Noam Chomsky and other academic experts on mental health have recently published a book titled The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump and subtitled Twenty seven Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. It is edited and put together by Bandy Lee, M.D., who organized the Yale University Conference on the “Duty to Warn.”
The Amazon.com blurb for the book says it explores “Trump’s symptoms and potentially relevant diagnoses to find a complex, if also dangerously mad, man”.
The book declares that Donald Trump is “dangerously mentally ill,” exhibiting “sociopathic qualities,” and that his madness is catching. That is to say, the nation as a whole may be seeing the beginning of a mass psychosis. This is a phenomenon last seen in Nazi Germany in the 20th century 30s.
Here is a direct quote from the book: “Beneath the grandiose behavior of every narcissist lies the pit of fragile self-esteem. What if, deep down, the person whom Trump trusts least is himself? The humiliation of being widely exposed as a ‘loser,’ unable to bully through the actions he promised during the campaign, could drive him to prove he is, after all, a ‘killer’.”
The book has raised a controversy because it apparently ignores the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Goldwater Rule, which states that it is unethical for psychiatrists “to offer a professional opinion about an individual based on publicly available information without conducting an examination” in person. It is felt that in some way such a public revelation stigmatizes those with mental problems, not to speak of the ethical obligation to confidentiality.
On the other hand the same association’s ethics committee has in some way modified its position when it ruled recently that considerations of national security and the safety of the public at large may allow professional mental health experts to express their opinion on public figures, even if generally speaking it is not permissible. That is to say the rule may not apply if the public figure represents a clear and present danger or a risk to others.
Dr. James Gilligan, of New York University, argued in his contribution to the book that “the issue here is not whether President Donald Trump is mentally ill. It is whether he is dangerous. Dangerousness is not a psychiatric diagnosis.”
The Ovi 