Yale disclaimer:
An official at Yale obviously noticed this on Daily Kos. I messaged him back that I would put his explanation onto my article.
Yale's statement regarding the recent conference you blogged about:
The Department of Psychiatry endorses the application of the expertise and experience of its faculty in the service of public policy. In this case, a faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry, Bandy Lee, Ph.D., organized a conference focused on the question of how psychopathology in a national leader should be addressed. She invited nationally-recognized experts in the field of mental health. This group included Robert Jay Lifton, formerly professor of Psychiatry at Yale and an internationally reknowned (sic) figure in the area of the impact of psychological traumas. The conference participants were specifically instructed to follow the “Goldwater Rule”, which prevent mental health professionals from diagnosing public figures based on second-hand information, i.e., information presented by the public media. The conference was organized by people who focused their presentations on President Trump and who were likely to discuss some of his actions. It was made clear that the opinions presented at the Conference did not represent those of the Department of Psychiatry or the University.
Tom Conroy
Director
Office of Public Affairs and Communications
More much needed attention being paid to the fact that Trump isn’t just a quirky impulsive president. This story has been updated all day as more publications published articles about it.
Chairing the event, Dr Bandy Lee, assistant clinical professor in the Yale Department of Psychiatry, said: “As some prominent psychiatrists have noted, [Trump’s mental health] is the elephant in the room. I think the public is really starting to catch on and widely talk about this now.”
James Gilligan, a psychiatrist and professor at New York University, told the conference he had worked some of the “most dangerous people in society”, including murderers and rapists — but that he was convinced by the “dangerousness” of Mr Trump.
“I’ve worked with some of the most dangerous people our society produces, directing mental health programmes in prisons,” he said.
“I’ve worked with murderers and rapists. I can recognise dangerousness from a mile away. You don’t have to be an expert on dangerousness or spend fifty years studying it like I have in order to know how dangerous this man is.”
What the Brits are reading today:
Chairing the event, Dr Bandy Lee, assistant clinical professor in the Yale Department of Psychiatry, said: “As some prominent psychiatrists have noted, [Trump’s mental health] is the elephant in the room. I think the public is really starting to catch on and widely talk about this now.”
James Gilligan, a psychiatrist and professor at New York University, told the conference he had worked some of the “most dangerous people in society”, including murderers and rapists — but that he was convinced by the “dangerousness” of Mr Trump.
“I’ve worked with some of the most dangerous people our society produces, directing mental health programmes in prisons,” he said.
“I’ve worked with murderers and rapists. I can recognise dangerousness from a mile away. You don’t have to be an expert on dangerousness or spend fifty years studying it like I have in order to know how dangerous this man is.”
Mental health experts begin carving out a new role for unprecedented times.
Donald Trump may or may not be mentally ill. He may or may not have an organic brain disease. Despite those unknowns, a group of prominent mental health professionals today agreed that they have an ethical obligation to expose to the public every instance of reality distortion, impulsive decision-making, and violation of presidential norms of behavior that singularize the Trump presidency.
At a conference held at Yale University Medical School and led by Bandy Lee, assistant clinical professor in law and psychiatry, mental health experts met to discuss whether their professional responsibility includes a duty to warn the public of dangers posed by President Trump’s behavior. For them the issue is no longer what psychiatric diagnosis Donald Trump merits or not. It is how to avert the "malignant normality"—as psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton called it—now threatening American democracy. CONTINUED
OpEd by John Gartner, founder of the Duty to Warn Facebook group (which I have been a member of since the start) and the psychologist who originated the 25th Amendment petition to remove Trump, in the Baltimore Sun: Military decisions shouldn't be made on impulse. He was active in organizing the Yale conference and quoted in the above articles (and interviewed on the local TV news).
Excerpts: After 9/11, the biggest foreign attack on American soil in history, it took
George W. Bush almost a month to
issue his first orders to take military action against Afghanistan. Though President Bush was determined to strike back quickly, there was a deliberate process of discussion, study, planning and coordination with allies.
It took President Donald Trump only a matter of days to reverse his entire Syria policy and take military action against Syrian President Bashar Assad.
As Ezra Klein put it on Vox, "He is unpredictable and driven by whims. He is unmoored from any coherent philosophy of America's role in the world. ... What we are seeing, instead, is a foreign policy based on Trump's gut reactions to the images flashing before him on cable news. And that's dangerous."
A portion of the mental health community has come forward to say they believe that Donald Trump shows troubling signs of mental illness. Aside from his narcissism, the most frequent concern these mental health professionals report is Mr. Trump's impulsivity. And in no area is impulsivity more dangerous than in the decision to use military force.
Transcript published with permission
Friday, Apr 21, 2017 · 7:24:22 PM +00:00 · HalBrown
LINK: www.dailykos.com/…
TRUMP TORNADO: A DEADLY COMBINATION OF CONDUCT, CONSEQUENCES AND ETHICS
A Psychological Viewpoint in Layman’s Terms: Public Servants Take Notice
By Andrea Cyr, M.S., LPC
As an experienced psychotherapist with advanced training in personality disorders, I believe it is imperative to convey the life-ending and democracy-ending potential of Donald Trump’s particular set of behaviors. There is a deeper understanding of these behaviors that I believe has been inadequately explained in the media and this piece attempts to change that. All of our lives are currently being threatened. This is not a politically motivated piece. It is a desire-to-sustain-life piece. CONTINUED
Thursday, Apr 27, 2017 · 1:23:12 PM +00:00 · HalBrown
More coverage… an excellent article here.
EXCERPT:
Recently, however, a small but growing number of mental health professionals have been willing to stick their necks out to shrink the head of the 45th president; just last week, representatives from a coalition of 800 mental health professionals met at Yale Medical School to discuss what they call their “duty to warn” the public about Trump’s behavior. For the sake of the country, these and other professionals believe it’s time for a psychological diagnosis of Trump, to provide an explanation for, among other things, the bizarre Twitter rants, peddling of easily provable lies, head-spinning policy reversals, incoherent interview answers and unhinged attacks on his perceived enemies.
Let us stipulate that it is not known for a fact that Trump has any kind of psychiatric diagnosis. Let us also stipulate that, to many observers, the most powerful man in the world displays many of the definitional traits of one disorder in particular: Narcissistic Personality Disorder, characterized by behavior that is impulsive, dramatic and erratic. According to the Mayo Clinic, people with NPD “come across as conceited, boastful or pretentious,” require “constant admiration” and belittle people they “perceive as inferior.” This grandiose, bullying shell hides profound insecurity, so “anything that may be perceived as criticism” can provoke “rage or contempt.”
Thursday, Apr 27, 2017 · 8:25:31 PM +00:00 · HalBrown
The articles keep on coming, here’s the third today.
President Trump’s apparent feckless impulsiveness in dropping weapons of mass destruction (MOAB – the largest non-nuclear bomb ever unleashed, tested on the people of Afghanistan) (image left below) and fifty-nine Tomahawk Cruise Missiles on Syria, exactly a week apart, on 6th and 13th April respectively, has unnerved much of the world.
His threats to Iran and North Korea, the latter even invoking a possible US nuclear attack without, apparently, even being aware of the consequences, are the stuff of nightmares, indeed of the chilling film “The Day After.”
Someone should send the movie-loving President a copy.
Trump, it is reported, does not read so is probably unaware of Carl Sagan’s succinct assessment of not alone the unimaginable holocaust of nuclear confrontation, but of the demented, unhinged stupidity: www.globalresearch.ca/...