Shrinks Against Goldwater
Just before the 1964 election, a muckraking magazine called Fact decided to survey members of the American Psychiatric Association for their professional assessment of Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, the Republican nominee against President Lyndon B. Johnson. The survey, highly unscientific even by the standards of the time, was sent to 12,356 psychiatrists, of whom 2,417 responded. The psychiatrists’ assessment was brutal. Half of the respondents judged Mr. Goldwater psychologically unfit to be president. They used terms like “megalomaniac,” “paranoid” and “grossly psychotic,” and some even offered specific diagnoses, including schizophrenia and narcissistic personality disorder. Only 27 percent of the respondents said Mr. Goldwater was mentally fit. In 1973, the A.P.A. defined a set of requirements for communicating with the media — the Goldwater rule — stating that it is explicitly unethical to offer a professional opinion about an individual without directly examining that person and getting his or her permission to comment.
Full article on the ethics of psychiatrists giving opinions about patients they’ve never examined.
Wow. That is crazy. Something tells me that if Lyndon B. Johnson had been the subject of that survey, those psychiatrists would have returned much more favorable responses. Kudos to A.P.A. for instituting the Goldwater rule, but why did it take them nearly a decade to do so?
It is interesting how the ethics of the time allowed psychiatrists who prided themselves on their discretion (not to mention being a noble profession) to render a psychiatric assessment on a public figure they had not examined and then announce to the diagnosis to the world.
Disgusting.
I think the shrinks who made these comments were evil. Barry Goldwater was a great American patriot.
I’m glad to learn that Goldwater collected a big check from these jerks.
These people should have forfeited their licenses to practice.