As the news breaks around us and around Trump, this may be threatening to lead the president to a narcissistic rage reaction, mixed with something Trump has never dealt with before: fear.
Few rational people are seriously thinking Flynn would have done this on his own. The talk on TV and in the news is that Trump had to have been in on the phone call with the Russian ambassador. As unstable as the president anything could happen from a rage reaction to a deep depression if his reality testing is intact and he sees impeachment as a real possibility.
With all of this going on this important letter to the editor may get lost.
To the Editor:
Charles M. Blow (column, nytimes.com, Feb. 9) describes Donald Trump’s constant need “to grind the opposition underfoot.” As mental health professionals, we share Mr. Blow’s concern.
Silence from the country’s mental health organizations has been due to a self-imposed dictum about evaluating public figures (the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 Goldwater Rule). But this silence has resulted in a failure to lend our expertise to worried journalists and members of Congress at this critical time. We fear that too much is at stake to be silent any longer.
Mr. Trump’s speech and actions demonstrate an inability to tolerate views different from his own, leading to rage reactions. His words and behavior suggest a profound inability to empathize. Individuals with these traits distort reality to suit their psychological state, attacking facts and those who convey them (journalists, scientists).
In a powerful leader, these attacks are likely to increase, as his personal myth of greatness appears to be confirmed. We believe that the grave emotional instability indicated by Mr. Trump’s speech and actions makes him incapable of serving safely as president.
- Lance Dodes, M.D.
- Joseph Schachter, M.D., Ph.D.
- Susan Radant, Ph.D.
- Judith Schachter, M.D.
- Jules Kerman, M.D., Ph.D
- Jeffrey Seitelman, M.D., Ph.D.
- Henry Friedman, M.D.
- Babak Roshanaei-Moghaddam, MD
- David Cooper, Ph.D.
- Dena Sorbo, LCSW, BCD
- Joseph Reppen, Ph.D.
- Ernest Wallwork, Ph.D.
- Judith E. Vida, M.D.
- Richard Reichbart, J.D., Ph.D.
- Joseph Abrahams, M.D.
- Leslie Schweitzer-Miller, M.D.
- Cheryl Y. Goodrich, Ph.D.
- Lourdes Henares-Levy, M.D.
- Alexandra Rolde, M.D.
- Dr. med. Helen Schoenhals Hart
- Eva D. Papiasvili, Ph.D.
- Mali Mann, M.D.
- Phyllis Tyson, Ph.D.
- Era A. Loewenstein, Ph.D.
- Marianna Adler, Ph.D.
- Henry Nunberg, M.D.
- Marc R. Hirsch, Ph.D.
- Lora Heims Tessman, Ph.D.
- Monisha Nayar-Akhtar, Ph.D.
- Victoria Schreiber, M.A., L.M.S.W.
- Penny M Freedman, Ph.D.
- Merton A. Shill, JD. LLM., PhD.
- Helen K. Gediman, Ph.D.
- Michael P. Kowitt, Ph.D.
- Leonard Glass, M.D.
Read all my stories about Trump’s unusual constellation of dangerous symptoms of various diagnosable mental disorders. Note: This link seems to take you back to this story. To read the rest just scroll down the page. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get them in chronological order.
Here’s another petition:
Tuesday, Feb 14, 2017 · 8:54:36 PM +00:00 · HalBrown
If you are a mental health professional, and don’t mind us vetting you to be sure, send me a personal message and I will send you the link to our Facebook page.
We believe that there should be safeguards against the abuse of diagnostic and therapeutic skills used gratuitously against public figures (The Goldwater Rule) but we saw, as well, the ethical duty encumbent on therapists to warn, report and prevent, where they could, damage to others (Tarasoff Rule). The exquisite balance necessary to balance both of these was seen to deserve open discussion. This site is for such purposes with the understanding that some clinicians fall on one side of this controversy and some on the other.
Respectful cross-dialogue is encouraged. Our intention is for our discussions on this site to be consistent with and to model our theories of health in both the individual and the group. ... So, may it be.