Whereas we could not have predicted a pandemic three years ago, the authors of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President anticipated how the president would respond, should there be a crisis. We tried to warn the public of the very consequences we are witnessing today: the loss of many lives and livelihoods of Americans.
Dr. Robert Jay Lifton has been one of the earliest voices to warn against these consequences. He is distinguished professor emeritus of the City University of New York, a leading psychohistorian renowned for his studies of Nazi doctors and of Hiroshima bombing survivors, and author of Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry.
Lee: What is your analysis of Donald Trump’s response to Covid-19, in which you have said that his own effort at solipsistic reality breaks down?
Lifton: Covid-19 has presented a problem for Trump and his reality struggles. I have written and spoken repeatedly about what I call his solipsistic reality. That means it is entirely self-contained and having little to do with what others consider reality and little to do with classical standards of evidence. With the Covid-19 virus, we have had a dreadful pandemic, which has given us constant, physical, organic evidence of sickness and death, evidence that is before us, that is concrete. And in that sense, the effort of Trump to call forth his solipsistic reality is less and less effective. Continue reading.