I thought of my Uncle Jerry when I read President Trump's recent tweet: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory.”
Uncle Jerry was convinced the FBI had bugged his spartan room in a YMCA.
He was my mother's half brother, and she and my father were bewildered by his fixation. So they asked my help. A college student, I was their pride and joy. Shouldn't I be able to show Jerry the hole in his logic?
But of course, I couldn't. That's the thing about paranoia: It's not amenable to rational discourse. I told my parents they needed the advice of a professional. Hearing their report, he in turn said that Jerry's symptoms suggested he had a major mental illness. It should not be ignored. When my parents got Jerry to a hospital, the staff confirmed the preliminary diagnosis of the professional that had been based on my parents' report.
Trump's tweets and speeches have prompted similar responses from a number of mental health professionals. In a letter to The New York Times, a pair of distinguished professors of psychiatry warned that it's dangerous to ignore what they see as Trump's impairments.
“Without any demonstrable evidence, he repeatedly resorts to paranoid claims of conspiracy,” Robert Jay Lifton and Judith Herman wrote. “We urge our elected representatives to take the necessary steps to protect us from this dangerous president.”
But there are diametrically opposed voices in these shrink wars. To some prominent mental health professionals, public pronouncements on Trump's fitness for the Oval Office are a no-no. In the run-up to the 2016 elections, the president of the American Psychiatric Association reminded members that the association's rules forbid pre-diagnosing presidential candidates.
“The unique atmosphere of the 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,” Dr. Maria Oquendo wrote on the association's website.
Oquendo and like-minded professionals explain their position by citing the “Goldwater rule.” It was a reaction to an embarrassing incident during the 1964 presidential race between President Lyndon B. Johnson and Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater. A short-lived magazine, Fact, announced on its cover: “1,189 psychiatrists say Goldwater is psychologically unfit to be president!” Goldwater sued for libel and won.
Subsequently, the APA forbade psychiatrists from commenting on a public figure's mental health “unless he or she has conducted an examination.”
Yet I have to believe that many a shrink has conducted a “long-distance” analysis, as it was dubbed. My parents' quandary wasn't unique. Lots of families have an Uncle Jerry. Wouldn't some take the problem to a mental health professional and be advised to get their loved one help?
If experts sometimes feel obligated to render judgment without seeing an ordinary citizen, why shouldn't they do so when their antennae are alerted by a president's behavior?
They need to be on guard against political bias. But to me, at least, Trump's behavior does raise questions.
For instance, Trump recently claimed that 2017 would be disastrous for Obamacare. “That's the year it was meant to explode because Obama won't be here,” the president said. “That was when it was supposed to be even worse.”
Notice: Trump didn't say Obamacare had a fatal flaw that his predecessor overlooked.
He said: “It was meant to explode” and “was supposed to be even worse.” That assumes that Obama
That is hardly the only example of Trump's magical thinking. Consider the second half of his famous promise to build a wall along our southern border: “And I will make Mexico pay for that wall,” he said. I can think of only two ways that promise could be redeemed: Wave a magic wand or invade Mexico.
Yet Trump seemed to genuinely believe that Enrique Pena Nieto would make the deal. Again, what could possibly motivate a Mexican president to do something that would instantaneously cost him his political career?
“I know more about ISIS than the generals do,” Trump claimed, referring to Islamic State. Isn't that grandiose thinking?
So for the moment, let's suppose this is how my parents responded when a shrink asked why they were worried about Uncle Jerry:
“He sits in a little room with scarcely a book, not even a newspaper, and says: ‘I know more than the generals.' Jerry says he's uncovered a U.S. president's plot to sabotage himself. He thinks he can compel a foreign president to do his bidding.”
I think we know how the shrink would reply.
“This is serious. It should not be ignored.”
PREVIOUS ARTICLE
