Legitimate exercise of absolute freedom of expression – guaranteed by the US Constitution – or violation of ethical norms that prohibit psychiatrists from making public judgments about the mental condition of a person not examined directly and professionally? The question, which has arisen many times during the Trump presidency when various psychiatrists criticized his behavior by hypothesizing personality alterations such as narcissism, comes back in these days to discuss with the decision of Brandy Lee, a psychiatrist who taught at Yale, of sue the academy for non-renewal of his contract. The break with Yale was caused by the protests of the famous lawyer Alan Dershowitz, to whom she had attributed a psychosis common also to Donald Trump and based on a sense of omnipotence, insensitivity and impunity.
The case broke out a year ago. Dershowitz, famous for defending characters such as OJ Simpson, Jeffrey Epstein and Mike Tyson, but also a friend of Trump and his lawyer in the impeachment trial, had been interviewed about his social relations with the financier Jeffrey Epstein, meanwhile arrested for trafficking. sexual with minors (he will commit suicide in prison). In one of the replies, he said he had “a perfect sex life” with his wife. Psychiatrist Brandy Lee – who had already sparked controversy in 2017 by publicly questioning Trump’s mental health – tweeted in January 2020 that the word “perfect”, also frequent in the president’s sentences, suggested a common psychosis.
Shortly thereafter, Dershowitz protested via email to Yale University: Lee, by formulating a diagnosis about him without ever examining him directly, had behaved unprofessionally and contrary to academic rules. As early as 2017, the university asked Lee to clarify that his views on Trump’s mental health did not involve Yale in any way; after his comment on Dershowitz he informed her that, if her behavior did not change, the professional relationship was bound to end. At the end of the last academic year, her contract was not renewed.
Now Brandy Lee accuses: saying she is excluded, after 17 years, for political reasons. Yale replied that she was never taught by the university, but taught 4 hours a week as voluntary faculty member, a precarious teacher to whom the institute is always free not to renew the position. Similar decisions are frequent: for the university they reflect internal processes which are not publicized.
This, however, is a case with a symbolic value: Lee will probably lose the case but has denounced Yale anyway to give resonance to an age-old issue.
It all stems from the so-called Goldwater Rule: a norm that the association of American psychiatrists gave itself in the 1970s after the case of Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate in the 1964 presidential elections, also defeated because several psychiatrists who had only seen him on TV made poor questioned whether he was mentally capable of handling the responsibilities of a president.
Goldwater sued the paper and won. Mental illness specialists have since been asked to stop making public judgments on subjects not professionally screened. Lee has certainly violated this rule, but other psychiatrists have also been making judgments about Trump’s mental health for years. Were they punished? It does not seem. The association maintains that any proceedings remain confidential. Lee says, in turn, that she is not part of the association and that her tweet was a contribution to the discussion, not a diagnosis.
© Time.News
March 29, 2021 (change March 29, 2021 | 22:32)
© Time.News