Recording of Live Session with Dr. Lee
Series on Fridays at 12 noon EDT/9 a.m. PDT
Below is the recording of the session on September 6, 2024, of the topic:
“Recovering from Trump Contagion -
Restoring our Collective Mental Health”
*These videos are now public and shareable. Please also share our fundraising campaign for a major National Press Club conference, linked here.
Dr. Lee is a forensic and social psychiatrist and an expert on violence who became known to the public in 2017 with her book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. Since then, she has endeavored to warn the American public of the societal dangers that would result from someone like Donald Trump being given the powers of the U.S. presidency. Since being unable to adapt to the change of his opponent, Donald Trump has been deteriorating rapidly. The country was little prepared for a mentally unstable president, and even less so for a disintegrating one with millions of followers, to whom he has spread his symptoms. Few are seriously dealing with these dangers, which is why we are organizing a fundraising campaign for a major, all-day conference at the National Press Club. Please join us to discuss the dangers and a path to healing, including from: The Psychology of Trump Contagion: An Existential Threat to American Democracy and All Humankind, Dr. Lee’s latest book, available through paid subscription or by ebook.
The APA's rewriting and promotion of the "Goldwater Rule" to make it harder for psychiatrists to warn the public about the danger of a public figure reminds me of Ralph Waldo Emerson's comment that “an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man,” which is another way to say institutions are all-too-easily instruments of Ego.
A serious weakness in our psychiatry is our inability to appreciate how easily rational thought pursuing truth is contaminated by our subconscious, self-oriented Ego.
Ego evaluates and sees truth in terms of itself. Freud's articulation of the dynamics of Self as being a product of Ego/SuperEgo/Id is an Egoic view of humanity. The triumvirate of Ego/SuperEgo/Id gives equal weight to all three, allowing Ego to run amuck. In an Egoic society, truth is the first victim.
Psychology needs a Copernican revolution where we recognize Self does not revolve around Ego, but amidst truth other than itself.
Acknowledging truth requires identifying, sidelining, seeing-through, taming, and even participating in the annihilation of our subconscious Ego, revealing a different view of existence. Practicing psychology, science or, spirituality without Ego is as socially radical an idea as Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophy.
Dr. Lee, several years ago, a physician-author published a book (which you might know) called “The Emperor of Maladies: A Biography of Cancer”, that won the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction in 2011. The title suggested to me that Trump, being a mental cancer, might aptly be called “The Emperor of Psychological Maladies” for purposes of the Conference or otherwise.