bubblesort
Well-known member
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2018
- Messages
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Sorry, I still say it's invalid. So does the APA. You can't tap dance around the Goldwater Rule by saying you believe that somebody's public persona is dangerous.
A Duty To Differentially Diagnose: The Validity Underpinning The Diagnosis Of The President
A DUTY TO DIFFERENTIALLY DIAGNOSEmedium.com
It is very long, partly because she's concerned to establish that it's both ethically and medically justified to diagnose Trump without interviewing him, then to explain psychopathy, what it is and how it's diagnosed, and to explain the similarities and differences between psychopathy, antisocial personality disorder and narcissism.
People can probably skim it to section 5 (thus skipping the history of the Goldwater rule and so on), but even then it is long, but very interesting indeed.
ETA: I can diagnose Trump -- as my grandmother would have put it (think Old Nan, Bran's nurse and Hodor's mum in GoT, here), "He's a bad un." That sums him up pretty well, I think.
The Goldwater Rule is not just there to be fair to the persona in question, it's there to prevent psychiatrists from humiliating themselves. Hypothetically, lets assume the Trump you and I see on TV is a real person and not a character he plays for political gain. That's a stretch, but lets see where that goes...
It is unsound to diagnose somebody at a distance like that, from media reports, and not from the processes that doctors use every day in their offices. If you have never even met somebody, you can't credibly diagnose their issues. If we could diagnose people from the media they generate, then why even have doctors appointments? Why not just let the doctor read my facebook or twitter feed, or even my SLU posts, to see if I have a gunshot wound, or depression, or whatever else I might have? It's absurd.
You and me can call Trump a psychopath. I think he probably does have mental health issues. He certainly seems to act like he has compulsions of some kind. When a doctor does it, that's a different story. If a doctor calls him a psychopath, and isn't just speaking figuratively, then unless they actually had Trump as a patient, and got Trump's approval to make that diagnosis public, then that doctor's expertise needs to be called into question. No competent doctor would even attempt to violate the Goldwater rule like this.
All educated people will rightly laugh at Dr Greenwood for posting this absurd 'diagnosis.'
