Trump ’ s Brain: What ’ s Going On?

BY STEVEN FINDLAY In late May the science and health news site STAT ran a provocative article titled: “Trump wasn’t always so linguistically challenged. What could explain the change?” Not surprisingly, the piece went viral.   After all, aren’t most of us wondering whether something is up with the President’s—how shall I say it—state of mind, psychological status, character, personality, and yes, mental health? For over a year, there’s been speculation about this. Most of the talk is loose and politically inflected. But substantive reflections by mental health professionals and serious commentators are on the rise. At first, media outlets were very careful. They didn’t want to say the president was “lying” let alone possibly crazy.   Their caution was grounded mostly in journalistic ethics and policies. But that caution was also attributable to a thing called the “Goldwater Rule,” which warrants explaining because it infuses this whole issue. Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee for president in 1964, successfully sued a now-defunct magazine called FACT (for $50,000) after the magazine ran a pre-election special issue titled “The Unconscious of a Conservative: A Special Issue on the Mind of Barry Goldwater.” The two main articles in the magazine contended that Goldwater was mentally unfit to be president.   According to Wikipedia, the magazine “supported this claim with the results of a poll of board-certified psychiatrists. FACT had...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Goldwater Rule Steve Findlay Trump Source Type: blogs