Psychologically Sound: The Mind of Donald J. Trump

A highly-respected psychiatrist challenges the media narrative that President Trump is mentally unstable.

The media and his political foes frequently attack Donald Trump with claims that he is mentally unfit for the presidency. Increasingly, his critics label him "unstable," "crazy," or "insane." But these armchair diagnoses have more to do with a dislike of his policies than any real clinical analysis.

In Psychologically Sound, Sheldon Roth, M.D. draws on decades of psychiatric and academic experience to reveal President Trump in a holistic manner—an understandable, stable, even likeable person. What emerges is a complex portrait of a man who has been effective and successful in business and politics, but who also has regrets about failings in his personal life.

Drawing on little-known aspects of Trump’s background, such as his love for the film Citizen Kane as well as or his decades-long friendship with positive-thinking advocate the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale, Dr. Roth paints a portrait of a man who is remarkably complicated, often brilliant, comfortingly human, and most importantly, of completely sound mind.

Dr. Sheldon Roth was in the private practice of psychiatry and psychoanalysis in Newton, MA for over forty years. He is a retired Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, and Emeritus Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst of The Psychoanalytic Institute of New England, East. Instrumental in the development of psychoanalysis in Russia, he was a Supervising Psychoanalyst for the Eastern European Psychoanalytic Institute, Moscow, Russia. From 1982–2010 he was a member of The Center for Advanced Psychoanalytic Studies, Princeton, N.J. 

Dr. Roth received his B.A. Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Brooklyn College (1960) and received his M.D. Alpha Omega Alpha from New York University School of Medicine (1965). He was a resident and Chief Resident in Psychiatry at The Massachusetts Mental Health Center, Boston, MA. As a Clinical Associate at NIMH Clinical Center, Bethesda, MD, he was a member of the Family Studies Divisions and chief administrator of the NIMH Adolescent Residential Treatment Center. From 1971–1974 he was Assistant Clinical Director of The Massachusetts Mental Health Center, Harvard Medical School. 

A popular teacher and lecturer at Harvard Medical School, particularly on therapeutic process and dreams, Dr. Roth has published widely on clinical topics as well as the Holocaust, romantic love, American short stories, and cinema. He is the author of Psychotherapy: The Art of Wooing Nature.

Dr. Roth currently resides in Los Angeles, CA with his wife of fifty-nine years, Cora, near the burgeoning families of their three sons.