Donald Trump held on to important classified documents in part because they made him feel "greater in his own mind," a retired Harvard psychiatry professor said on Wednesday.
Dr. Lance Dodes, a retired assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who previously broke down Trump's "severe, continuous, mental disturbance" for Raw Story, appeared on MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell to discuss Trump's mental state following his first federal indictment. O'Donnell asked if there was "a psychiatric explanation for why he kept those documents after the federal government demanded them and his attorneys told him to give them back."
"My guess would be that it makes him greater in his own mind," Dodes said. "Now, he has secret documents, which he had when he was president, but if he loses the presidency, at least he has the secret documents."
Dodes added that, "It's like having a badge on your four years old that says you're a secret policeman."
"I think it's something like that. He needs it for himself," he explained.
Dodes further predicted that, as Trump's legal troubles continue to grow, he will "look worse and worse."
"That is the psychiatric explanation. He is fundamentally different from normal people. We'll see more and more of that," the psychoanalyst said.
