FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGISTS URGE BIDEN TO PROSECUTE TRUMP

Forensic psychologists Bandy X. Lee and Jame R. Merikangas have urged President Joe Biden’s administration not to give defeated President Donald Trump a free pass and must throw the book at him for his abuses and corrupt practices. The remedy for psychosis is reality checks. In the case of a pathological and criminal president, recommending prosecution is an essential part of setting standards and doing our job as healers, they said.

In an article for the DC Report carried by Raw Story, Lee and Merikangas said: "No doubt there is a need for healing divides and finding a common language. Pathological personalities do not respond well to conciliatory gestures, as this may be experienced as coddling, indulging, and giving license to further transgressions. This has been seen with Donald Trump and his cronies, who have used others’ allowance to expand a subculture of violence and abuse. Instead, what gains respect with these personalities are firm boundaries and limit setting, despite their protest."

They stressed: “Additionally, we should show enough respect to hold our fellow human beings accountable to a higher standard even if—and especially if—they cannot do so themselves. As psychiatrists who have a duty to the public’s health, we must also point out that not to collect on the president’s debts and not to compensate the workers he has failed to pay by shifting funds to his family or declaring bankruptcy, would legitimize abuse of the law and be harmful to society.”

“As forensic psychiatrists, it is not difficult for us to say that an insanity defense for President Trump does not pass the smell test, and failure to prosecute crimes for which the evidence is clear would undermine the very foundation of our justice system. In fact, we are of the opinion that healing cannot—and should not—occur without prosecution,” Lee and Merikangas argued. “Bringing a high-profile criminal to justice can actually be healing for our collective mental health.

After four years of ‘alternative’ realities toppling our sense of right and wrong, health and pathology, almost half of the nation finds refuge in his cult of supremacy and anger, while the other half is traumatized. Prosecution and clear boundaries can help bring reality back to both parties that have been gaslit into believing untruths, usually at the expense of their interests, their livelihoods, and even their lives.”

Firm boundaries are necessary because tolerating intolerance, paradoxically, leads to intolerance and persecution. Likewise, blurring the distinction between health and pathology leads to pathology’s flourishing at the expense of health. As psychiatrists, not politicians, we have an obligation to provide an antidote to delusional thinking and violent behavior, even if the propaganda systems pervading mass media and the Internet will not, Lee and Merikangas argued.