B O O K S A N D M E D I A The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President Edited by Bandy X. Lee, MD, MDiv. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press, 2017. 384 pp. $27.99 hardcover. Just between the time that an email request from the book review editor of the Journal arrived (November 28, 2017) to the time of sitting down to begin writ- ing a first draft of this review (January 14, 2018), there was a flood of print and electronic media opin- ions on the interrelated topics of President Donald Trump’s mental health and perceived dangerous- ness. Further, elucidated during this discussion has been the controversy about the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA’s) position on the Goldwater Rule, which declares unethical and forbids all public opinions by psychiatrists about diagnoses and mental health status of public figures whom the opining party has not directly examined according to ac- cepted standards for psychiatric evaluation. 1 Keeping up with the media and print publications about President Trump seriously hampered writing this review, as events of each day threatened to over- run whatever I had written. This experience re- minded me of occurrences during the presidential campaign. Mr. Trump the candidate presented him- self as embodying several traits that many thought of as incompatible with the task of serving as the presi- dent of our country. All of this was brought out pub- licly and repeatedly during the long campaign. With each howler, liberals and moderates were convinced that surely this latest gaff would be the candidate’s undoing; U.S. citizens would never stand for it. With each such attack, his supporters grew more certain that he was their man; even women supporters de- fended this man who demeaned and made nasty sex- ual comments about women. His base did not reject him as the liberals expected or hoped. In late January 2018, President Trump made some of his most of- fensive statements when referring to Haiti and other African nations in derogatory terms. 2 While nations around the world and many of us at home were out- raged, his approval rating climbed to almost 40 per- cent on domestic polls, higher than it had been in months. To many psychiatrists, President Trump’s state- ments and behaviors were patently symptomatic of one or several mental disorders. The facts of the case and the serious risks of erosion of our constitutional democracy and possible nuclear annihilation of the world demanded that psychiatrists warn the public. The analogy to the silence of Germany’s educated and professional classes during Hitler’s ascendancy to power was too obvious to ignore; but roughly 40 percent of the country does not agree that the presi- dent is evil or dangerous. Bandy Lee’s edited book, a compilation stemming from the presentations at a similarly themed confer- ence that took place in New Haven, CT, in April 2017, is a sincere act of conscience. The authors of the 28 chapters (including Prologue, Introduction, and Epilogue) are not in full agreement as to the details of what they believe ails President Trump, but all concur that he is mentally ill or dangerous (by virtue of being president) or both. There is discor- dance as to the nature or the diagnosis of the mental illness that makes him dangerous, and the various authors take their shots as to which descriptive terms and which diagnoses fit best. Along the way, the au- thors acknowledge the heavy presence of the Gold- water Rule and the intimidation to silence psychia- trists that the APA leadership and Ethics Committee have imposed. 3,4 I think that the critically important question taken up in this volume is Mr. Trump’s fitness to serve as president and that the furor over the Goldwater Rule will become a footnote in the history of this presidency and this era. It is clear that the president’s dangerousness is the most important concern to our country, especially to those poor and disenfranchised persons who will be most damaged by his policies 5 and to the global en- vironment that may be irrevocably affected. I was also interested to see how deeply the authors would take on and debate the Goldwater Rule. One could assume that the authors’ willingness to make public diagnostic, descriptive, or psychological statements about a public figure of whom they have not person- ally conducted a formal diagnostic assessment serves to challenge the APA’s long-held principle. This not- withstanding, I was also hoping to read a thoughtful debate in which the Goldwater Rule was placed in broader social and intellectual context. I hoped to see 267 Volume 46, Number 2, 2018