Here's the ethical problem with labeling Trump a 'narcissist'

(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

published 7 March 2016

There's evidence that politicians as a group are more likely to be narcissists than the average person, but that doesn't make it ethical to apply that diagnosis — or any psychiatric label — to a specific candidate without an in-person assessment.

So argues Robert Klitzman, a professor of psychiatry and bioethics at Columbia University, in The New York Times today. He cites the American Psychiatric Association's "Goldwater Rule," which holds that "it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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