest Messages were Too Dangerous to Ignore’
A Foreign Newspaper Tries to Explain the Absence of Mental Health Experts in American Media
The Sydney Morning Herald published the following:
“We are seeing a man in profound psychological crisis. He actually needs adulation and accolades from the public—like one would need oxygen—because he has so few inner resources.”
- American psychiatrist Dr. Bandy Lee“[Donald Trump’s] behaviour and thought processes seemed so unhinged as to raise concerns about ‘dangerousness’.”
- American psychiatrist Dr. Allen Dyer“If a client of mine did this, I would probably say we need to up their meds.”
- Australian criminal psychologist Tim Watson-MunroAmid war in the Middle East and fears of a global economic implosion, the U.S. president was having a meltdown of his own, furiously posting to his Truth Social account between 9:49 pm and the ungodly hour of 4:10 am.
Those multiple incoherent posts—including a now infamous depiction of himself as Jesus—have thrown fresh focus on the president’s mind…. U.S. President Donald Trump attacked Pope Leo XIV,… calling the leader of the Catholic Church “WEAK on crime”….
It is particularly fraught with danger for psychologists and psychiatrists in the United States. They have to deal with the MAGA base, which believes all criticisms or observations are politically motivated, and must also navigate … the Goldwater rule, which prevents psychiatrists from offering professional opinions about the mental state of someone they have not personally evaluated….
Even Allen Dyer, the sole survivor of six American Psychiatric Association members who authored the Goldwater rule in the 1970’s, has said it is a misnomer and may be suppressing legitimate public discussion about Trump. “None of this mattered too much until Donald Trump first ran for president in 2016,”… Dyer told this masthead this week….
Forensic psychiatrist Bandy Lee, a former Yale faculty member who edited the 2017 bestseller The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, is more alarmed than most. Lee says she has assessed 1000 patients whose psychological structure largely matches that of the 45th and 47th president of the United States, and many were violent offenders. “It meant I was able to recognise him as a dangerous personality straight away,” she says….
John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff between 2017 and 2019, used Lee’s book—in which more than two dozen experts argue the case for what was driving Trump’s behaviour and why he was medically unfit for office—as a guide for dealing with his boss….
In a forum this week, Lee says she understands why most people would like to believe that a president’s actions are rational. “But the threats, reversals, and rhetorical exaggerations we have seen are, unfortunately, not likely to be strategy,” she says. In her mind, a psychiatric emergency is a medical one. “What we are seeing is not just the level of incapacitation of someone in a coma but worse, since his incapacity actively poses a danger and pressures people into not seeing it”….
Respected investigative psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, who died last year, has argued the more appropriate term to describe Trump is solipsism. “Narcissism suggests self-love and even, in quaint early psychoanalytic language, libido directed at the self,” he explained. “Solipsistic reality means that the only reality he’s capable of embracing has to do with his own self, and the perception by and protection of his own self….
Lee says Trump’s behavioural traits could partly explain why he went to war in Iran in February, against his earlier pledges not to repeat the military mistakes of predecessors. “He fights his feelings of inadequacy by seeing himself as all-powerful, and tries to deny his impairments through the exertion of force,” she says.
Australian criminal psychologist Tim Watson-Munro fears Trump doesn’t know how bad he is…. “I haven’t examined him, but like most people on the planet—particularly mental health professionals—everything he says is ripe for clinical interpretation, if I could put it that way.
What seems like a natural article is all but prohibited in the United States. The Boston Globe asks: “Are mainstream news media finally ready to examine Trump’s mental fitness?” It reports:
A recent New York Times story and prominent MAGA defections could be signs of the dam breaking.
President Trump’s obvious signs of mental decline have not received the national news media attention that would be commensurate with the problems they pose to the world. Hopefully, that’s beginning to change.
Peter Baker, reporter for the New York Times, dug deeply into the president’s erratic, bizarre, and dangerous behavior, social media posts, and other statements for an article released this week.
Actually, no. Peter Baker’s article does not quote a single mental health expert (I happen to know even he, highly-respected as he is, cannot; he and his colleagues interviewed me for more than thirteen times for the New York Times alone, only to have only my quotes scrubbed). Even as his article is titled, “Trump’s Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate,” and he cites our book, observe what he had to write afterward (emphasis mine):
John F. Kelly, his longest serving White House chief of staff in the first term, even bought a book by 27 of those specialists called “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” in an effort to understand his boss and came to the conclusion that he was mentally ill.
This is not the first time a president’s mental fitness has been called into doubt. John Adams, Andrew Jackson and both Roosevelts were from time to time accused of being unbalanced by political foes. Abraham Lincoln struggled with depression. Woodrow Wilson was never the same after a stroke. Lyndon B. Johnson veered between manic energy and bouts of gloominess. Ronald Reagan seemed to slip late in his presidency, and many wondered whether the Alzheimer’s disease announced years later might have already begun affecting him.
Some Trump admirers have compared him to Richard M. Nixon, who espoused what he reportedly called “the madman theory.”
That Donald Trump is merely one of many—that he is entertaining a “madman theory” rather than being utterly out-of-control, raving mad—is his own fantasy thinking carrying over to the rest of the country.
It was not always this way. In fact, there is a sharp delineation before and after the American Psychiatric Association’s disinformation campaign, when we went from being the number one topic of national conversation to complete blackout from all major media. As I have said before, we are now the barometers of society. We will know we have reached a true turning point, when mental health experts are consulted again for the profound mental health crisis we are in, upon which the survival of all humanity depends.
Announcement:
Dr. Bandy X. Lee is in the process of establishing SURVIVAL UNIVERSITY. Please use the contact form to join and to help make this unprecedented effort successful. She is also leading a public course series with Preventing Violence Now, about which you can find out more and register here.
Discussion about this post
https://bandyxlee.substack.com/p/psychiatrists-do-not-diagnose-from
Of course, we docs diagnose from afar.
We must.
We usually have much less information than we have on him.
One more way way of an already decayed society rejecting truth
The American media is afraid to say anything. They sure did any time President Biden made a gaff. The merger of media has doomed the media itself. A few people at the top who are willing to ignore plainly what is right in front of us every day.
He is beyond capable of serving this country. He is beyond capable of making sane decisions. His cabinet, his staff and republicans are terrified of a man with dementia. A man who has no idea of the damage he is causing. A man who before long won’t even remember the harm he has caused.