If you ever have need of the services of a psychiatrist, I would strongly recommend you select one besotted with liberal ideology. First of all, you'd save a ton of money. That's because liberal psychiatrists are blessed with the gift of being able to diagnose you without even having seen you. That means you're consultations need not last very long.  

I should warn you, however, that you can be sure that if you're a political conservative, you are likely to be committed to a mental institution.

More than 50 years ago, a psychiatrist published an article that stated flatly GOP candidate Barry Goldwater was crazy. The editor of the publication, Ralph Ginzburg, was sued for libel by Goldwater who subsequently won a $75 K judgement.

And just weeks before election day in 1964, hundreds of psychiatrists and psychologists signed an open letter claiming that Goldwater was unfit psychologically to be president. Ever since then, the American Psychiatric Association has had a policy known as "The Goldwater Rule" that ethically forbids mental health professionals from commenting on the mental state of a public figure they have not examined.

I guess these academic psychiatrists didn't get the memo.

Washington Times:

Psychiatry professors from several Ivy League universities who argue Donald Trump is unfit for the presidency are calling on Congress to take “lawful steps” to remove him from office.

The professors’ letter to Congress, published by The Huffington Post, says the president’s supposed mental “unraveling” is hurting his ability to govern.

“The power of the presidency has accentuated Mr. Trump’s failings with devastating effects,” the letter states. “His psychological isolation — including his tenuous relationship to reality — has led to the dangerous isolation of the United States from the rest of the world.

“Our Constitution has provisions for removing any president who is unable to discharge the duties of office,” it says. “For the sake of our country and the world, we urge our elected representatives to summon their courage so that lawful steps can be taken to end the Trump presidency.”

The letter is signed by Harvard professor Judith L. Herman, Columbia lecturer Robert Jay Lifton, and Yale professor Bandy X. Lee, along University of California professors Dee Mosbacher and Nanette Gartrell, Campus Reform reported.

Trump is many things, but if he's unfit for office, so are most presidents. All presidents are, to one degree or another, "narcissistic personalities." They wouldn't go through the tremendously humiliating, exhausting grind of a campaign unless they had supreme confidence in their own abilities.

Trump doesn't hide it as well as others. But that's not the motivation behind this letter. We all know it's pure politics. Liberals are unable to separate politics from the rest of their lives ("the personal is political") and think everyone else suffers from the same disease. 

There has been a debate ever since Trump was nominated about whether mental health professionals should obey the Goldwater Rule and refrain from commenting about Trump's problems. I imagine this high profile letter to Congress wil begin a procession of well known psychiatrists who will all demand Trump be impeached because he's a danger to society.

They might want to ask who is a real danger to society? Trump or mental health professionals who diagnose without ever having examined their patient?