From an essay Salon:
For the past five years, some of America's foremost mental health experts have warned us about Donald Trump’s psycho-pathology.....They report that he is a malignant narcissist, a pathological liar who is obsessed with violence, easily manipulated by praise and other ego-stroking behavior, indifferent to the suffering of other human beings, anti-social and anti-human in his values, irresponsible and impulsive, and, in short, something of a psychopath.
Dr. Lance Dodes, a retired clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, argues in an interview today in Salon that Trump's delusional beliefs fuel the Republican Party's detachment from reality, as shown through the Big Lie, conspiratorial thinking, the right-wing propaganda media and other anti-democratic beliefs and behavior.
Now this is my favorite part that some of us who post here know so well without benefit of a degree in psychiatry.
Dodes adds: “His followers close themselves off from accurate or rational information in order to protect their connection to the cult leader and to avoid questioning his delusional views, which would cause them to be shunned or expelled from the group.”
“Followers adopt the belief system of a populist tyrant which becomes the new permitted reality, spreading to others who are swept up by their need to be included. That belief system, however fantastical or delusional, remains accepted truth……. Those who have been conned into believing the tyrant's lies find comfort in their conviction that they know the truth, enabling them to feel superior to doubters. …. If he could, Donald Trump would turn America into a police state” (i.e., HFT’s idea of utopia).”