Dr. Bandy X. Lee is one of the most thoroughly delusional people in the political sphere today. The great irony is that she got there by railing on about what she sees as the psychiatric-level delusions of our president.
Lee is one of a number of high-profile mental health professionals who have plowed through the Goldwater Rule and seen fit to diagnose President Donald Trump with some form of mental illness.
Not entirely content with the modicum of fame this has brought her, Lee, president of the World Mental Health Coalition and a professor at the Yale University School of Medicine, has been “translating” Trump’s tweets for her Twitter audience.
“My ‘translations’ of Donald Trump’s words (or his quotes) are largely data-driven and informed by basic psychoanalytic techniques,” she writes in a pinned tweet.
“They are neither malicious nor jocular, but are intended as a public service to promote grounding in reality and truth.”
I’m not a mental health professional, but I would urge anyone who is and who can find the psychoanalytic techniques buried here to contact me immediately:
Translation: “[Now I am attacking California’s homelessness.] The more I attack anything of Nancy Pelosi, the more petty, partisan & political I look. Just more of the same from the Do Nothing Pres.: trying to usurp the Constitutional role of the House!” twitter.com/realDonaldTrum…
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That’s not where the real delusion comes in, however. Lee was interviewed by Salon for a piece published Friday in which she discussed the only subject on which anyone in the media is particularly interested in hearing her discourse — Donald Trump’s mental health. In full pot/kettle/black mode, the Yale professor said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi can call 911 to have an involuntary hold placed on President Trump because he’s gone ’round the bend.
The subject came up when Lee was talking about the fact the speaker hasn’t done enough to counter the president — which is, one would think, a rich assertion when you consider she just shepherded his impeachment. But no: “As a co-worker, she has the right to have him submit to an involuntary evaluation, but she has not,” Lee said told Salon.
“Anyone can call 911 to report someone who seems dangerous, and family members are the most typical ones to do so. But so can co-workers, and even passersby on the street. The law dictates who can determine right to treatment, or civil commitment, and in all 50 U.S. states this includes a psychiatrist.
“The advantage of a co-worker starting this process is that a court can mandate a mental capacity evaluation before the dangerous person returns to work,” she added.
“The committing physician is preferably the patient’s treater, but does not have to be.”
This is a curious notion. Lee is desperately invested in the 25th Amendment narrative — which states that President Trump is mentally ill and ought to be kicked to the curb via the constitutional provision that stipulates how a president should be removed for incapacity — that’s been pushed by a loose coalition of semi-prominent psychiatrists and psychologists together with Democratic lawmakers and pundits who need a few minutes on MSNBC. Well, whatever gets you attention, I suppose.
There’s a marked difference between this and stating not only can you can call up the authorities on the president have them place an involuntary hold upon him, but that the speaker of the House ought to do so.
“I am beginning to believe that a mental health hold, which we have tried to avoid, will become inevitable,” Lee said in the interview. Good grief.
There are some other great head-slappers in the interview, which had to do with her recent “translation” of Trump’s six-page letter to Nancy Pelosi on the eve of impeachment.
On Lee’s takeaways from the letter:
“First, he is highly unwell, which I am glad many finally seem to see now. More specifically, you can tell how unwell he is by the degree he cannot deviate from his defenses: mainly, denial and projection. We often say he is ‘doubling down.’ A truly sick person will be unable to show any tolerance of ambiguity, doubt or flexibility in thinking. The letter, like his lengthy interviews or his chronic tweeting over years, is unable to show any variation from the characteristic rigidity of pathology.”
So “any tolerance of ambiguity, doubt or flexibility in thinking” is a sign of being unwell, and projection is one of the defenses? Interesting.
Also interesting: She’s never evaluated Donald Trump in any sort of clinical setting, which is clearly a violation of the Goldwater Rule — an American Psychiatric Association ethical guideline that forbids comment on any public figure by a psychiatrist who hasn’t actually treated that figure. And no, it’s not covered under the provisions that allow psychiatrists to opine for reasons of public education or consultation to government, either.
And then she talked about how she diagnosed Jonathan Turley, the George Washington University law professor who argued against impeachment during before the House Judiciary Committee, with “shared psychosis”: “‘Shared psychosis’ is a phenomenon which happens in households or in nations when a sick person goes untreated and healthy members are in close contact,” she said.
“Rather than the sick person getting better, the otherwise healthy people take on symptoms of the sick person, as if they had the sickness themselves. It is a very dramatic phenomenon that equally dramatically disappears when you remove the sick person from contact or media exposure.”
So a sick person who gets media exposure for opinions that conform to Trump Derangement Synd— erm, Trump’s syndrome of derangement can develop a shared psychosis that only goes away when that person is removed from that environment?
As for Pelosi calling the letter “really sick”:
“She has said this a number of times, but I am not sure she is convinced of her own words,” Lee said. “If she were, shouldn’t she be responding to it as an emergency? As a co-worker, she has the right to have him submit to an involuntary evaluation, but she has not.”
Now, as a layperson, I have a few takeaways of my own, starting with. Yes, Nancy Pelosi isn’t convinced of her own words.
Furthermore, Dr. Bandy X. Lee is suffering from a shared psychosis with the most rabid element of the Democrat electorate, one that has always seen President Trump as illegitimate and pursued his removal by any means necessary. I’m basing this on her obvious projection and the delusional belief that a president can be placed under an involuntary hold by the speaker of the House calling 911 (or whatever number you use specifically to commit presidents).
Then again, I’m sure this all can be translated to prove I’m suffering from “shared psychosis.” That’s how this all works, right?
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