The House Judiciary Committee on Friday voted along party lines to approve two articles of impeachment against Donald Trump for obstruction of Congress and abuse of power, according to a report from The New York Times .
In an essay published the previous day by the nonprofit, investigative news site DC Report , a Yale University-affiliated psychiatrist urged Congress to consider what she described as Trump’s “mental pathology,” as well as legal issues, when impeachment proceedings move forward to a full House vote.
In the article titled, “Congress Must Weigh Trump’s Poisonous Narcissism As Well As His Corruption,” Dr. Bandy X. Lee said that an organization she helped to found, The World Mental Health Coalition, is now petitioning Congress to “take these danger signs seriously” and consult with the psychiatric group to receive an assessment of Trump’s mental health.
Lee has warned of what she says is Trump’s precarious mental health status since 2017, when she co-authored the book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump . In the book, Lee and more than two dozen other mental health professionals argue that the psychological ailments they perceive in Trump render him a threat to national security.
Earlier this year, Lee and a group of her colleagues argued that the behavior documented in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report shows that Trump is “unable to rationally process risk,” as well as being, “preoccupied with himself to the point where he does not even consider the good of the nation.”
In her DC Report essay published Thursday, Lee specifically identified symptoms that she said are exhibited by Trump and that indicate he suffers from “Narcissistic Personality Disorder.” She added that a face-to-face interview with the president to confirm the diagnosis would likely be unhelpful, because NPD “falls within the spectrum of diagnoses for which a personal interview actually harms accuracy.”
A report by the popularized psychology magazine Psychology Today describes the hallmarks of Narcissistic Personality Disorder as “grandiosity, a lack of empathy for other people, and a need for admiration.”
Lee cited Dr. John Zinner, a specialist in NPD, who said that because Trump possesses a “brittle” sense of self-worth, he reacts to any form of criticism as if it were “humiliation and degradation.” As a result, Zinner claimed, Trump lashes out with “narcissistic rage.”
Such fits of rage, Lee wrote, will “bring down as many people as possible” as the NPD sufferer fights back against perceived slights by using emotional or even physical violence, “without empathy, compassion, authentic guilt, or remorse.”
Because Trump has control over America’s massive military and nuclear arsenal, his fits of “narcissistic rage,” Lee continued, could create “a potentially catastrophic situation.”
