During the Soviet era, Russian Psychiatry became ignominious for their use of Psychiatry to diagnose disorders in political opponents. Dissidents were often sent to Psychiatric hospitals, treated against their will with powerful anti-Psychotic medications (which, at the time, had much more significant side effects and dysphoric effects than our current drugs), and marginalized as anti-social or worse for merely desiring more political freedoms.
In the United States, during the 1964 presidential campaign between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater, a group of American Psychiatrists purported to diagnose Barry Goldwater, whose Conservative politics were anathema to their liberal sensibilities. As I documented in my post, PsychBlogging and the Goldwater Rule, this led to some changes in the ethical standards applied to Psychiatrists:
In POTUS and the Goldwater Rule, past President of the American Psychiatric Association, Herbert S. Sacks, M.D., wrote:
"We are reminded of the 1964 Goldwater-Johnson election, when 1,189 American psychiatrists responded to an inquiry for their opinions of the candidates by a now defunct magazine. The bulk of the political responses, couched in psychiatric terminology, were so unfair and so outrageous to Goldwater that he sued and won a substantial settlement. APA issued public statements decrying such analyses and in 1973, when the Principles of Medical Ethics With Annotations Especially Applicable to Psychiatry were drafted, Section 7.3, stated: 'On occasion psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention, or who has disclosed information about himself/herself through public media. It is unethical for psychiatrists to offer a professional opinion unless he/she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement.' The Canadian Psychiatric Association has a parallel ethical standard."
Liberal Psychiatrists diagnosing Conservatives and Republicans is noxious and dangerous; now we must add that Conservative Psychiatrists diagnosing liberals is also noxious and dangerous:
Top psychiatrist concludes liberals clinically nuts
Makes case ideology is mental disorder
WASHINGTON – Just when liberals thought it was safe to start identifying themselves as such, an acclaimed, veteran psychiatrist is making the case that the ideology motivating them is actually a mental disorder.
"Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded," says Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of the new book, "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." "Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave."
The article goes on to quote Dr. Rossiter documenting various aspects of liberal ideology that derive from infantile development and using this as the basis for diagnosing liberals as Psychiatrically ill. This is not at all dissimilar to those liberal Psychiatrists who discern sociopathic roots of Conservative ideology and use such findings to diagnose conservatives as Psychiatrically ill. In both cases, the outcome is nonsense. As such, the most charitable term for Psychiatrists who indulge in such behavior is charlatan. This is not Psychiatry and does not resemble the way in which an ethical Psychiatrist would conduct himself.
Since Freud first attempted to apply Psychoanalytic concepts to the political sphere, there has been a long tradition of Psychoanalysts and Psychiatrists, along with others in the field of Mental Health, using their particular expertise to advance our understanding of historical figures, cultural phenomena, and current events. As I described in PsychBlogging and the Goldwater Rule, in response to criticism of a Sanity Squad Podcast, this often leaves the Mental Health Blogger treading a fine line:
As with any professional who uses his or her expertise to comment on the world via a Blog, the PsychBlogger must walk a fine line between using professional expertise to illuminate and using such ability as a weapon. I do not think the Sanity Squad crossed the line. We stayed close to the manifest behavior of our subject, did not use his psychological make-up (real or imagined) to attack him, but in an attempt to understand why he did what he did, and did not use our knowledge to discredit his political positions. We all must remain mindful of the risk of stepping over the line and, as with most issues, look for our readers and listeners to remind us when we, from time to time, approach too close to the line.
It would be ideal if we all addressed each other's ideology on the basis of the ideas involved, rather than the motivations and the unconscious wishes of the proponents. I do not like Liberalism because I have seen most of its ideas fail when confronted with reality. I do not like the excesses of Conservatism when its results are gratuitously cruel or disdainful. That being stated, it is clear that we will often have occasion to describe ideologies and the people who espouse them using terms and concepts derived from Psychiatry.
As an example, denial is a psychological defense that allows a person to mitigate or avoid the painful consequences of an unpleasant reality. When prolonged or extreme it can become pathological. The sudden death of a loved one is often met with denial (No!, It can't be.) If the person still insists their loved one is alive a week later, they have entered the realm of significant mental disturbance. In the political arena, I believe it is accurate to state that many Congressional liberals are in denial when they refuse to enact FISA because they fantasize/fear that the Bush administration is a greater enemy than the Islamists who want to kill us. However, this must be distinguished from using the fact of their denial as evidence to support a diagnosis of psychosis based on their inability to weight the threat from Islamists the same way I do. They have all sorts of psychological reasons to minimize and deny the threat (to lessen their anxiety and facilitate their attempt to gain power); they can certainly suggest that conservatives have psychological reasons to heighten the threat (fearfulness of "the other" a perennial favorite accusation of the left, as a way to hold onto power by frightening people, etc.) In this case I find the conservative argument much more salient and have explained why many times. That doesn't mean if you disagree with me you are "psychotic" or "narcissistic."
In addition, it must be pointed out that even when ideas arise from our infantile minds, eg wishes for a maternal government to take care of us cradle to grave, this does not amount to psychopathology; everyone has wishes, conscious and unconscious, to be taken care of. What makes such wishes pathological is when they interfere with our ability to "work, love, and play" not when they are expressed as a political preference.
If, and inevitably, when, I step over the line between description, psychological explanation, and diagnosis, on this blog, I trust that my friends will point it out to me; at that point I can either re-think my comments or explain why my readers might be misunderstanding my comments or intent. If I am particularly lucky in my choice of critics, they will let me know, in terms which are useful and helpful, when I cross the line.
One final note: Political madness, to use Rossiter's term, is a reasonable and appropriate area for psychiatric investigation and diagnosis (see my Post on The Arab Mind for an example.) Political ideologies that involve or sanction crimes against humanity, such as genocide, or concentration camps for one's enemies, or treating others as less than human, are fair game for diagnostic and other explanatory work. Whatever you think of liberalism or conservatism, neither ideology has ever been the equivalent of "political madness."
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