The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President by Bandy X. LeeMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
The “Goldwater rule” is the rule given to members of the American Psychiatric Association in which it essentially stated that members are advised to not diagnose or give medical opinions of public figures whom that they have not examined in person. The reason for this rule goes back to the infamous time in 1964 of a Republican firebrand and politician in Barry Goldwater. In his run to the President, anonymous psychiatrists were giving out their opinions that Barry Goldwater had psychiatric problems in which no evaluative basis was provided or given. In order to root out the ethical problems that arose, psychiatrists have been advised to not repeat this episode in history in what is believed to be the risks associated to the credibility and reputation of psychiatrists and mental health professionals. In “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump”, Dr. Bandy X. Lee takes issue of the rigidity of this rule and has called on herself and other psychiatrists to break with the Goldwater rule in which it relates to this unique time in history with someone as impulsive and unhinged as Donald Trump as President. Dr. Lee has dubbed this and her colleagues with the moral and ethical responsibility in their “duty to warn”. Their “duty to warn” as they call it, to warn the public about the unique threats posted by “anyone as mentally unstable as Mr. Trump” and that someone like him “simply should not be entrusted with the life-and-death powers of the presidency” (Lee, 8).
In “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President”, Dr. Lee has put together a compilation of research type articles by the nation’s and world’s most preeminent experts in the field. For instance, Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo who is known for the famous Stanford prison study, says that Donald Trump is “unbalanced” and fits into a “specific personality type” in being an “unbridled, or extreme, present hedonist” and “narcissist”. Clinical psychologist John Gartner on the other hand labels Donald Trump to be a “malignant narcissist” and an individual who “evinces the most destructive and dangerous collection of psychiatric symptoms possible for a leader.” Gartner continues that the “catastrophe” of Donald Trump could have been avoided if “we in the mental health community had told the public the truth, instead of allowing ourselves to be gagged by the Goldwater rule.” All these preeminent scholars have decided together along with hundreds of their colleagues to step away from this time dated rule and “warn the public” of the unique threats posed by a sociopathic narcissist and lifelong con man in Donald Trump. A man who throughout his life has been unable to express the human emotion of empathy.
I have always said that Donald Trump’s only “genius” are the information overload and distraction techniques. As a result, this keeps most of the population caught up with their lives to follow in the daily and habitual lies of Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a compulsive liar. This is who he has been all of his life. In “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump”, eminent scholars and researchers in the field of psychiatric research and mental health present to us a very convincing case as to why the mental health of the President should not be off limits to discussion. It is their “duty to warn” the public instead of the “Goldwater rule” in getting in the way of the public knowing the whole truth on the type of person that Donald Trump precisely is: a malignant narcissist of the first degree.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/16356842-sassan
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