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medpundit |
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Tuesday, September 21, 2004Frank's 'clinical findings' might be put another way: How can someone who disagrees with me not be crazy? The author of Bush on the Couch sounds like a Soviet psychiatrist around 1950. In those days, when Stalinism was a cosmology, political dissidents were often sent to psychiatric hospitals as schizophrenics--the substance of their mental illnesses being their divergent political beliefs. Having recently interviewed a series of psychiatrists in Russia and the Baltic states, I came away with the impression that the psychiatrists who diagnosed and treated these people really believed their patients had psychiatric disorders. They never seemed to question the fact that all the criteria of illness were political rather than medical ones. And neither does Frank. The president dissents from Frank's view of the political world, and therefore science tells us that the president is insane. ...Mostly, though, Frank is blind to the underlying silliness of his enterprise. As an analyst and a psychiatrist, he has presumably learned to be forbearing, not judgmental, and not prejudicial. But his diagnoses in Bush on the Couch are nothing more than moral and political indictments that he offers as "scientific determinations." The election will prove a better diagnosis of President Bush. As I've said before, playing "pin the diagnosis" is great fun, but it's only fun if you play it with people you don't like, which means it's never fair and balanced. Even Freud couldn't resist the temptation. posted by Sydney on 9/21/2004 09:25:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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