Notes

Foreword

  1.     Please see Appendix for the link to the Yale conference transcript.

Prologue

  1.     It should be noted that a majority of the American Psychological Association membership did not approve this revision of the Association’s ethics code and tried to rescind it. They did not succeed, however, until the matter became a public scandal.

  2.     We hold no brief for the general moral superiority of the American Psychiatric Association, which has had its own ignominious history in the ways that its diagnostic code for many years reinforced institutional homophobia and misogyny. In the particular case that we are discussing, however, the APA was fortunate enough to have good leadership that resulted in a position of moral clarity.

  3.     Please see Appendix for the link to the Yale conference transcript.

Introduction

  1.     Assessing dangerousness requires a different standard from diagnosing so as to formulate a course of treatment. Dangerousness is about the situation, not the individual; it is more about the effects and the degree of impairment than on the specific cause of illness and it does not require a full examination but takes into account whatever information is available. Also, it requires that the qualified professional err on the side of safety, and it may entail breaking other, ordinarily binding rules to favor urgent action.

Donald J. Trump, Alleged Incapacitated Person: Mental Incapacity, the Electoral College, and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment

  1.     Sections 3 and 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment state:

    Section 3. Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.

    Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

    Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office [emphasis added].

Should Psychiatrists Refrain from Commenting on Trump’s Psychology?

  1.     As discerned by videotaped exchanges and acknowledging the limitations of relying on such material as opposed to a traditional and in-person psychiatric evaluation.

Health, Risk, and the Duty to Protect the Community

  1.     My own translation from the Hebrew. A literal take on this passage might be “Go not rumoring among your people; Stand not on the blood of your neighbor: I am God.”

New Opportunities for Therapy in the Age of Trump

  1.     Portions of this essay were adapted with permission from his article “Therapy in the Age of Trump,” in The Psychotherapy Networker (May–June 2017): 34–35.

In Relationship with an Abusive President

  1.     This is a fictional couple.

Trump and the American Collective Psyche

  1.     This chapter has been adapted from an earlier essay, “Trump and the American Selfie,” in A Clear and Present Danger: Narcissism in the Era of Donald Trump, coedited by Steven Buser and Leonard Cruz, and from the article, “If Donald Trump Had a Selfie Stick, We’d All Be in the Picture” (billmoyers.com/story/donald-trump-selfie-americas-worst-side/).

The Loneliness of Fateful Decisions: Social and Psychological Vulnerability

  1.     This name for the crisis will be used for ease of communication, although it has been rightly criticized as reflecting a U.S.-centric view of the world.

  2.     Much of the history of the October 1962 crisis has been drawn from Robert Kennedy’s 1971 memoir of those events, Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971). Unless otherwise noted, quotations are from that source.