The Goldwater Rule dates back to the time when the Dems decided to throw everything at Goldwater and indulge in any nasty smear they could think of. That included having shrinks accuse him of mental illness. Thus the Goldwater Rule, a basic elementary form of professional ethics in which supposed professionals in the field are not supposed to fake diagnose politicians they dislike, but have never met.
Those were better times. The Goldwater Rule has been observed mainly in its violation in the Trump era. And now the most pseudoscientific part of the field has officially dismantled it.
The statement, an email this month from the executive committee of the American Psychoanalytic Association to its 3,500 members, represents the first significant crack in the profession’s decades-old united front aimed at preventing experts from discussing the psychiatric aspects of politicians’ behavior.
It figures that a branch of the profession last relevant during WW1 would take the lead in no longer pretending that its professional ethics trump its politics.
It will likely make many of its members feel more comfortable speaking openly about President Trump’s mental health.
It will add to the things they know nothing about that they can opine on. And it is a long list.
The impetus for the email was “belief in the value of psychoanalytic knowledge in explaining human behavior,” said psychoanalytic association past president Dr. Prudence Gourguechon, a psychiatrist in Chicago. “We don’t want to prohibit our members from using their knowledge responsibly.”
The value of psychoanalytic behavior and $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee. It just won't be drinkable because of the gestalt.
But in the same spirit, I'm forced to use my knowledge of psychoanalytic pseudoscience to diagnose Prudence as suffering from unresolved conflicts with her father while projecting those conflicts on President Trump. Her love and hatred for him has led her to this sad state.
The rule against psychiatrists offering their analysis of the emotions, thought patterns, and beliefs underlying such behaviors, Glass said, robs the public “of our professional judgment and prevents us from communicating our understanding” of the president’s mental state.
While breaking the rule enriches the public with the understanding that anyone doing it has no professional ethics and is practicing a pseudoscience that operates entirely outside the usual method of diagnosing a patient through some form of interaction rather than watching MSNBC.
Once you're abusing your standing for the equivalent of political namecalling, you lose it.
The group acted despite growing criticism that the Goldwater rule is outdated and even unethical for preventing psychiatrists from pointing out behaviors that raise questions about a government official’s mental state.
It's good to be living in Orwellian times where preventing unethical behavior by supposed medical professionals is... unethical.
One stated rationale for the Goldwater rule is that psychiatrists need to examine patients in order to properly evaluate them. In fact, for decades the State Department and other federal agencies have asked psychiatrists to offer their views on the psychological state of foreign leaders, Glass pointed out, evidence that government officials believe it is possible to make informed inferences about mental states based on public behavior and speech.
Again, we have a supposed medical professional who is unable to distinguish ethical behavior in public forums from intelligence gathering analysis of enemy leaders. (Never mind that the State's information gathered through such analysis has been traditionally worthless.)