Zoom Link: ‘Containing Trump Contagion – Healing Our Collective Mental Health’

Live Session Today at 12 noon EDT / 9:00 a.m. PDT

An article in the HuffPost this week placed “the Goldwater rule” in surprisingly accurate perspective.  This occasion was such an exception, it created a buzz within the World Mental Health Coalition discussion group, and a gracious member took a picture of “the current HuffPost headline on its home page” as of October 22, 2024:

Below is an excerpt of the article by S.V. Date, with the subheading: “An author of the 1973 American Psychiatric Association standard says it was never meant to stop doctors from expressing their opinions based on public information”:

A psychiatrist who helped craft the 1973 “Goldwater rule” that has kept many mental health professionals from opining on Donald Trump for nearly a decade said that it was not intended as a hard-and-fast prohibition, and that if he were Trump’s doctor, he would order a full battery of tests to determine the cause of what he believes could be the former president’s dementia….

Dyer said Trump’s recent behavior warrants medical evaluation, like his apparent inability to remain focused on a single topic or string together complete sentences, for example, or his confusing of people, as he has repeatedly done with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.  And more recently, his loss of interest in taking questions at his own campaign event, followed by a demand that his staff play some of his favorite songs while he stood onstage and swayed to the music.

“I find it concerning that he doesn’t complete his sentences, seems to lose track of the question he is trying to answer, or avoid, and that one thought doesn’t lead to another, but appears to veer tangentially off track,” Dyer said….

Trump, who is 20 months away from turning 80, [said:] “I’ve done cognitive tests. I’ve done them twice, and I aced both of them, and the doctor in one case said, ‘I’ve never seen anybody ace them.’”

Dyer and other psychiatrists, though, said that test, often used as an initial screening tool which Trump took nearly seven years ago, is not helpful in assessing his current condition.

“That assessment is given to potential nursing home patients to decide which wing to assign them to, not to someone you want to hire, let alone be president,” said Andrew Smolar, a Pennsylvania psychiatrist who has had numerous patients of Trump’s age and apparent condition.

Smolar is among the 440 and counting health care professionals supporting Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris who warn that Trump’s current condition is worrisome and call on him to release his medical records….

In the coming decades, [the Goldwater Rule] did not really matter as both major parties nominated candidates who spoke and acted within the mainstream of American political discourse.  The only time a presidential candidate’s mental health was questioned was by supporters of George W. Bush in the 2000 primary, when they spread rumors that rival John McCain’s nearly six years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam had scarred him psychologically.

That respite ended in 2016, when Republicans nominated a conspiracy theorist and habitual liar who, even at age 70, displayed symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder as laid out in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

After he was elected, some psychiatrists and psychologists began warning about Trump’s behavior, predicting that it would get even worse, and called for his removal under the Constitution’s 25th Amendment. And those doctors and therapists, in turn, were often criticized for violating the Goldwater Rule.

Bandy Lee, a professor of psychiatry at Yale University, was fired after editing and contributing to the book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Professionals Assess a President”….

“I never objected to the original Goldwater rule, and kept with it,” Lee said. “It was its perversion in March 2017 I objected to, and what we see today is the result”….

Dyer, who believes he is the last member of the original 1973 ethics committee who is still alive, wondered in a 2020 article in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association whether the APA had gone too far in its revision.

“With regard to Goldwater and Trump, way down deep there is general agreement that public statements should be made carefully and cautiously, but also way down deep there is concern and alarm about Trump’s instincts, desires, behavior, and mental status,” Dyer wrote.  “Professionals for good reason try to remain above politics, to hold principle above expediency.  I hope at the end of the day, in the face of a president who respects none of that, we will not regret saying too little”….

To Dyer, Smolar and others, Trump’s behavior in his public remarks are ticking off the boxes on the list of symptoms warning of dementia.

Even his tendency to drop obscenities into his public remarks of late―he used the phrase “I don’t give a shit” speaking at a Catholic Church fundraising event last week and called Harris a “shit vice president” in a Saturday rally in Pennsylvania, where he also spoke of the size of the late golf legend Arnold Palmer’s penis―suggests “disinhibition,” another sign that his condition is worsening, Dyer said.

Allen Dyer and I have spoken a number of times, and what he said stayed with me for years: “The Goldwater Rule is supposed to be an affirmative obligation [to educate the public].” Otherwise, it would never have made it into any code of ethics.

Announcement:

Dr. Bandy X. Lee is inviting you to a live session in a series: