Miscellaneous
Allen Frances doesn’t think Donald Trump is "crazy." This is not comforting news. Last winter, the former the chair of the DSM-IV Task Force and the department of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine wrote a widely circulated letter to the New York Times affirming that as the man who “wrote the criteria” that define narcissistic personality disorder, Trump doesn’t seem to be suffering from it. Instead, as he suggests in his new book, he’s just “a bad person.” Which is worse. In his new book, “Twilight of American Sanity: A Psychiatrist Analyzes the Age of Trump,” Frances suggests that it’s America that’s the psychologically distressed party here — and offers his insights on what it takes to become “rational again.” In this episode, Frances speaks with Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams about why we make bad choices, and how the best results can come from the worst crises.