Back in 1964, a whole bunch of psychiatrists decided they would like to psychoanalyze Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. The result was what's known as the "Goldwater Rule."...Flier is Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School. His tweet was "Narcissistic personality disorder. Trump doesn't just have it, he defines it."
The American Psychiatric Association first began to follow the rule in 1973, but given recent events, it saw fit Wednesday to remind psychiatrists across the United States that the rule exists and must be followed.
"The unique atmosphere of this year’s election cycle may lead some to want to psychoanalyze the candidates," Maria A. Oquendo, president of the APA, wrote, "but to do so would not only be unethical, it would be irresponsible."
It's not clear whether Oquendo's post was a direct response to Flier's tweet or Scarborough's comments ["We’re asking ourselves — I didn’t say this, but this is what everybody is saying: Is Donald Trump a sociopath?"], but the timing certainly seems to fit. She did not respond to a request for comment....
Do you know what I'm about to say? WaPo is highlighting the things people are saying about Trump, but the APA warning came out Wednesday and is more closely synchronized with attacks on Hillary Clinton. WaPo doesn't even mention the spate of analysis of Hillary Clinton that followed her "short-circuited" remark. The "timing certainly seems to fit" — if anything — a desire to protect Hillary from attacks. The analysis of Trump's mental health has been going on for a while.
And here's my post from this morning observing that discussion of Trump in terms of mental illness has unleashed a corresponding approach to attacking Hillary Clinton. I'm against this kind of cheap, phony medicalizing of political discussion, whether it's done by psychiatrists or amateurs — or WaPo columnists like Kathleen Parker who thinks her own experience with brain injury puts her in a "unique position" to talk about Trump's brain.
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124 comments:
Perhaps if Donald Trump started talking about the specific policies he would implement, the psychoanalyzing would subside.
Interesting that Barry Goldwater is invoked, someone Hillary supported as a teenager.
Well, the good news is that even bad faith idiots seek the status of the scientist.
Nobody mainstream is claiming that the Virgin Mary or some other supernatural being manifested before them and proclaimed that it is righteous that Donald Trump should be smitten, so far as I know.
PROGRESS!!1!!!!!!!!!!
Well it's not just pyschiatrists that play this phony cheap "expert" game. You wind up with open letters from economists, historians, social scientists, political scientists, Hollywood bozos, union leaders, trash collectors (and sadly and wrongly lately generals and admirals) all offering their "expertise" as to what's wrong with a particular candidate--and what's right with the candidate they support.
So called "expert" opinions are like noses--everybody has one.
Once again, every argument used against Trump is an even more devastating argument against Clinton.
A classic smear tactic in politics is the psychoanalysis at a distance.
As every psychoanalyst from Freud onward has realized, you need to actually talk one-on-one with a patient for a considerable amount of time before you can figure out the person's problem.
Psychoanalyzing a candidate from what you see of him on video makes about as much sense as diagnosing the candidate with cancer or diabetes or heart disease based on what you see of him on video.
Just treat all such "psychological studies" of candidates with a grain of salt.
The APA publishes the DSM, and has recently created controversy by proposing the withdrawal of NPD from their manual as a disorder.
So first off, they're not objective about this.
Second, the idea that a candidate's unprecedented traits, behaviors and observed intrapersonal values can't be observed, debated, criticized by the general public is laughable. There is no other basis upon which to make a decision on their fitness for office or alignment with a voter's views.
Psychiatry might have an inferiority complex over not accessing recondite technical details like x-rays, laboratory tests and the like in their more subjective diagnostic pathways. But that doesn't mean that they make informal diagnoses based on any of those details wrong. If a medical doctor was on tv discussing the diagnostic ramifications of a lab reading that was made public, that would not be unethical.
The psychiatrists are just up in arms because behavior is more readily observable and not veiled behind a scanning device, a chemical reagent or anything of the like. But once any results from any of those criteria become public, it's absolutely allowed to discuss them in a speculative, public manner - and regularly done.
The APA needs to take a chill pill. Concern about widespread armchair diagnostics is legitimate. But their field is no more protected from discussing basic and publicly revealed facts than any other specialty's. Sorry about your lack of sophisticated diagnostic equipment, psychiatry! Deal.
It's not our problem. And neither need be Trump. Humanity is allowed to access and work with available knowledge. End of story.
Love the EFB post. Might be best short post of the month.
Trump walks into a psychiatrist's office wearing nothing but Saran Wrap.
The psychiatrist looks at him and says, "I can clearly see your nuts."
Personally, I think it's obvious that Trump's a narcissist. But I also think it's a possibility that Hillary's a sociopath.
Not all sociopaths are criminally dangerous. But based on the implications of Hillary's actions that invited legal concern, that ship has sailed.
In general, it's important to keep sociopaths out of positions of power. But both they and their narcissistic clinical cousins swell the ranks of "high-achieving" professions, such as the law, surgery, politics, executive management, etc.
I assumed both of Clintons and Trump are known sociopaths. Their public lives bear this out. Fortunately, I'm not a psychiatrist so I can make that opinion public. Some psychopaths and sociopaths are quite socialized and successful in their fields, after all. Trump strikes me a bit more like the researcher in this Smithsonian article, who is willing to adapt tendencies. Which means having a confrontational press is really important, and only Trump will get that.
But I still can't get to the point of voting for him. How can I choose between Herod and Pilate?
Or... what R&B said
Ministers are in the top-ten of narcissist jobs as well. So, don't trust what the pastors have to say on this election!
There was plenty of talk about whether Regan had Alzheimer or similar.
Talking about whether someone is "crazy" is irresponsible. Inquiring as to whether someone is suffering from a degenerative neuro-physical disorder is just conducting due diligence.
From Raw Story today it seems that the WaPo has overstepped the official APA proclamation.
Which brings us back to the American Psychiatric Association’s warning on Wednesday in the form of a gentle reminder to the professionals.
“This year, the election seems like anything but a normal contest, that has at times devolved into outright vitriol. The unique atmosphere of this year’s election cycle may lead some to want to psychoanalyze the candidates, but to do so would not only be unethical, it would be irresponsible,” wrote APA President Maria A. Oquendo.
Oquendo did not specifically reference Trump, it should be noted.
In view of an 8-year record, what evidence at this point would count against the hypothesis that O is a narcissistic sociopath?
the idea that a candidate's unprecedented traits, behaviors and observed intrapersonal values can't be observed, debated, criticized by the general public is laughable.
Odd things make you laugh but to each is own. Just so long as you weren't suggesting what a candidate says or how he behaves during the course of a campaign is evidence of his personal traits behaviors or intrapersonal values.
so when parker was sitting with client no 9, she was presumably sane?
Sociopaths and narcissists can both be scary, but in different ways.
Based on my completely unwanted dealings with them (usually after finding them out after the fact), my simplified taxonomy is this:
Narcissists feel no empathy, so they WILL screw you over not only without regret or thinking it through, but without even giving it a thought at all. But they generally won't seek to harm you, and that's because they know that doing so will ruin their reputation, which matters to them above all else.
Narcissists need an audience to please, so they generally have a conscience. Just a very stunted and crude one, whereby widespread approval/disapproval (or just approval by the "right" people) is all that matters.
Sociopaths have no need of any such audience or approval, so they feel that they should be able to do anything and there's nothing that anyone thinks about it that can change their mind. No conscience whatsoever. Because of this, they attracted to positions or demonstrations of authority itself - never mind the social structures that organize for that authority. They'd just assume to nuke the whole audience (or humanity itself, for that matter), and get what they want.
The irony is that most of what they want isn't possible absent a society. I would have no problem with a sociopath finding a peachy existence for himself/herself on a desert island. But often their goals are socially constructed anyway: Money, power, etc.
It doesnt matter all that much who the President is. That job is largely a front man for a rather large group. Policies, both in broad strokes and details, come from the group.
The Presidency, in itself, has remarkably little input, and Presidents are usually persuaded of a policy approach internally. The persuaders are very powerful.
The candidates state of sanity is of some interest, but I'm sure this can be worked around if necessary. Clinton certainly seems "well handled".
Best to know what group/clique/society is coming in with the President. This is clear with Clinton, but so far it is still quite uncertain with Trump. I hope thus is clarified soon.
Hillary Clinton's medical condition is not even a question of psychiatry. A brain tumor is not psychiatry. Many physical conditions can be diagnosed visually, remotely. We did it with Soviet leaders all the time. And remember Bart Giamatti.
Look at that third film of her that AA posted, the one that goes on for 6 minutes, and tell me what that is. It's not camera work.
No, really, please debunk it.
The warning also serves as a bolster to the notion that these paid mind-readers have a clue. They're being professional, even to the point of abstaining from making crap diagnoses like the rest of us.
I well remember Goldwater being declared by his opponents and much of the press as 'insane' and a 'danger to the nation'. Too young to vote, I nonetheless thought Goldwater a better candidate than the corrupt LBJ. In retrospect, we would have been better off had Goldwater won in 1964.
Get a load of the headline at Drudge: "2016. Hillary Conquers the Stairs."
Oooh, that hurts on many levels. The candidate has problems: an unexplained hole in her tongue, and she can't climb a short flight of stairs without assistance. What's going on? Another FDR in the making?
"what evidence at this point would count against the hypothesis that O is a narcissistic sociopath?"
His family life.
As long as we're banging on about Hillary's potential medical anomalies, what was up with that video of her having some weird type of a seizure with the robotic rapid eye-blinking?
Maybe this has something to do with the current Drudge headlines on the harridan's health,
SHOCK PHOTO: Multiple staffers help unstable Hillary up stairs
http://theamericanmirror.com/shock-photo-grandma-hillary-helped-stairs/
Stated otherwise, there's more gold in them thar Hillary hills than in Trump's hills.
Ha ha ha. Althouse is so funny. I'm sure this was intended to influence DJT and other political hacks re HRC. Now that these non-psychiatrists know about this rule, I'm sure they'll follow the directions. Maybe they'll also stop misquoting HRC by pretending that she said she had short circuited herself rather than her answer (i.e. "it") had short-circuited.
Presumably Althouse also thinks that a stern warning from the ABA would all across the land put an end to non-lawyers spreading their idiotic legal opinions.
Good stuff.
I do not agree with throwing around terms you don't quite know what they mean.
But Hillary!'s drive to win at all costs, and now to succeed on her own as a politician - a metier she obviously is not suited for, is quite remarkable.
Is she somewhat like Ironbutt Nixon, just different?
If psychiatric analysis is inappropriate when the very life of the country is at stake, it's of no apparent use at all.
I thought that you noticed — okay, it's what I noticed — not the timing of the recent announcement by the APA, but the timing of their original "Goldwater Rule."
The rule wasn't implemented after the public psychoanalyzing of Goldwater during the 1964 election, but in 1973, the year after Thomas Eagleton, the running rate of Walter Mondale, had to drop out of the race after it was revealed he had once received electro-shock therapy.
The APA didn't act until after public discussion of the Democratic nominee's mental state, not the Republican one. It should be called the "Eagleton Rule."
The idea that Obama is a narcissist is amusing. He obviously has concerns and priorities that go beyond his own reputation and he displays what can only be identified as empathy to way too many people for it to be easily dismissed. He shows gratitude - not indiscriminately or always to political opponents who don't treat him fairly - but this doesn't matter. Being selective with one's empathy is actually pretty natural; it's not having any of it that's pathological. Believing that you're talented enough to accomplish things that you obviously excel at doesn't make you pathological, either. Obama believes in himself and definitely has a strong ego, perhaps stronger than average - but that's not the distinction for pathological narcissism. I just think he takes things seriously and doesn't succumb to social/political pressure to just shake off what they tell him to shake off or get emotional over what they demand that he should get emotional about. He has different values, not no values when it comes to valuing what happens to other people.
Do psychologists have some sort of similar rule? They're so much less educated than psychiatrists that it probably doesn't make sense to expect much from them.
Presumably the psychologists can still blabber about their assessments of people from afar.
Lincoln would have been diagnosed as clinically depressed. Would we want to exclude him on that basis?
"so much less educated"
Some are. Some only have masters degrees. Some are differently educated. A PhD in Psychology or a PsyD is a fairly rigorous degree. At some schools it is an additional six years after getting an undergraduate degree (with its load of prereqs), along with a significant amount of internships and clinical training.
Like being a scientist, the word itself doesn't necessarily imply either a surfeit or a lack of education.
When did that ever stop the liberal press from seeking out an "expert" to further the narrative?
It is more significant that Hillary can't even climb five steps without help. The press should do its REAL job.
Hey, it's Hillary who had the concussion and possible TBI, not Trump. And he doesn't drink, either, unlike the Secretary.
I get it Paddy O, but in general it is fair to say that hanging w/ med students is tougher than hanging in the psychology department.
Just sayin.
That last article about brain injury and Trump ignores the "elephant in the room" of Hillary's head injury in 2012, that, according to her husband, "required six months of very serious work to get over".
The liberal Psychos are notoriously selective. The invocation of their religious/moral principles can only mean that Democrats, and Psychos, are now vulnerable to charges of bigotry. They have pushed too far, too fast, to selectively, and their religious beliefs are on trial.
APA doesn't need to worry. Nobody with a brain has any real respect for Psychiatrists any more. The same is true of lawyers.
Of course, there are always the dumb asses.
I should revise. Corrected version:
Nobody with a brain has any respect for :
bankers
Economists
Politicians
Lawyers
Liberal Arts Professors
Journalists
TV Execs
Except the dumb asses.
Mock,
I won't vote for people if I know that they're mentally ill. And, if I know that they're hopped up on drugs (like JFK) I won't vote for them, either.
PBandJ but are the best med students specializing in psychiatry? Maybe, but not always. Plus, it's harder because there are more narcissists in med school, not necessarily because they understand people's mental states better and more thoroughly.
My impression has been that psychiatrists are better if medication is required, while psychologists may be more adept at non-pharmaceutical responses. Differently educated for different goals. Becoming a neurosurgeon may require a great deal of intelligence and zeal, but may not be as helpful for those with PTSD.
Is being a narcissist and a sociopath a contagious malady? Hillary has been married to Bill for 40+ years.
Althouse is right. We shouldn't be mocking Hillary's mental condition.
We should be praying for her and hoping that she recovers.
Experts say Billiary has a dark pink aura.
I'm in favor of the medicalizing of political discussion when the behavior of a presidential candidate raises questions that don't seem to be answerable based on the usual norms of self-interest and political competence.
Paddy O,
I've known and know freinds/aquaintnces who are PhD and Masters Psychs. And, I know a fair number of docs (but no psychiatrists). In my obviously limited experience the docs are on a different level in the smarts department. But, they can be a bit edgier (that's a euphemism), which is a feature to me. But, I can imagine that this may not be great for psych type work.
Don't forget that the Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Hasan is a psychiatrist. Physician, heal thyself!
acquaintances, not whatever that was.
Althouse is right. We shouldn't be mocking Hillary's mental condition.
We should be praying for her and hoping that she recovers.
You are right, eric. And I do. But I don't want her as President.
"Althouse is right. We shouldn't be mocking Hillary's mental condition."
Hillary's mental condition will never see the light of day.
Never = January 20, 2017.
Blogger Basil said...
Hey, it's Hillary who had the concussion and possible TBI, not Trump. And he doesn't drink, either, unlike the Secretary.
"Possible" Basil? Her own doctors said that she had a stroke. Well, they said "cerebral venous thrombosis" which is medspeak for "a stroke"
John Henry
"And he doesn't drink, either, unlike the Secretary."
Not that this turns out to be a sign of being a great POTUS, as W showed us. Maybe Mitt would have done better as a dry POTUS.
The cons really like picking non-drinkers. I wonder if this, for some cons, makes current (i.e. w/in the last year) pot smoker Gary Johnson unacceptable as a DJT alternative. Maybe pot is more acceptable than alcohol, according to some cons. Plus, he's climbed all of the so-called seven peaks, so let him smoke w/ever he wants.
>but in 1973, the year after Thomas Eagleton, the running rate of Walter Mondale<
george mcgovern
Wow..if that piece wasn't written by R&B, would have assumed it was a joke.
We need some gauzy slo-mo footage of him at the beer summit and the read by Alan Alda.
Trump doesn't actually fit the criteria of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Obama does. That isn't to say he isn't narcissistic; almost all CEOs and politicians are, it's what enables them to get where they are.
Of bigger concern isn't some psychoanalysis, which is highly subjective and can't be done from afar, but analysis of Hillary Clinton's behavior, many of which are associated with severe brain trauma. A big worrisome part of this is that Hillary appears to do poorly under continual pressure and by all accounts, being POTUS involves being under a lot of pressure (it still amazes me how much presidents age their first term of office and how most seem to be so much more relaxed after leaving office.)
Kathleen Parker... thinks her own experience with brain injury puts her in a "unique position" to talk about Trump's brain.
Kathleen Parker doesn't just have megalomania, she defines it.
Greenspan famously said that the only American President he ever knew who struck him as sane was Gerald Ford and that was because Ford was an accidental president. A sure sign of grandiose ideation is the idea that you can be the most powerful man in the world and thereby make the world a better place. Normal people don't have such thoughts.......,Eisenhower looked pretty sane. I think he thought that his leadership of the armed forces on D-Day was the high point of his career and the presidency was just a footnote. All the other presidents of my lifetime have looked like they had a few screws loose.
Libertarian V.P. candidate William Weld sized up Trump this way: He has a screw loose. That nails it.
Trump is a narcissist? What else is new? The same is true of Hillary. If narcissism was a disqualifier for high office we would be very short staffed. I'm more concerned with basic matters such as a candidate's competence and accomplishments and Hillary other than in graft and bimbo eruption hasn't demonstrated any of either.
This just in: most of our leaders are narcissists.
"(it still amazes me how much presidents age their first term of office and how most seem to be so much more relaxed after leaving office.)"
This is a common statement. But, W seems like an exception. The dude as really fallen off a cliff since 08. He looks super old, imho. Not too long a ago I saw images of him and I had a nanosecond short circuit where I though of his father.
This just in: most of our leaders are narcissists.
Right. Churchill was a narcissist. It goes with the territory.
It is conceivable that there are diseases whose only symptoms are behavioral. I doubt there are many. In any case, anyone who claims to be able to diagnose such diseases is either lying or crazy. Probably both.
At the end of the day, I don't think the rule is a bad one. And/but it's extremely easy to get around. The televised shrink just has to make sure to couch all of their pronouncements under the usual qualifiers: "I haven't examined them. This doesn't pertain to X specifically. I haven't diagnosed such-and-such and no one can absent a proper interview, etc. But IF PERSON X exhibited symptoms Y, Z and triple L, then you would have yourself a full-blown narcissist. The following are the symptoms of Disease Beta: Yada Yada Yada. Talk to your doctor if you experience.... blah blah blah." Make it generic like a fucking pharmaceutical commercial. That's how you do it. Very easy to get around. Simple.
Mark Caplan said...
Libertarian V.P. candidate William Weld sized up Trump this way: He has a screw loose. That nails it.
And why exactly should I care that a man who appointed an official state astrologer in 1994, proving he has a screw loose, criticizes an opponent without citing any facts that back his screw loose opinion?
Rhythm and Balls said...
As long as we're banging on about Hillary's potential medical anomalies, what was up with that video of her having some weird type of a seizure with the robotic rapid eye-blinking?
8/7/16, 7:42 PM
This is what I'm saying. Brain lesions or a tumor. The falls are a symptom, not the cause of her problems.
The tongue mark was a biopsy i.e. tumor removal. But it may have metastasized; she certainly isn't getting better.
She wouldn't live out her term. The stress would eat her alive. They must have calculated she would survive the election. Kaine must know. I wonder what that makes him.
Watch for any more close-up footage of the inside of her mouth. I'll be surprised if that camera angle isn't guarded against, but with her frequent eccentric head movements and gaping I think we'll see more. Well, I guess that depends on what they decide to show us. Of course, amateur video is so much better these days. Imagine Zapruder with an iPhone 6s Plus.
This is a medical, not a psychiatric or psychological problem. The go-to on this is a neuropod. How I miss Dr. Kennedy.
Psychiatric is medical. Psychoses and other mental illnesses are caused by physiological rather than psychological pathology, which is why they are treated with chemistry and/or electro-convulsive therapy.
Unknown wrote: This is a medical, not a psychiatric or psychological problem.
Psychiatric problems are medical by definition.
Ya'll ever heard of tough love? When someone is a drunk or a drug addict, you don't enable it. You have to confront them and help them as best you can, even if that seems like in the short term they're going to hate you.
If you care at all for Hillary, you won't vote for her. Voting for her will end up killing her. Not only that, but she will die a national embarrassment as the DNC continues to try and prop her up like Weekend at Bernie's. Because they don't care about her at all, they just care about power. And they're using the Clintons for that power.
It's time for tough love, folks. Vote for Trump and show the DNC that we care about Hillary.
Quaestor, I think we crossed the finish line at the same time on that one.
Mock for the win! But hold your tickets for the photo.
Yes, but her condition is not one that can be treated with Prozac or Risperdal or Abilify or Seroquel or Aricept.
More like Avastin or methotrexate. Or the knife, of course. Stainless or gamma.
I wonder what she's spending on doctors, must be a damned fortune. Determined public surveillance, i.e. the media doing its job, ought to be able to yield more clues.
I feel sorry for her, actually. She finally gets into position to achieve her lifelong goal and her health fails. But I still don't like her, nor would I ever support her even if she were healthy.
Or the knife, of course. Stainless or gamma.
Depends on what kind of knife one has in mind.
Mme. Guillotine. Yes, that would cure the malady, all right.
Blogger mockturtle said...
Mme. Guillotine. Yes, that would cure the malady, all right.
With that Seahawks logo, you must live somewhere near me.
Used to live in Seattle but my profile shows where I live now.
I wonder if Flier psychoanalyzed Barack "I, I, I, Me, Me, Me" Obama? Dude, there's your NPD.
BREAKING: Hillary’s Handler Carrying Auto-Injector Syringe For Anti-Seizure Drug Diazepam! We have pics at Gateway Pundit,
How about the real nutcases on the scene? Members of the news media are completely psychotic and have been for years. Secretive, pathological liars with a collective God-complex. Watching MSNBC for a day is like a visit to an eighteenth century insane asylum to watch the inmates gibber their fantasies. Time to hose them all down!
By the way, how do the Superman/ Batman / DC Comics movies get away with that Arkham Asylum shtick? Talk about stereotyping people with mental health issues! I guess it is OK when Hollywood does it.
Crazy, baby.
PB&J: " Maybe they'll also stop misquoting HRC by pretending that she said she had short circuited herself rather than her answer (i.e. "it") had short-circuited"
Lol
Poor Hillary! Her darn answer, over which she has no control, short curcuited on her!
PB&J demonstrates the degree of sycophancy that will be expected of all of us soon.
""The American Psychiatric Association issues a warning: No psychoanalyzing Donald Trump.""
Because then we'd have psychoanalyze Hillary. God only knows what dark worms have burrowed into her convolutions.
The Association is not only acting to protect Clinton, but to deflect scrutiny of its judgment that saw fit to back the progressives' pro-choice policies.
Every mass murder in the past 20 years has one thing in common ... and it's not guns.
The overwhelming evidence points to the signal largest common factor in all of these incidents is the fact that all of the perpetrators were either actively taking powerful psychotropic drugs or had been at some point in the immediate past before they committed their crimes.
These drugs are known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), Diazapam, the drug contained in the injector being carried by Hillary's medical doctor or nurse was originally marketed as Valium, an anti-depressant and an SSRI.
William Weld may be right, she must be crazy - well maybe Billy Joel sang it first. But the seriousness of our next President tied forever to a drug associated with mass murder and suicide is frightening and even more serious is the long-term effect of the drug which actually worsens her medical condition by turning episodic seizures into a chronic seizures. Among SSRI users the relapse rate for the drug is 85%.
I would remind readers that I am not an expert but I have read a lot about SSRIs while staying at a Holiday Inn Express.
The reason psychiatrists aren't supposed to "diagnose" candidates this way is because they aren't actually treating the candidate (and so cannot really make a competent diagnosis) and certainly shouldn't be stigmatizing the mentally ill or violating doctor patient confidentiality.
But private citizens are perfectly justified in wondering whether some of these candidates exhibit personality disorders or suffer mental illness. Those illnesses are fairly widespread, and it's not unlikely for a presidential candidate to be suffering mental illness. While Nixon was never properly treated, he very well may have suffered from paranoia and that may have caused his scandals. Should we just look at Trump and Clinton and say "well, we can't get them into a shrink's office, so no speculating on their mental impairments"? I suppose we could just say "they both seem to lie the way normal people breathe, and there's a cold inhumanity to what they say and do" without going into amateur diagnoses. But whatever's going on there, we're going to be suffering through it for years.
Only reason the APA cares is that the reality is horrible.
If they can diagnose somebody from afar, what is the point of all of the personal sessions to figure out what the problems of a patient are?
If they can diagnose somebody they never met from a few minutes of TV coverage and an article or two, why can't they diagnose somebody they're directly treating anywhere near that quickly or efficiently?
gadfly said... "BREAKING: Hillary’s Handler Carrying Auto-Injector Syringe For Anti-Seizure Drug Diazepam! We have pics at Gateway Pundit."
An expert on Secret Service tactics told TGP Secret Service agents would not touch a candidate in the manner that this individual did and especially Hillary Clinton. It has been widely reported on Hillary’s disdain for the agents who work to protect her. The man who touches Hillary may be a member of Hillary’s close staff – but he is NOT a Secret Service agent.
Maybe he's one of Hillary's "black friends".
"See how fast my friends work?"
"they both"
There you go again with the false equivalencies again, Brando. I thought you had learned your lesson on the other thread.
One of them makes statements that the reality based community find delusional, I will say that. The other is an obnoxious blowhard.
"There you go again with the false equivalencies again, Brando. I thought you had learned your lesson on the other thread."
I'll try to explain this simply so it can get through your Trumpist bias. Althouse has referred to both candidates being "psychoanalyzed" and so it is relevant to refer to both here. Further, the fact that I consider both candidates mentally impaired when frankly Trump is the one who is most often maligned for this suggests I am leaning more for Trump by tossing Clinton into the mix.
But as I have no love for Trump and you are deep in the Trump Kool-Aid, I suppose you cannot see anything I do as anything short of a cheap attack on Trump. So perhaps I am overoptimistic in explaining myself to you.
if the diazepam story at gateway pundit is true, then, the bigger harm to hillary might not be that she has an emergency injection of diazepam at the ready but that she chose to run in such a condition.
But, will they enforce that rule by asking that the medical licences of violators be revoked or suspended?
"Perhaps if Donald Trump started talking about the specific policies he would implement, the psychoanalyzing would subside."
-- Doubtful. This is standard operating procedure. Even Ryan and Romney got psychoanalyzed, just not to the level that Trump has been, and usually the people doing the analysis were smart enough to hide behind a veneer of acceptability.
Calling the Republican an emotionless, un-empathetic, narcissistic hate-machine is what I expect the media to do, because it is what they've done since I started paying attention to elections, ever.
Remember: Mitt Romney was called un-empathetic -- despite us knowing that he ministered to people, including a dying kid where he sat with him and helped him write a will. If people can be that wrong about Romney, why should I trust the same people about Trump?
I tried to watch women's gymnastics last night but it was excruciating.
Maybe in the future we'll be able to tell the TV what sort of presentation we want.
I'll not be one of those people who select the option "Soap Opera Women."
Our cable TV has a bunch of those Music Choice channels.
Yesterday, my wife put on "The 1970s" for background music.
For the last 5 or 6 hours I have been plagued by the voice of B.J. Thomas.
I may have to shoot myself.
I'll try to explain this simply so it can get through your Trumpist bias
For the Nth time. It is not a Trumpist bias, though I do not share your concerns to the same degree (and I am a native New Yorker and have seen more if him than you have).
My bias is desiring that God, Trump, the American electorate, and/or any other agent if destiny, save us from the rule of Hillary Rodham Clinton! All else is secondary.
Again you say something like
we could just say "they both seem to lie the way normal people breathe, and there's a cold inhumanity to what they say and do"
I agree with this in the case of Clinton but not of Trump. At least the latter part is ridiculous.
I admit my reticence to comment on the former is tactical. Lying is not an automatic disqualification in politics. Just like not all rain is at all times unwelcome, ie 'the farmers need it.' It's chaff in an EW environment. You don't owe the SAM sites a clear shot at you.
Point is what is the truth? With Hillary it's all horrible. Trump may be bumptious but I don't think he will consciously do harm. All you see is bumptiousness and to you it makes him an unperson. All Hillary sees in approximately half the US population is bumptiousness and to her it makes them unpersons. My anger with you is because either you don't see this or you don't care.
I don't think Hillary couldn't make it up the stairs because of a mental illness condition.
I think it was because she is a seizure-ridden stroke-addled incontinent old woman with agility issues.
To clarify.
I am Laslo.
If the stories about diazepam and her handlers having to help Crooked Hillary up stairs are true, she shouldn't be running. And expect me to t to become a campaign issue. The press could hide JFK's illness, and FDR's wheelchair, but I don't think that they will be able to hide this. Trump sure won't ignore it, unless he is hiding similarly bad problems. I have been wondering for a bit now whether the reason that no one really saw her much until the Dem convention was because they were saving up her health for the regular campaign. And the bed in the Scooby van might make sense in a similar vein. But running for President is high stress, as is the Presidency itself. What is that going to do for her health, as she has to go nonstop for the next three months? Still, my bet is that the Sunday shows are going to concentrate on Trump's campaign supposedly falling apart, and not her health issues. We shall see.
gadfly said...
'Every mass murder in the past 20 years has one thing in common ... and it's not guns.'
Another oopsy - it's "Nearly every mass shooting in the last 20 years shares one thing in common, and it isn't weapons"
What a silly headline - of course the one thing *every* mass shooting has in common is the weapon.
"The overwhelming evidence points to the signal largest common factor in all of these incidents is the fact that all of the perpetrators were either actively taking powerful psychotropic drugs or had been at some point in the immediate past before they committed their crimes."
Actually not, and he supplies very little evidence. Most mass shootings are gang or other crime related (google "shot at party", e.g. 14 people wounded in shooting at Bakersfield house party)
That article continues with "..On to the list of mass shooters and the stark link to psychotropic drugs:" but many or most of the people in the list aren't mass shooters, and his anecdotes go back over 15 years. There were over 300 mass shootings in 2015.
No wonder you didn't supply a link for your misquote.
Well, as long as Trump and his supporters have alienated every minority group already (including the disabled), they might as well start alienating those of us who have to struggle with chronic illness on a daily basis.
I don't know if Hillary has some kind of serious chronic illness. The question is if said illness makes her unfit for office.
And on that one, the bar is set pretty low. FDR was crippled by polio, but he was elected to four terms through the Great Depression and World War II. JFK had Addison's disease, but he was elected and saw us through the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Woodrow Wilson had a stroke while in office, which left him half-paralyzed and half-blind. For months, his wife handled many of the duties of the Presidency while he recuperated.
So far, Hillary doesn't seem to be in such a bad shape. I still won't vote for her, though.
@Unknown - I don't see Crooked Hillary intentionally doing harm (that has,I think, been Obama in his mistaken anti-colonial zeal), but rather that she mostly doesn't care. What matters to her, I think, is the money first, and maybe power second. She probably didn't set out to give the Russians control over 1/5 of our uranium supplies, but rather when the opportunity came along, took their money. And maybe ditto from the Muslim world in her pushing for regime change in Lybia, Egypt, and Syria.
Eric the Fruit Bat said...
I tried to watch women's gymnastics last night but it was excruciating.
I might watch if the gymnasts were amply breasted adult women rather than scrawny teenagers with glandular conditions.
Various Olympic Athlete Body Types
(Warning: Unfortunate labeling)
Ferdy, you're nitpicking. Are you just a stickler or do you feel a pressing need to defend psychotropic drugs against blowback fair or unfair? Having mistakenly taken Prozac once (I mixed it up with another pill), I found it made me feel terrible, as in curling up on the bathroom floor wishing for death terrible.
While it may be unfair, I have no problem imagining such medications being responsible for some people doing terrible things. Do you sell the stuff or prescribe it for a living? I don't take the vax stuff seriously but this association might hold water. Certainly worth study and not brushing aside with a reed.
"For the Nth time. It is not a Trumpist bias, though I do not share your concerns to the same degree (and I am a native New Yorker and have seen more if him than you have)."
Ok--hard to tell which "Unknown" I'm talking to, but considering it's Trump who has been getting the "mentally ill" label by the media, I'd figure if anything tossing Hillary into the mix is more partial to Trump. I'm originally from NY myself, and it's my long exposure to Trump that makes me not trust him. Once you mistrust someone it's hard to build anything off of that.
"My bias is desiring that God, Trump, the American electorate, and/or any other agent if destiny, save us from the rule of Hillary Rodham Clinton! All else is secondary. "
I don't want to see Hillary elected either--while I think she will win, I fully expect her tenure to be one of the worst presidencies we've ever lived through, possibly cut short by impeachment. I have no illusions about that. But I can't pretend that to knock one candidate automatically builds up the other--it's not like I move votes or anything. I just don't see a point in avoiding criticizing one of them simply because you hate the other one more. If I were a public figure and my words mattered, that might be different. But here we're all just spitting out opinions and ideas for our own benefit.
"I admit my reticence to comment on the former is tactical. Lying is not an automatic disqualification in politics. Just like not all rain is at all times unwelcome, ie 'the farmers need it.' It's chaff in an EW environment. You don't owe the SAM sites a clear shot at you."
They all lie, to some degree, but these particular candidates lie far more than anything I've seen and on far more issues of substance. It does matter what the lie is--for instance "I've always loved polka" is almost charming BS, but "my husband made $100 million from foreign sources while I led our country's foreign policy because they must have loved his speeches" is far more important.
Bruce, point taken, but I think she's pretty much good with immiserating anyone who doesn't vote for her. Trump may strike at individuals but I think he would be the president of Republicans and Democrats too, and not value people strictly on their usefulness to him.
I also think that she cannot function in her condition, is not functioning properly now. She can be wound up for set-piece displays and events, but dealing with the daily pressures of office? We'll be seeing a lot of handlers and a lot of medi-pens. We won't see what she does alone in a room with Putin, whose people probably can tell him how to set her off.
The thing is with Hillary...there's just no upside!
As for FDR, JFK and Wilson, not inspiring records. The despised US military-industrial complex bailed all three of them out of troubles which they helped to cause and which real statesmanship could have averted. Incidentally, they all exhibited some loathsome behavior in private.
Unknown said...
Ferdy, you're nitpicking.
The claim was that "nearly every" mass shooting is associated with SSRI's. No evidence was provided to support that statement, just a very few hand-picked mass shootings along with some suicides and other not-mass-shooting craziness.
Sure, SSRI's make some people go crazy. So does booze or getting dissed in front of the chicks at a party.
The last few weeks I've been having these strange visions of Paul Ryan being sworn in as President. Don't know if it means anything.
@Amadeus 48 I guess it is OK when Hollywood does it.
Yeah, like 'gun violence'. Nobody does it better than Hollywood.
You people don't know what he was carrying, why he was carrying it and his relationship to Clinton. Coming from the Gateway Pundit, I'd say the story was drek.
Fernandinande: Sure, SSRI's make some people go crazy. So does booze or getting dissed in front of the chicks at a party.
8/8/16, 9:59 AM
Say WHAT?
No, I'm serious, I had not known that that was a known thing ("Sure"?!). Um, I don't know if most people know that that's a known thing. Perhaps there should be more public awareness. Perhaps people on ssris shouldn't have access to firearms, as loath as I am to say that. If I'm the last to know, fine, but to me that's a WOW!
Unk,
, I'd say the story was drek.
I'm sure you would.
I'd say, the media should not rest until that man's role and his life story are laid out in multimedia for the world to see. Whatever it is.
It could be a Valium-pen or an Epi-pen or it could be a vape pen or a penlight or just a pen. My not-betting-my-life-on-it opinion is that it is not the Diazepam pen that I saw the suggested photo of.
That's not important. What is important is that this big black guy is apparently kind of Magic Man who goes on stage behind the candidate, touches the candidate, and he tells the Secret Service what to do.
And also tells Hillary what to do. That's pretty big news that this somebody we don't know who tells the Secret Service and your hoped-for future POTUS what to do.
That is news to 99.99999999% of all warm blooded mammals. If a corps of crypto-medics follows her everywhere waiting for her to drop dead, that's news. If she has brain damage and needs to be told what to do, that's news. If he has to be in the room with her and Putin, that's news.
The detail may be drek. The wider story is not drek.
The offensive part is that these are deficiencies of character being blamed on mental illness. I have some experience that says there is some overlap there- mental illness can certainly interfere with performing certain duties and can distort character, but it is not the same as these politicians who act in self interest and lie habitually to serve their own interests. It is a disservice to our understanding of mental illness as well as our ability to hold politicians accountable, to conflate these two things.
There is a clinical distinction between psychosis and personality disorder. A psychopath is not psychotic and knows what he does is wrong but does it anyway. Ted Bundy, who obviously had a 'personality disorder', was not 'insane'. A sociopath has what used to be called a character disorder.
Unknown said...
You people don't know what he was carrying, why he was carrying it and his relationship to Clinton. Coming from the Gateway Pundit, I'd say the story was drek.
http://av.conferencearchives.com/pdfs/100201/PR3.06.pdf
But, ya know, stick with your narrative.
Turtle, Stan,
Being evil, and having brain damage, are not mutually exclusive.
First obvious thing to note is that issued no such statement about psychoanalyzing Hillary, although my suspicion is that "Crazy Eye Killa" Clinton would be well worth psychoanalyzing.
Also, I don't think they have issued such a statement about psychoanalyzing Obama. If you want to study narcissism, Il Dufe would be the Mother Lode.
No one has mentioned the huge leftward bias of psychiatrists themselves, which suggests that they may need more discouragement regarding Trump than Clinton.
http://images.dailykos.com/images/130311/lightbox/md-graph.jpg?1424435860
Blogger Fernandinande said...
gadfly said...
'Every mass murder in the past 20 years has one thing in common ... and it's not guns.'
Another oopsy - it's "Nearly every mass shooting in the last 20 years shares one thing in common, and it isn't weapons"
-----------------------------------------------------------
Sorry that I forgot to post the source - I even put the damned thing in italic and forgot to source it.
Anyhow, my source was:
http://www.naturalnews.com/039752_mass_shootings_psychiatric_drugs_antidepressants.html
What you read is what it said. The stuff after the first two paragraphs is mostly from a blog post that I made years ago on my discontinued blog, researched from several sources.
But you missed the point - SSRIs are dangerous and specific cases are available for your perusal at ssristories.com.
Gadfly, do you really expect anyone to take such a source seriously?
Hillary glitched out again today (Aug 8) during a speech. It's really freaky.
BTW, has anyone yet identified this doctor/life-coach following Hillary around?
@Joe - do you mean the guy carrying the Diazepam injector? Pictures I have seen is of a big black guy, dressed like the Secret Service, who is often right behind her, and is carrying what appears to be a Diazepam (apparently an anti seizure medicine) injector in his hand, apparently ready to inject her if the situation warrants. If this is accurate, it could be important - do we really want someone who's th their finger on the nuclear trigger who is likely to have some sort of seizure or brain fart at any time? We shall see if this is just a VRC conspiracy, or a real issue.
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