On the front of Tuesday’s “Science Times” section in The New York Times was the science behind declaring Trump insane. The subhead next to his face was “Assessments of the Republican candidate’s mental health have sparked renewed debate in the psychiatric field over the so-called Goldwater Rule.” The headline, under the fold, was simply “Analyzing Trump.”
“Science” reporter Benedict Carey spent 1,437 words exploring how Trump might be declared nuts.
In the midst of a deeply divisive presidential campaign, more than 1,000 psychiatrists declared the Republican candidate unfit for the office, citing severe personality defects, including paranoia, a grandiose manner and a Godlike self-image. One doctor called him “a dangerous lunatic.”
The year was 1964, and after losing in a landslide, the candidate, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, sued the publisher of Fact magazine, which had published the survey, winning $75,000 in damages.
But doctors attacked the survey, too, for its unsupported clinical language and obvious partisanship. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association adopted what became known as the Goldwater Rule, declaring it unethical for any psychiatrist to diagnose a public figure’s condition “unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement.”
Enter Donald J. Trump.
The 2016 Republican nominee’s incendiary, stream-of-consciousness pronouncements have strained that agreement to the breaking point, exposing divisions in the field over whether such restraint is appropriate today.
Psychiatrists and psychologists have publicly flouted the Goldwater Rule, tagging Mr. Trump with an assortment of personality problems, including grandiosity, a lack of empathy, and “malignant narcissism.” The clinical insults are flying so thick that earlier this month, the psychiatric association posted a reminder that breaking the Goldwater Rule “is irresponsible, potentially stigmatizing, and definitely unethical.”
Nevertheless, Carey promoted how William Doherty, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota, organized an online manifesto against “Trumpism” as “inconsistent with democracy” and “antithetical to everything we stand for as therapists.” It’s been signed by “more than 2,000 mental health specialists.”
If the Times really believed this was an unethical attack, they wouldn't have promoted it at the top of their "Science" section. It would be dismissed as unworthy of their news pages, like the people accusing Bill Clinton of sexual assault. Instead, this very neatly matches the Clinton playbook, to suggest Trump is too unreliable to be in charge of the nuclear codes.
Carey noted there’s a “bipartisan history” of analyzing public figures, noting it was applied to LBJ, to Nixon, and to the Clintons, and the question if Bill suffered from “sex addiction.” But Carey ended by suggesting that maybe with all the instant social media, it’s easier to diagnose mentally ill candidates from afar, and, yet, maybe constant lying shows a positive, adaptive side (see the Clintons):
But in an era when private moments and comments are increasingly available for public consumption, some argue that the Goldwater Rule is due for an update.
''There's another perspective on this altogether,'' said John D. Mayer, a University of New Hampshire psychologist who has written widely on the rule. ''The ethicists who wrote the rule have been entirely focused on the negative side of commentaries. But there's a positive, adaptive side to every personality trait.
''If you call someone deceitful, whether Clinton or Trump,'' Dr. Mayer said of this year's nominees, ''it needs to be said that, for a good politician, there are reasons you can't always say everything you know, or exactly what you think.''
