American Thinker
Robin Ridless
Jan 19, 2018
[excerpt]
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/01/the_case_study_against_trump_and_the_threat_of_nazi_psychiatry.htmlThe cry-in-their-beer plaint in Politico recently by Bandy X. Lee and Leonard L. Glass, co-editors of the anthology The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, has a tell. It argues that the mental health professionals in their anthology, in promoting a certain view of the president's behavioral health, are not violating the ethical canons of their profession. Yet the denial doesn't link to the contested rule – or rather, it links selectively and partially, to a secondary gloss that appears to support the co-editors' position, which is that the mental health contributors to the anti-Trump anthology are righteous rebels against an unreasoning and callous bureaucracy.
Hardly. The Goldwater rule – to step back – is a provision in the code of ethics of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) prohibiting member-psychiatrists from diagnosing public figures without personally examining them. It is designed to prevent psychiatrists from misusing their "science" to propagandize. If psychiatrists could throw their weight around in political battles, they could sell themselves to the highest bidder. Not to say they haven't, but the rule puts up an impediment.
That's where Lee and Glass's P.R. comes in. Psychiatrists on the faculties of Yale and Harvard, respectively, they claim that a March 2017 opinion by the APA unduly expanded the longstanding Goldwater rule. In direct contradiction to this characterization, the APA said the issued opinion "reaffirms" it. This is a basic difference.
