The (Psycho) Resistance.

• Author: Vatz, Richard E.
• Position: THERAPEUTIC THEORY - Mental health of Donald Trump as ground for his removal from office

"HIS [IS] IMPULSIVE, IMPETUOUS BEHAVIOR. Such behavior in this age could result in world destruction. This behavior reflects an emotionally immature, unstable personality Basically, I feel he has a narcissistic character disorder with not too latent paranoid elements."

The attacks by mental health specialists on Pres. Donald Trump's psychological qualifications to be president have all raised the question of what is called the "Goldwater Rule," the informal name given to the American Psychiatric Association's Section 7.3 of "The Principles of Medical Ethics with Annotations Especially Applicable to Psychiatry." It states that it is "unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion about an individual based on publicly available information without conducting an examination."

This article's opening quote belongs to a psychiatrist from Los Angeles, Calif., who, in an infamous article in 1964's Fact Magazine--in which more than 1,100 psychiatrists wrote in to publicly diagnose and assess presidential nominee Barry Goldwater--insisted that the Republican senator from Arizona, a solid conservative nominee, was a "narcissist," "paranoid," "psychotic," and dangerous, particularly in the nuclear age. The embarrassment from the irresponsible diagnoses of almost 10% of the nation's psychiatrists was immediate--as well as enduring. Hence, the "Goldwater Rule" was adopted by the APA to reduce the pretensions of psychiatrists and to protect unexamined public figures.

The election of Trump manifestly has frightened and elicited concern from perhaps a majority of American citizens. This writer is one of them. To accept that such a volatile president presides over the world's largest and most-effective nuclear weapons stockpile is sobering indeed. Regardless, the American people elected him--cries from the left concerning Russian collusion notwithstanding--and those who are trying to remove him through psychiatric mystification are violating democratic norms through a pseudo-medical storm of disparagement.

Those engaged in this attempt include the Rep. Jamie Raskin (D.-Md.) and more than four dozen cosigners--mostly Democrats, of course--of his House bill: the "Oversight Commission on Presidential Capacity Act." That Act would, consistent with, as Raskin puts it on his web page, "Section 4 of the 25th Amendment [empowers] Congress to establish a permanent 'body' that can declare that the President is 'unable to discharge the powers and duties...