The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump

Author	Bandy Lee
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	Donald Trump, mental health, politics
Genre	Non-fiction
Publisher	Thomas Dunne Books
Publication date	October 3, 2017
Pages	320
ISBN	978-1-250-17945-6

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump is a 2017 book, edited by Dr. Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist, containing essays from 27 psychologists, psychiatrists, and mental health professionals on the "clear and present danger" that US President Donald Trump's mental health poses to the "nation and individual well being". They argued that the president's mental health was affecting the mental health of the people of the United States^[1] and that he places the country at grave risk of involving it in a war and of undermining democracy itself because of his pathological narcissism and sociopathy. Consequently, Trump's presidency represents an emergency not only allowing, but perhaps also requiring, psychiatrists to deviate from the American Psychiatric Association's Goldwater rule, which holds that it is unethical for psychiatrists to give professional opinions about public figures without examining them in person.^[2]

According to Jeanne Suk Gerson in The New Yorker, "A strange consensus does appear to be forming around Trump’s mental state," including Democrats and Republicans who doubt Trump's fitness for office.^[2]

In a blog post republished on Salon in September 2017, journalist Bill Moyers wrote that "[t]here will not be a book published this fall more urgent, important, or controversial than The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump". In an interview with Robert Jay Lifton, Moyers said that Trump "makes increasingly bizarre statements that are contradicted by irrefutable evidence to the contrary." Lifton said, "He doesn’t have clear contact with reality, though I’m not sure it qualifies as a bona fide delusion." As an example, Lifton said, when Trump claimed that former president Barack Obama was born in Kenya, "he was manipulating that lie as well as undoubtedly believing it in part."^[3]

Carlos Lozada in the Washington Post wrote that many politicians and commentators referred to Trump as "crazy" or doubted his mental health. In this book, mental health professionals examine that claim. They define Trump's behavior in terms of psychiatric disease, such as narcissistic personality disorder. They conclude that “anyone as mentally unstable as Mr. Trump simply should not be entrusted with the life-and-death powers of the presidency.” Lozada wrote that these conclusions are "compelling," but the contributors are writing from their own political perspective, and other mental health professionals differ. Presidents with mental illness, like depression, can be effective, and presidents without mental illness can still be dangerous.^[4]

Estelle Freedman, the Robinson Professor in U.S. History at Stanford University, said of the book:

This insightful collection is grounded in historical consciousness of the ways professionals have responded to fascist leaders and unstable politicians in the past. It is a valuable primary source documenting the critical turning point when American psychiatry reassessed the ethics of restraining commentary on the mental health of public officials in light of the “duty to warn” of imminent danger. Medical and legal experts thoughtfully assess diagnoses of Trump’s behavior and astutely explore how to scrutinize political candidates, address client fears, and assess the 'Trump Effect' on our social fabric.

Writing for RealClearPolitics, Carl M. Cannon, by contrast, argued that the book's foreword, by psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, "offers the melodramatic view that clinicians who don't warn the world about Donald Trump's shortcomings are akin to Nazi doctors who worked at Auschwitz. At the risk of practicing medicine without a license, I'd suggest that this historical comparison is de facto evidence of [Trump Derangement Syndrome] – and paranoid grandiosity".^[5]

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