The Goldwater Rule: A Tale of Psychiatric Scandals and Ethics

This is the tale of the Goldwater Rule that proves sometimes the doctors are crazier than the patients!

In the sweltering summer of 1964, the psychiatric community found itself at the center of a scandal that would shake the very foundations of professional ethics. Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate for president, was about to become the unwitting star of a psychiatric soap opera.

Fact magazine, in a move that would make even the most seasoned tabloid editor blush, decided to ask 12,356 psychiatrists if they thought Goldwater was fit for office. It was like throwing a lit match into a powder keg of professional decorum and the results were explosive: 1,189 psychiatrists declared Goldwater unfit, proving that you don’t need to meet someone to know they’re bonkers. Some even went full Freud, diagnosing Goldwater with everything from “chronic psychosis” to “compensated schizophrenia.” Apparently, being a Republican candidate was a mental illness in the ’60s! It was a psychiatric free-for-all, with shrinks lining up to psychoanalyze a man they’d never met.

Goldwater, not one to lie back and free-associate about it, sued the pants off Fact magazine. He won $75,000, which in today’s money is approximately the cost of a single session of couples therapy in Manhattan. But the real victory was yet to come.

Fast forward to 1973, and the American Psychiatric Association, red-faced and probably needing some couch time themselves, introduced the Goldwater Rule. The gist? No more drive-by diagnoses of public figures. It’s like Vegas: what happens in the psychiatrist’s office, stays in the psychiatrist’s office.

But like a repressed memory, the Goldwater Rule lay dormant for decades, waiting for the perfect storm to awaken it. That storm arrived in 2016, when a certain Donald Trump took office.  Suddenly, psychiatrists everywhere were itching to break the rule, proving that sometimes, the only thing more irresistible than analyzing someone’s psyche is a chance to go viral on Twitter.

The drama was palpable. Should they speak out, risking professional censure, or remain silent, potentially enabling a leader they deemed unfit? It was a battle between conscience and ethics, with the Goldwater Rule hanging precariously in the balance.

And so, the rule remains, a bastion of professional ethics in a world where the lines between public discourse and psychiatric diagnosis are increasingly blurred. It’s a reminder that sometimes, the hardest thing for a psychiatrist to do is nothing at all.

Bibliography

1. Wikipedia contributors. “Goldwater rule.” Wikipedia.
2. American Psychiatric Association. “The Goldwater Rule: Why breaking it is Unethical and Irresponsible.”
3. Levin, A. “Goldwater Rule’s Origins Based on Long-Ago Controversy.” Psychiatric News.
4. Pettit, M. “The Goldwater Rule: a bastion of a bygone era?” PMC.
5. Psychiatric Times. “The Goldwater Rule or Not, Our Country Needs Psychiatry.”
6. The Hastings Center. “The Real Story Behind the Goldwater Rule.”
7. First Amendment Encyclopedia. “Goldwater Rule.”