Language Amplifies the Mind

"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." -- Proverbs 23:7

   We cannot really know what a person thinks, even a president of the United States. We can only know what he says. Moreover, we can also know when he lies.
   And as our colleague Pug Mahoney often says, "I'm not a psychiatrist, but I know a looney when I see one."
   There has been much talk in recent days about this president's comments and how they do not fit with fact or reality, as well as whether he is a racist. Whether he believes in his heart the truth of what he says, we cannot know. But we do know that what he says, repeatedly, is racist.
   Professional societies years ago set what became known as the Goldwater Rule, after numerous psychologists and psychiatrists criticized the mental health status of Barry Goldwater, the Republican senator from Arizona and candidate for president.
   The rule prohibited professional analysts from setting a diagnosis on someone they had not personally met and treated. In any case, it's also unprofessional to reveal any diagnosis of someone the therapist had met.
   In principle, that's a good rule. But when a person in the public eye, especially as high as the presidency of the United States, repeatedly says things that are plainly untrue, based on false premises and display a massive ignorance or misuse of readily available information, it becomes clear to observers that there is something amiss with the person who speaks this way.
   It does not take a mental health care professional to discern this. Moreover, it may not even be a matter of a textbook mental health issue. It could well be simply a matter of incompetence, ignorance, or stupidity.
   The current president of the United States may well be, in his words, "a very stable genius." Others, however, can conclude from his actions, behavior and language that he is neither stable nor a genius.
   There is no requirement that only licensed health care professionals can form and express opinions on his intelligence, competence and stability. His "genius," if any, is in making himself the center of attention.