Donald Trump Is 'The Most Dangerous Man in the World'
After the American Psychiatric Association expanded its so-called Goldwater Rule into a gag order on mental health professionals, the forensic psychiatrist Dr. Bandy Lee organized a conference at Yale with the title, "Does Professional Responsibility Include a Duty to Warn?" to discuss the rule and its relevance during the increasingly alarming Trump presidency. While only two dozen attended physically in an atmosphere of fear, the conference tapped a huge groundswell of interest in the forms of hundreds of communications from mental health professionals: just as football players don't give up their right to free speech when they take the field, they agreed that the moral and civic duty to warn about the president's dangerousness should supersede professional rules about neutrality. This led to Dr. Lee editing a new book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Professionals Assess a President. Here are excerpts from four of the essays in the book.
A Persistent Loss of Reality
— Dr. Lance Dodes
Because Donald Trump has been a very public figure for many years, we are in an excellent position to know his behaviors—his speech and actions—which are precisely the basis for making an assessment of his dangerousness, whether we assess him using the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders criteria for antisocial personality disorder, as below, or whether we apply our knowledge of malignant narcissism, both of which include the signs and symptoms of sociopathy. Let us consider these in turn.
Lack of Empathy for Others; Lack of Remorse; Lying and Cheating
Trump’s mocking the disability of a handicapped reporter, unconcern for the safety of protesters at a rally (“Get rid of them!”), sexually assaulting women, threatening physical harm to his opponent in the election (alluding to gun owners eliminating her), repeatedly verbally attacking a family who lost their son fighting for the country, degrading people who criticize him (calling them insulting names, as he did in both the Republican primaries and the general election), a history of cheating
