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Eric Levitz in New York Magazine:

“There is no diagnostic blood test or brain scan for narcissistic personality disorder; there’s just a list of observable traits.”

According to Mr. Levitz, there is no reason to believe that a psychiatrist who sees a patient once a week is more qualified to diagnose narcissistic personality disorder than a doctor who has “access to hundreds of hours of a patient’s interviews and improvisatory remarks, along with a small library’s worth of biographical information and testimonials from his closest confidants.” And while he considers the left’s preoccupation with the “25th Amendment solution” as less than rational, given the country’s hyperpartisan political climate, the right’s refusal to acknowledge the president’s mental deficiencies is even more “crazy.” Read more »

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Paul Waldman in American Prospect:

“As a 71-year-old man who never exercises and subsists largely on junk food, the potential for Trump to experience a cognitive decline in the next few years is real.”

Much of what is in Mr. Wolff’s book has already been reported, in one way or another, by White House journalists with access to the president and his aides. Mr. Waldman predicts that we will only hear more of the same kinds of anecdote as the pressures of the presidency exacerbate Mr. Trump’s “copious character flaws.” Read more »

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Finally, From the Center

Bandy X. Lee in The Guardian:



“The personal health of a public figure is her private affair — until, that is, it becomes a threat to public health.”

Dr. Lee is the Yale forensic psychiatrist who contributed to the book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” and is a leading voice among mental health professionals publicly questioning the president’s mental fitness. She reportedly briefed a group of lawmakers — over a dozen Democrats and at least one Republican — on the president’s health in December. She explains here why she believes that “it is Trump in the office of the presidency that poses a danger.” Read more »

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Jacob Sullum in Reason:

“I think Lee and Trump both are drawing hasty conclusions based on biased samples, and Lee’s belief that she has any special authority to judge the president’s competence is at least as delusional as Trump’s belief that his success as a developer, a reality TV star and a politician puts his I.Q. score above 140.”

Mr. Sullum, writing for the libertarian Reason, is skeptical about Dr. Lee’s public warnings about the president’s mental health. There’s a difference, he notes, between a diagnosis like that of narcissistic personality disorder, “which is little more than a list of unappealing characteristics that often go together,” and a more serious disorder which may “ justify coercive intervention.” According to Mr. Sullum, Mr. Trump’s “antics” have the “the salutary effect of undermining respect for the presidency, which may lead to long-overdue limits on its powers.” Read more »

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