Twilight of American Sanity: A Psychiatrist Analyzes the Age of Trump

“Unravel[s] the national psyche that brought our politics to this moment.” — Evan Osnos, The New YorkerA landmark book, from “one of the world’	s most prominent psychiatrists” (The Atlantic): Allen Frances analyzes the nation, viewing the rise of Donald J.

Trump as darkly symptomatic of a deeper societal distress that must be understood if we are to move forward.

Equally challenging and profound, Twilight of American Sanity “joins a small shelf of essential titles—Arlie Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land is another—that help explain why and how the Trump presidency happened” (Kirkus).It is comforting to see President Donald Trump as a crazy man, a one-off, an exception—not a reflection on us or our democracy.

But in ways I never anticipated, his rise was absolutely predictable and a mirror on our soul.

… What does it say about us, that we elected someone so manifestly unfit and unprepared to determine mankind’s future? Trump is a symptom of a world in distress, not its sole cause.

Blaming him for all our troubles misses the deeper, underlying societal sickness that made possible his unlikely ascent.

Calling Trump crazy allows us to avoid confronting the craziness in our society—if we want to get sane, we must first gain insight about ourselves.

Simply put: Trump isn’t crazy, but our society is.—from TWILIGHT OF AMERICAN SANITY