Until she became so concerned about Donald Trump’s behavior and rhetoric. He could only call it one thing: Dangerous. Very much. In 2017, he organized a conference and consulted with other medical professionals, then published a book containing 27 essays by psychologists and psychiatrists calling Trump a “clear and present danger.” The book details all the ways a Trump presidency could threaten the country, with authors touching on perceived sociopathy, narcissism, paranoid delusions, impulse control problems, antisocial personality disorder and a host of other related issues. characteristics. “Donald Trump’s speech and behavior show that he has severe sociopathic traits,” Dr. Lance Dodes wrote in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, adding: “The need to be seen as superior, when combined with a lack of empathy or compassion for harming other people . , are in fact the hallmarks of tyrants, seeking to control and destroy all who oppose them, as well as believing in themselves rather than the country they lead.” Almost all of their predictions about Trump’s behavior and the wider controversy came true, but Dr. Lee’s book came under fire from MAGA supporters, conservatives and even the American Psychiatric Association, which complained that doctors should not to diagnose public figures, especially those not in the spotlight, because such behavior was contrary to a directive known as the Goldwater Rule. Dr Li and her co-authors argued they had a greater duty to warn society of the danger. It is hard for one to argue, at this point, that the book was not particularly prescient. And now, Dr. Lee says, she’s even more afraid. Dr. Bandy Lee has been a psychiatrist for 25 years, working in prisons and with violent offenders — and sees eerie similarities to these patients in Donald Trump (Buddy Lee) “My biggest fear is that we’re going to get more pathological as a society, because once … we get to that level of wanting to destroy ourselves, it’s going to get that much stronger,” he tells the Independent. “In a state of health, we are led…to affirm life and well-being. In a pathological state, we are driven to destroy, to bring about death.” He worries that if “Trumpism is not contained, it has already spread nationally beyond what can easily be contained. If it continues, then we will most likely be headed for our deaths.” It’s incredibly frustrating for Dr. Lee and her colleagues, she says, because they warned of exactly all of this. They wrote extensively about his inappropriateness and his potential to incite chaos, only to later witness the Americans storming the Capitol, a country mired in turmoil and arguably even more divided. They saw this coming and no one listened. And speaking publicly about her fears has hurt her career: Dr. Lee drew the ire of the APA, which reaffirmed its commitment to the Goldwater Rule the same year her book came out. The association named the ethics principle in reference to an “incident that occurred during the 1964 presidential election.” “During this election, Fact magazine published a survey in which it asked approximately 12,356 psychiatrists whether Senator Barry Goldwater, the GOP nominee, was psychologically fit to be president,” the association noted in a news release on 2017. “A total of 2,417 respondents responded, with 1,189 saying Goldwater was unfit to be president. Goldwater would later sue the magazine, which was found liable for damages.” APA President Dr Maria A. Oquendo, when reaffirming the association’s commitment to the principle in that same announcement, said: “It was unethical and irresponsible in 1964 to offer professional opinions on people who were not properly evaluated and it is unethical and irresponsible today ». Dr. Lee was fired from a position at Yale University and filed a lawsuit against the institution last year, claiming the loss of her contract stemmed from tweets she made about Trump and Alan Dershowitz in 2020. Last week, U.S. District Judge Sarah Merriam dismissed the case, stating in her ruling that Dr Lee’s “vague assertion that some unspecified provision in the Faculty Handbook creates a right to ‘academic freedom’ is clearly insufficient to show that [the] The defendant undertook a contractual obligation to guarantee the continuous reappointment of the plaintiff.” A university spokeswoman told the Yale Daily News in a statement that the school “does not consider the political views of faculty members when making appointment decisions.” “Yale is pleased that the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut agreed with Yale that Dr. Lee had no legal standing,” Yale University spokeswoman Karen Part wrote in an email. Dr Lee said she will appeal and won’t stop talking. He told the Independent that “there was a clear medical consensus” about Trump – that he was far from the lone professional psychiatrist who was not being treated by the 45th president. “No one disagreed that it was dangerous and very dangerous,” he says. “And being dangerous is by definition unfit for president and probably a lot of other things. We eventually did a fitness assessment and found that he was unfit for almost any job because he couldn’t meet the most basic criteria for fitness to make decisions. “This was based on the Mueller report. So close colleagues and associates giving reports on his work behavior under affidavit, I mean it’s … better than what we usually have for fitness evaluations. It was a very, very strict fitness assessment and it couldn’t meet the most basic criteria that are just basic for any job.” Trump himself never stopped giving doctors a lot of information for diagnosis. MAGA supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, affected by Trump’s continued rhetoric and inflammatory behavior (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.) “I mean there was such a wealth of information available for decades and he was letting his unfiltered stream of thoughts come out constantly, on an hourly basis, every day. We never get this kind of information from a patient. He was easier to diagnose than a patient,” Dr Lee tells the Independent. Dr Lee, in her 25-year psychiatric career, has worked with prisoners, gang leaders, mafia bosses – arguably the most dangerous personality types with a terrifying capacity for manipulation, violence and, most importantly, getting others to follow their lead. . “The first alarm came, because this was the kind of person I would see … in the maximum security prisons, where I usually work,” he said. “And he was running for the presidency of the United States! So this was very disturbing to me. That’s when I was almost on the edge of my seat, the whole campaign … and then the election and the inauguration. That’s why I took action.” He says: “He’s a more serious mover and shaper of culture – not because he’s smart, because he’s definitely not. Because of the seriousness of his pathology and the influence and position we had placed him in.” That’s why he’s not surprised at how the Trump presidency has turned out. she is appalled that people in society who saw what was happening did nothing to stop it. “The phenomenon is exactly as I thought it would happen … not even a big deviation from what I predicted and feared,” he says. “What was unexpected and strange was that there would be no intervention, no proper reversal of such a common phenomenon. Many Trump supporters blindly support him despite warnings from medical professionals — and Dr. Lee isn’t surprised (Kyle Mazza/via ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock) “I have worked in public and private sector settings, in state hospitals and prisons, where you see what happens when there is no treatment. People go on for a long time with illness and disability, and you see how devastating it can become. “But this was not what I expected at the national level. I thought we would have intervention from the healthier strata of society. But because the nation was unfamiliar with this phenomenon, I mean, unless you’re a mental health professional who has worked with seriously, seriously ill people, day in and day out, you can’t really, really imagine. He takes great pains to distinguish between mental illness and mental unfitness, which are two very different things. In The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, it is pointed out that many health professionals believe that about half of US presidents could have suffered from some kind of mental illness. This would not necessarily make them unsuitable. Trump is a different kettle of fish, they say. “The two are not the same,” says Dr. Lee. “Regardless of what the popular perception of mental illness is, mental illness … does not mean that you are incompetent or incompetent. In fact, you could be very competent and even more competent in the areas that are not affected.” However, Dr. Lee argues that Trump’s mental state disconnects him from reality and endangers basically, well, everyone. “It’s like asking, does Donald Trump really believe his lies? That’s, that’s the wrong question.” she says. “His mind doesn’t work like that. In his mind, reality is irrelevant. So whether you believe something or not, it’s based on believing that there is a reality to believe it.” Dr Lee says that, in Trump’s mind, ‘reality is irrelevant’ (Getty Images) She feels the only way to stop Trump and the growing polarization and violence would be, in her words, “to impeach him, to isolate him. His booking will…
