When can we write about something else than Trump being unhinged?
Ethicist and lawyer Jack Marshall’s blog.
Last month: Terry Tao’s blog
My photo blog is here. +++ Links to all the several dozen articles I cross-posted to Daily Kos with comments are here.
Ethics Alarms |
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
Shrinks diagnosing Trump: The Goldwater rule goes mainstream (in the New York Times)
Count me among the mental health professionals (as a retired clinical social worker and mental health center director who was licensed to diagnose and treat patients) who disagree with the Goldwater Rule under special circumstances. These occur when a candidate offers ample evidence that he has one or more psychiatric diagnoses that make him or her unfit or even dangerous to be president.
Now while Republican physicians are speculating about Hillary Clinton’s physical fitness to be president while Trump himself has started saying she looks like she had a stroke, and has trouble walking up a flight of stairs unaided, and needs to sleep between brief speeches.
Obviously the physicians that speculated on this have scant evidence to go on. Physical diagnosis requires an examination and often tests. Psychiatric diagnosis in usual accomplish with a face-to-face interview and occasionally psychological tests like the Rorschach and MMPI.
However, because Trump has been unscripted in so many of his rallies and demonstrated a wide variety of symptoms of disorders that make him temperamentally unfit to be president. Even if we don’t count his lack of empathy (a characteristic of narcissistic personality disorder), there’s his pathological lying and confabulation and his impulsiveness. Add to this that his narcissism makes him highly unlikely to heed advice that challenges his beliefs.
Just a thought: Trump wants extreme vetting for VISA applicants. How about requiring extreme vetting for presidential candidates? Start with requiring they release their income tax returns. A Rorschach Test and MMPI should also be required.
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| Not fit enough to fight World War II? |
In what was billed as a major foreign-policy address in Ohio, Donald Trump suggested—as he has in the past—that Hillary Clinton is somehow secretly ill. This time though, he said Clinton lacks the “mental and physical stamina” to take on ISIS, a declaration that comes just a week after conspiracy theories bubbled to the surface once again saying that the Democratic presidential nominee has some terminal ailment. Daily Beast
Monday, August 15, 2016
A rare gift to the electorate from Donald Trump
Simply put, Donald Trump has demonstrated his dark side more that any other candidate in this election and possibly in history. The only candidates in my memory that come close are George Wallace and Pat Buchanan. Add to this that we have seen so many examples of his bullying and mean and/or threatening reactions to slights that even without making a psychiatric diagnosis we can make judgments about his temperament.
Trump believes in himself with such conviction that he sees no need to heed advice from those who want him to win that he has to “act” presidential. Give Trump credit for refusing to act a role that would be dishonest.
As an evil Popeye, he proudly lives by the credo “I yam what I yam.” And that is good for us!
New to this blog… read previous “editions” here.
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