So Mueller’s report came down with a bang yesterday, to a big collective “Okay…”
And in other news this week, Thorn-in-Trump’s-Flesh George Conway caused a ruckus with his tweeting of the list of characteristics of narcissistic personality disorder, and was called out by his wife for tweeting diagnostic information while not being a psychiatrist. Good thing somebody is keeping that conversation going, even if it’s just us non-professionals.
And then this happened: Tuesday I attended a conference held at the National Press Club in DC sponsored by the World Mental Health Coalition (WMHC), and came away both invigorated and scared out of my wits.
The conversation about nuclear weapons alone is worth everyone’s time. And also the discussion about individual responsibility that ensued during the Q&A. You can view the whole CSPAN coverage here.
[New research shows that] virtually every military leader in the United States government in power during Hiroshima was opposed to the use of the bomb. They all understood that surrender was already inevitable and that the Japanese were ready to surrender and that this bomb should not be used. They made an attempt using the Joint Chiefs of Staff, trying to get the British Chiefs of Staff to get Churchill to persuade Truman—and he failed partly because the John Bolton of that time was the man who controlled the decision. — Gar Aperovitz, Ph.D.
This conference coincided with the release of the second edition of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” an expanded edition of the best-selling collection of expert opinions edited by Dr. Bandy X. Lee, who also organized the conference. Dr. Lee, Dr. Jerrold Post and Dr. Jeffrey Sachs put together an impressive panel of speakers for this conference, including mental health experts but also a historian, a climate scientist, a lawyer, a philosopher, and an expert on nuclear weapons. (There were also surprise appearances from David Cay Johnston, Congressman Jeremy Raskin and author/journalist Mehdi Hasan.) Together, they made an impassioned plea for both information and action from the mental health profession concerning the dangerous state of the world and some of its more, shall we say, erratic leaders.
Trump is not fit to be Commander-in-Chief, but he is fit to serve as the leader of an authoritarian state. — Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Ph.D.
In an introduction Dr. Lee explained how the WMHC originated. While it’s true that the Coalition grew out of discussions among the original authors of the book about Trump and further discussions in online groups, these led to an exploration of how the mental health profession might cope with the rather horrendous social condition in which the nation finds itself now and which is going to continue to afflict us for the foreseeable future, even absent Trump himself (please God). The focus of the WMHC going forward is not on Trump himself but on public sanity in the face of dangerous societal conditions.
But in this particular conference, the WMHC intended to demonstrate that its leaders feel empowered to bypass the controversial “Goldwater Rule” that has lately stymied discussion of the state of Trump’s mental health by professionals.
To be clear, the WMHC as a body does not disown the original “Goldwater Rule,” the guild rule of the American Psychiatric Association which states that it is unethical for psychiatrists to give a professional diagnosis about public figures whom they have not examined in person, and from whom they have not obtained consent. But as the entire panel presentation and discussion made absolutely and painfully clear, the public has a right to any information that the mental health profession can provide about any public figure who has engendered as much fear and perplexity as Trump has. “We need you!” panelist Richard Painter vociferated, “Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t speak out!”
In 2017, despite pleas from psychiatrists to roll back the Goldwater Rule, the APA doubled down on it and expanded its scope. It now says that it applies also to “an opinion about the affect, behavior, speech, or other presentation of an individual that draws on the skills, training, expertise, and/or knowledge inherent in the practice of psychiatry.” Pretty comprehensive. And in the legal opinion of Mr. Painter, an unconstitutional infringement on First Amendment rights.
The American Psychiatric Association is not the only mental health association. There are the American Psychoanalytic Association, the American Psychological Association, and the National Association of Social Workers (and confusingly, way too many of them share initials). These others all have their own guidelines, none of which include a Goldwater Rule. Quite a few psychiatrists, including Dr. Lee, have resigned from the APA rather than submit to what amounts to a gag rule. Yet the APA’s rule (now largely known as the “Trump Rule”) has captured the public imagination as a “thing”—I believe that there’s a general impression that it’s some kind of law—and has stirred up apprehension in the media about airing any further professional opinions on the subject of Trump’s mental health. (In fact, Dr. Lee had two television interviews scheduled right before the conference that were suddenly and mysteriously canceled.) The only people on TV talking about it now are people who preface their remarks by saying, “I’m no psychiatrist, but…”
So, good on you, WMHC. Now get to work on restoring the fabric of society. We need you.