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I’ve never met her, but she seems nuts to me…

One of the old truisms is people go into psychology to deal with their own craziness. This certainly seems true where Trump Derangement Syndrome is involved, as Mike LaChance at Legal Insurrection reports:

Yale psychiatrist Bandy Lee has repeatedly called Trump mentally unfit for office, despite the fact that she has never even met him. This has been widely condemned as an ethical violation of her profession.

Hmm.  Why would that be so, just because she’s never had any actual contact with Mr. Trump, to say nothing of interviewing him?  Do we mean to say we expect psychologists to actually talk with people—in person–before diagnosing them?  When the object is a coup, that would rather get in the way of the ultimate goal, wouldn’t it?  Can we afford to limit pseudo-medical pseudo-professionals in that way?

As concerns grow about Joe Biden’s mental health, Lee is now refusing to apply the same standard to the former Vice President.

As Professor Jacobson pointed out, watching Biden has become sad. It is obvious to anyone who watches clips of Biden campaigning, that he is not as sharp as he used to be.

Bandy Lee suddenly thinks diagnosing someone from afar is inappropriate.

Nancy LeTourneau writes at the Washington Monthly:

Brandy X. Lee, one of the mental health professionals who has been very vocal about Trump’s unfitness for office, explained why a declination to diagnose Biden is in keeping with professional standards.

‘I do not diagnose without examination and do not speak about public figures in general, unless there is evidence of such profound danger to public health and well-being because of serious signs of mental instability in a public servant, that it would be a public disservice not to share the knowledge and training that I have. Biden has not risen to this threshold…

I never spoke up about a president or a presidential candidate either before or after Donald Trump, and neither have thousands of mental health professionals who have come forth with similar concerns in ways that are unprecedented in U.S. history, for any president of any party. I only speak up when there is a medical need of such great magnitude as to risk the survival of the human species. This is definitively Donald Trump, not Biden. Nor is it Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, or any other false equivalences people wish to create for political purposes.’

Well of course.  If the very survival of the human race is at stake, just making things up is not only allowable, but the ultimate in virtue signaling!  She’s at it again:

Igor Derysh wrote at Salon:

Yale psychiatrist: Trump is ‘putting lives at risk’ with coronavirus; Pence is ‘enabling’ him

President Trump’s preoccupation with his own image amid the spread of the coronavirus is ‘putting lives at risk’ and Vice President Pence is only ‘enabling’ him, Yale psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee told Salon in an interview this week.

Psychology has a less than stellar reputation, and people like Lee are doing nothing to change people’s minds.  If Americans can’t trust psychologists to be non-political, psychology will quickly become, like the media, a wholly owned adjunct of the D/S/C Party.  If psychologists can’t be trusted to deal with everyone on an equal basis, regardless of their political beliefs, psychology and those involved in it, cannot be trusted.

The criminal misuse of psychology by totalitarian regimes is well documented.  Anyone that doesn’t appreciate the wonders of communism must, by definition, be crazy, and untold thousands, perhaps millions, were imprisoned, their minds destroyed by drugs and other forms of abuse and torture.  This terrible history of psychology in service to the state is why all psychologists must be professional, non-political in their interactions with their patients, and in their public pronouncements.

In reality, President Trump has not in any way violated the Constitution.  He is restoring the rule of law, and if ending wars and unnecessary conflicts has anything to do with peace in the world, he has had a strong part in making the world safer.  He has gained enormous economic concessions from our adversaries, and strengthened relations with our allies, including NATO, which is now, for the first time in decades, paying their fair share of their own defense.  His response to the Coronavirus is, in fact, far more effective and serious than the responses of his predecessors to similar contagions, and even the leader of the World Health Organization has admitted it.   Even the Governor of California(?!) has praised Mr. Trump’s response to the virus in California.

To Dr. Lee, this is evidence of an imminent threat to civilization and justification for violating medical ethics.  Apparently, it is sufficient for Yale University as well.

One thing is certain: it will be more than sufficient to further damage psychology’s reputation.  If and when D/S/Cs once again take power, that won’t matter.  They’ll weaponize psychology in particular, and medicine in general, against their political enemies: half or more of America.