We spent the last four years documenting the work of Yale psychiatrist Bandy Lee, who repeatedly diagnosed Trump from afar, a decision that ultimately cost her position at the university.
Now we have a former Harvard psychiatrist claiming that Trump’s mental state still represents a danger to the country.
I had never heard of Dr. Lance Dodes before reading this piece by Chauncey DeVega of Salon, but a quick Google search revealed he is a regular guest on MSNBC. Shocker.
Former Harvard psychiatrist Lance Dodes: Trump’s psychosis is still an “enormous danger”For at least the past five years, some of America’s and the world’s foremost mental health experts have attempted to warn the public that Donald Trump was (and is) a dire threat to public safety.Based on Trump’s public behavior and other available information, these experts warned that he appears to be a malignant narcissist, a pathological liar who is obsessed with violence, easily manipulated by praise and other ego-stroking behavior, indifferent to the suffering of other human beings, anti-social and anti-human in his values and behavior, irresponsible and impulsive and in total quite likely a sociopath or perhaps a psychopath…In an effort to assess Donald Trump’s continuing danger to American society and democracy, I recently spoke with Dr. Lance Dodes, whom I have interviewed on numerous occasions. Dodes is a retired assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a training and supervising analyst emeritus at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He is among the foremost voices who attempted to warn the American people and the world about Donald Trump’s dangerous behavior.
Now for the truly funny part. Trump has been out of office for six months, and yet people in liberal media can’t stop talking about him. So naturally, this is the first question DeVega asked Dodes:
Are Trump’s followers addicted to him? What would withdrawal look like for them and the country as a whole?I don’t like to use the word “addiction” because it has a particular meaning. I would describe Trump’s most extreme devotees as members of a charismatic cult. Such cults unconditionally worship a charismatic leader who is often delusional with a grandiose, psychotic belief in his perfection, like Trump. The followers close themselves off from accurate or rational information in order to protect their connection to the godlike cult leader and to avoid questioning his delusional views, which would cause them to be shunned or expelled from the group.
You’ve read the rest a thousand times, MAGA is a cult, QAnon, blah blah blah.
Dodes has been making this same argument about Trump for years. In 2017, he wrote at Newsweek:
While there have surely been American presidents who could be said to be narcissistic, none have shown sociopathic qualities to the degree seen in Trump. Correspondingly, none have been so definitively and so obviously dangerous. Democracy requires respect and protection for multiple points of view, concepts that are incompatible with sociopathy. The need to be seen as superior and a lack of empathy or remorse for harming other people are in fact the signature characteristics of tyrants, who seek the control and destruction of all who oppose them, as well as loyalty to themselves instead of the country they lead.
Like Bandy Lee, Dodes has also violated the ethics of his profession by analyzing Trump from afar repeatedly on MSNBC, where he is a favorite guest of Lawrence O’Donnell. This is from January of this year:
What is it about Trump that makes psychiatrists so crazy?
Featured image via YouTube.
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