Who were the 27 contributors to The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump and what specific diagnoses or assessments did each offer?

Checked on December 21, 2025
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Executive summary

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump is a 2017 edited volume that collected 27 essays by psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental‑health professionals who argued that President Donald Trump posed a “clear and present danger,” while disagreeing about precise diagnoses [1] [2]. The sources provided list several named contributors and sample chapter titles and quotations, but do not supply a complete one‑to‑one mapping of every contributor to a single formal diagnosis in the material supplied here [3] [4].

1. What the book is and who convened it

The book grew out of a Yale conference titled “A Duty to Warn” organized by forensic psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee, who edited the collection of 27 essays arguing that clinicians had a moral duty to warn the public about perceived risks posed by the president [5] [1].

2. The shared judgement — dangerousness, not unanimity on diagnosis

Reviewing the collection, commentators and academic reviewers note that while the authors are not in full agreement about specific psychiatric labels, they largely concur that Trump is mentally ill or dangerous by virtue of being president and that his behavior creates grave risk to the nation [2] [1].

3. Confirmed contributors and the specific assessments attributed to them in available reporting

Several contributors and the thrust of their chapters are named in the available sources: Philip Zimbardo and Rosemary Sword frame Trump as showing “extreme present hedonism” combined with narcissism and bullying, warning this mixture makes his access to nuclear authority frightening [6]. Gail Sheehy argued that a “trust deficit” — Trump trusting no one — is the core problem, alongside narcissism and paranoia [6]. David M. Reiss wrote on “Cognitive impairment, dementia, and POTUS,” raising concern about cognitive decline [7]. James A. Herb’s chapter considered Trump as an “alleged incapacitated person” and examined the Electoral College and the Twenty‑fifth Amendment [3] [7]. Leonard L. Glass contributed a piece asking whether psychiatrists should refrain from commenting on Trump’s psychology, engaging the ethics question [3]. Diane Jhueck offered “A clinical case for the dangerousness of Donald J.,” making a direct clinical argument for dangerousness [7]. James Gillian emphasized that the issue is dangerousness, not solely a psychiatric label [7]. Other named contributors cited in the excerpts include Harper West (who later compiled excerpts) and Craig Malkin among the contributors listed in promotional and review materials [6] [8].

4. Limits of the available reporting on individual diagnoses

The provided sources (table of contents snippets, reviews, and excerpts) document chapter titles and summarize themes but do not present a complete roster mapping all 27 contributors to a single specific diagnostic label for Trump; multiple authors explicitly resist single diagnostic certainty and debate the ethics of remote diagnosis under the Goldwater rule [3] [4]. Academic reviewers also highlighted discordance among authors about the nature of the pathology even as they agreed on dangerousness [2].

5. Why the book mixes clinical language with civic argument

Contributors use a mix of clinical concepts (narcissism, paranoia, cognitive impairment, present‑hedonism) and civic‑legal framing (duty to warn, 25th Amendment, dangerousness) to argue that professional restraint should yield to public safety concerns; critics note that differing diagnoses across essays undermine confidence in a single clinical verdict [5] [1] [2].

6. Bottom line for readers and researchers

Readers can take from the book a consensus claim that the authors see Trump as dangerous and a call for institutional safeguards, but the exact list of all 27 contributors paired with a single specific diagnosis for each is not available in the supplied reporting; consulting the book’s full table of contents or the volume itself is necessary to compile a definitive, chapter‑by‑chapter mapping [3] [4].

Want to dive deeper?
What is the Goldwater rule and how did it shape debate over The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump?
Full table of contents and chapter authors of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump — who are all 27 contributors and their chapter titles?
How have psychiatrists and professional associations responded to clinicians publicly diagnosing political figures since 2016?