Arguing that the letter effectively serves as a \u201cconfession,”\u00a0Lee said that Trump\u2019s letter was an example of the president projecting his own motives onto Pelosi. But Lee warned that Pelosi has not done enough to respond to the president.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a coworker, she has the right to have him submit to an involuntary evaluation, but she has not,\u201d Lee 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 coworkers, 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.<\/p>\n
“The advantage of a coworker starting this process is that a court can mandate a mental capacity evaluation before the dangerous person returns to work,” Lee continued. “The committing physician is preferably the patient’s treater, but does not have to be.”<\/p>\n
While Lee added that Pelosi\u2019s strategy of\u00a0withholding the articles of impeachment<\/a>\u00a0from the Senate has been effective, she also warned that the delay risks making Trump even more dangerous.<\/p>\n \u201cI am beginning to believe that a mental health hold, which we have tried to avoid, will become inevitable,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n In a recent interview with Salon, Lee discussed her \u201ctranslation\u201d of Trump’s letter, Pelosi\u2019s relationship with him and the growing dangers posed by the president\u2019s mental health with Salon:<\/p>\n What was your main takeaway when you first read Trump’s six-page letter to Pelosi? Denial is when you shut out of consciousness things that are too painful to consider, such as the fact that he is incapable of serving as president. He \u201cknows\u201d this better than anybody, which is why he has to push down the truth by saying: \u201cI alone can fix it,\u201d or \u201cI know better than anybody.\u201d Projection is when you displace undesirable traits of yourself you are trying to deny onto others. Most people will see that he is projecting his own unacceptable thoughts and motives onto Pelosi.<\/p>\n Why go through the trouble of \u201ctranslating\u201d Trump\u2019s lengthy letter? Without this, it is easy for people to get confused about what is reality, and all will become of equal validity without being testable, which is the purpose. If we read his letter correctly, on the other hand, it works as a confession.<\/p>\n Psychoanalysts will recognize the method. It is a very standard way of coming to understand someone. \u00a0First, you arrive at a \u201cformulation\u201d of the person from detectable, external patterns \u2014 and many clinicians say that they know more about Donald Trump than any patient they have ever had in their careers, as he is extremely transparent from his unfiltered tweets and from the overabundant, high-quality information that is available, including sworn testimonies. Once you have a formulation, you keep testing it until you reach a reasonable level of certainty. Then, you can interpret what one is saying in light of one\u2019s defense mechanisms. And the more impaired the person is, the more predictable the thoughts and behavior will be.<\/p>\n Some people will dispute the ethics of disclosing what I see, and my response is: danger. We are legally bound to break patient confidentiality for safety reasons, and a president is not even a patient.<\/p>\n What was Trump trying to tell Pelosi with the letter? You mention \u201cshared psychosis\u201d while \u201ctranslating\u201d the portion of Trump\u2019s letter about law professor\u00a0Jonathan Turley<\/a>, who argued against impeachment. Are you implying that he suffers from shared psychosis? And can you elaborate on your \u201cshared psychosis\u201d description in general?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cShared psychosis\u201d is a phenomenon which happens in households or in nations when a sick person goes untreated and healthy members are in close contact. 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.<\/p>\n The severity by which others are affected is what induces me to believe that Trump is sometimes truly paranoid and delusional rather than merely lying. The difference is a matter of degree, and I have enough experience with this dynamic in prison settings to recognize that this is at pathological levels. In this context, almost anyone who actively takes the side of the president is likely to have some degree of the \u201cshared psychosis.\u201d If you were unaffected, you would be repelled. And this is why we often see a clear split, much like the binary division in our country.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>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 \u201cdoubling down.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>I started \u201ctranslating\u201d Trump\u2019s tweets as a public service sometime in the summer, because I could see his negative influence as he tries to reform others\u2019\u00a0thoughts. Even for those who do not believe him, he pushes the needle. The impressive inefficacy of former special counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s report and then the impeachment proceedings in changing people\u2019s minds should convince people of how powerful these mechanisms are. I intend my \u201ctranslation\u201d to neutralize some of his effects, as well as to \u201cimmunize\u201d readers by arming them with the right interpretation. For example, they can now see that his severe symptoms make it right to decipher up as completely down and black as completely white.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>He was not telling her anything so much as telling himself and his \u201cbase.” He senses better than anyone that she sees through his fa\u00e7ade and knows he is incapable \u2014 his biggest fear. And so he will wish to avoid her just as he does other healthy world leaders. He prefers to associate with his \u201ckind”: those who are too deprived to notice, the uneducated, other incapable \u201cleaders\u201d such as dictators and those who successfully manipulate him.<\/p>\n