George Conway, a conservative lawyer and husband of Kellyanne Conway, adviser to United States President Donald Trump, is one of the harshest critics of his wife’s boss.
Recently, he made some more unflattering comments about President Trump. Using the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) handbook on mental illnesses, he showed remarkable similarities between Trump’s behaviour and the manual’s outlined symptoms of mental disorder.
Trump blew a gasket!!
Conway’s wife, no doubt motivated by her awareness of her boss’ proclivities, responded by saying that he deserved to be angry because her husband was not a psychiatrist.
In 1964, during the presidential campaign between Barry Goldwater (R) and Lyndon Johnson (D), Fact Magazine polled 12,356 psychiatrists. The question asked was: Do you believe Barry Goldwater is psychologically fit to serve as president of the United States?
Some of the responses were alarming.
One said he “… had the same psychological makeup as Hitler, Castro, Stalin and other schizophrenic leaders.”
The APA wrote Fact, saying, “…Should you decide to publish the results of a purported ‘survey’ of psychiatric opinion based on the question you have posed, the APA will take all possible measures to disavow its validity.”
Fact ignored the APA, Goldwater lost and sued the magazine and its principals. The issue at hand in Goldwater vs Ginsberg was the article published by Fact titled ‘The Unconsciousness of a Conservative: A Special Issue on the Mind of Barry Goldwater’, in the September to October 1964 issue.
The court ruled in favour of Goldwater and awarded $1 in compensatory damages and $75,000 in punitive damages.
The APA then issued the ‘Goldwater Rule’ in 1973, which is now Section 7.3 in the Principles of Medical Ethics with Annotations Especially Applicable to Psychiatry. The rule applies to public figures and states, “It is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorisation for such a statement.”
This may be a good time to look at President Trump’s medical record. During the campaign, when he vilified, libelled and humiliated his rival Hillary Clinton, one of the comparisons he made was their health.
His friend at the Enquirer photoshopped Clinton’s picture, showing a bloated, sick, 300lb invalid, attributing to her a string of deadly diseases.
Asked to produce his medical records, this fast-food, Pepsi-drinking fanatic produced a document from a character known as Dr Harold Bronstein, stating that he was in “astonishingly excellent health” and his stamina was “extraordinary”.
This year’s medical revealed that some astonishing things happened since.