Psychiatry Group Tells Members They Can Ignore Goldwater Rule

This Dr. Glass…does anyone know what he suffers from? I gave it some thought…

From the story on stat.com:
“Last week, in an essay in Psychiatric Times, [Harvard psychiatrist Leonard] Glass called the prohibition on such communication “an unacceptable infringement…”

That’s hyperbolic. All infringements are unacceptable. Including “unacceptable” makes this one seem as egregious as kidnapping for ransom, until you stop and think about it.

The infringement was on Dr. Glass’s “right and duty” in some regard. Is he sure there’s anyone on earth who feels that he has some duty to them? I’m sensing some grandiosity.

He goes on about his “right and duty” to…

“…discuss issues ‘where the perspective of psychiatrists could be very relevant and enlightening.'”

That presupposes that there exist topics to which psychiatrists’ perspectives are relevant and issues so obscured that a psychiatrist’s perspective will brighten, not dim, our understanding of them. It’s also somewhat hyperbolic, in that “enlightening” us with their perspectives assumes their perspectives are relevant. There’s no need to include “relevant,” much less “very relevant,” except to make what he’s saying seem well-thought-out and therefore unassailable. The wordiness and over-confidence bring mania and grandiosity to mind again.

His umbrage was smoldering since the publication of a multi-co-authored letter to the New York Times in February, by Dr. Glass and some fellow travelers, concerning the mind of President Trump. The Times let Dr. Allen Francis comment on the futility (and ethics-breaching) of their passionately-crafted co-creation. Dr. Glass self-exonerated last month by citing the aforementioned right and duty. His believing he has some “duty” associated with a public figure who doesn’t know he exists suggests grandiosity, of course, but paranoia, too, should be considered.

Glass must have had a lot of umbrage waiting to blow. I say that because the stat.com piece continued…

“He ended the essay by announcing his resignation from the American Psychiatric Association [(APA)], which adopted the rule in 1973. He had been a member for 41 years.”

1973 was 44 years ago, which means the Goldwater rule was in place before Dr. Glass joined the APA. Something having to do with the President upset him so terribly that he undid a decision he’d made 40 years ago.
–Going beyond believing that one has a connection to a famous public figure and acting on the belief is not just suggestive of paranoia, it’s diagnostic. Leaving a professional log-rolling club after 40 years, not to mention announcing one’s departure in a widely ready psychiatry periodical, is reckless and immodest, which adds support to the developing hypothesis, namely that Dr. Glass was experiencing mania when he wrote about the Goldwater rule. With the affront of the 2016 presidential election not going his way ao wounding as to remain unprocessed, it was inevitable that psychiatric symptoms would develop. He felt uniquely exposed and impotent after the election of President Trump, not realizing he’s one of billions of worthless eaters when viewed from above by banksters, Illuminati, and Dark Statesmen. Our hierarchies, to them, are flat. In reaction, he manifests mania, grandiosity, hyperbolic phrasing, and reckless behavior. The voters (his millions of patients) were not medication- (media-) compliant. He’ll show them what non-compliant really means, acting on every impulse just to show he can. However, mania can be a reaction to an antidepressant, mood-stabilizer, certain antipsychotics, and opioid drug; iatrogenic rather than psychogentic cause is possible. Without drug influence, mania is an axis I disorder. With drug influence, we’re told, it’s not possible, so I’ll stick with Trump-induced mania for his axis I diagnosis. For axis II, I’m considering narcissistic personality disorder (PD), histrionic PD, paranoid PD. There another possibility in a diagnosis I and my “committee” invented just last week. (My committee is me, two chihuahua mixes, a large black wolf-like dog, a mostly white (but he had a rough childhood) pit bull, an understandably furtive – usually absent, in fact – feral tabby cat, and two Rainbow (for inclusiveness and diversity) Lorikeets who live with my neighbor across the alley, both of whom “Tweeted” their participation through the kitchen window for committee discussions and voting.) We christened the complex of signs exhibited by Dr. Glass and others in his field of medicine “psychiatric authoritarian personality disorder,” (PAPD).* The Committee, at our last meeting, concurred with my assessment of mania with underlying PAPD as the ailments that plague Dr. Glass. In frank violation of the Goldwater rule, the Committee approved of and encouraged my publishing our conclusions here.

*We noted that although authoritarianism as a personality trait has been discussed and referred to especially often since the 1950 publication of “The Authoritarian Personality” by Theodor Adorno and others, it doesn’t make strong in psychiatry. Obviously, taken to extremes, the authoritarianism can become a pathology, yet the great nosologists of psychiatry do not acknowledge that. They have not designed a personality disorder that describes themselves.

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