“You nailed him!” is the typical response I received on Twitter, the forum I have been using to reach out to the public, after the assassination of Iran’s top general, Qassim Suleimani. My audience was referring to the concerns I had regarding Donald Trump leading up to the act of aggression, which is precisely the psychological danger I warned against, along with more than 800 other mental health professionals who joined me in petitioning Congress to consult with us about this danger.
Militarily and legally, no accusation of the president can or should be made without definitive proof. Psychologically, however, one is capable of generating a “formulation” of a person, testing it against data, as in a scientific experiment, and confirming it before events happen. When it is strengthened over time through continual information and repeatedly tested against real events, it sharpens to great precision, and one can begin anticipating behavior. Before there is a “wag the dog” maneuver to distract or to rally support, there is the thought. It feels uncanny, indeed, to have such a grasp on someone so as to be able to predict just the kind of military move he would make within approximately 12 hours of his making it—so much so that, when DC Report asked me to do an analysis of Rudy Giuliani 24 hours earlier, I complained: “But … Donald Trump is about to erupt in Iran!”
The afflicted person, outraged at the deprivation of the adulation to which one feels entitled, becomes blind to other concerns such as the safety of others or the self.