On Sept 19th Slate published an interview with Bandy Lee, MD, MDiv, the editor of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.”
The fact that two White House officials reached out to Dr. Lee with their serious concerns about Trump’s deteriorating mental condition is alarming in and of itself.
This morning Salon published another interview. It is even more alarming.
It was hard to choose two excerpts from the Salon article as so many of them are sounding an alarm which we are in peril if we ignore. (Emphasis mine)
Chauncey DeVega: So much of this is predictable from a clinical standpoint. Trump is not going to get better. What are his symptoms?
Bandy Lee: Donald Trump has shown a number of symptoms which are now quite obvious to even an untrained person. He is impulsive. He is reckless. He has shown a lack of empathy and a lack of concern about consequences. His grip on reality is loose. I suspect he is unable to tolerate reality for what it is. So, Trump has to make himself into a person who is infallible and an expert on everything.
Therefore, when reality does not comport with his emotional needs, he has to fabricate his own version of reality. Trump has also shown a tendency of needing to present himself as being strong and powerful. He is constantly preoccupied with his self-image, he is unable to tolerate criticism and he lashes out when there is a hint of anyone being against him or challenging his authority. The truth of the matter is quite the opposite. Trump's behavior is a sign of weakness, not strength.
DeVega: Trump doesn't seem to have an internal sensor that says, "This is wrong". Instead it is just literally, “Here's what I feel. I'm going to do it."
Lee: Trump doesn't have that internal restraint. He has to constantly guard himself unless he's getting perpetual adulation and approval from others. He truly feels as if he's catastrophically in danger of losing himself. That is why something like a devastating nuclear war would not be inconceivable to him. Trump has built himself up to be as the undefeatable, powerful, all-knowing person. If that façade were to crumble, then it will feel as if the entire universe were crumbling as well. It would become very attractive for Trump to launch a war or to use nuclear weapons. We know from his speeches, his own words, that he's very attracted to nuclear weapons. Trump has even asked, “Why do we have them if we don't use them?”
Bandy Lee is one of the two most referenced mental health professionals warning about the dangerousness of Donald Trump. Clinical psychologist John Gartner is the other. He was also interviewed by Chauncey DeVega:
Back in June, this is what Gartner had to say:
DeVega: At this point in Trump's presidency, are things better or worse than you initially thought, regarding his behavior and public evidence of his mental health and well-being?
Gartner: The theme of my chapter in "Rocket Man" is that Donald Trump is actually deteriorating psychologically. We've not seen the bottom. We're not in a static situation. We're actually in a dynamic situation. Now, some people look at it as, OK, he's not crazy, he's just an authoritarian and we're going through a period where American democracy is being degraded. That may be true, as horrible as it is. But from a mental health point of view, Trump is getting worse in several regards.
Malignant narcissists deteriorate. When they gain power, they become more inflamed in their grandiosity and in their paranoia. They also become more unrestrained in their sadism and in their will to power. Malignant narcissists like Trump are antisocial and have a willingness to do anything to get and keep power. The noted psychologist Erich Fromm actually argued that such personalities then begin to verge on psychosis at that point, becoming so grandiose and paranoid that they really live on the boundary of psychosis and reality.
In addition to that, I think Donald Trump is deteriorating for a second completely independent reason, which is that we're seeing clear evidence of organically based cognitive decline. If you look at the interviews that he did in the 1980s, he was actually surprisingly articulate. He still expressed what I think we would considered by many to be loathsome views, but he spoke with a high level of vocabulary that included polished sentences and complete paragraphs. If you compare that to how Trump speaks now, he almost can't complete a thought or a sentence without meandering into something nonsensical.
I think that what with the intense pressure on Trump has gotten much worse since Gartner expressed these opinions the risk of him having a dangerous break with reality has increased exponentially.
My diaries about Trump’s mental health.