Reflecting on Karen Gardner’s Sept. 11 column, I agree with her that clinical language can help to put in focus that out-sized personality we now have in the White House, but not all might accept that “antisocial personality disorder” is a valid psychiatric diagnosis.
From a layperson’s perspective, I would suggest distinguishing the mentally ill from those I might call the morally ill.
Where there are thought disorders, mood disorders, or sustained or chronic experiences of great anxiety, psychiatrists may help people suffering from such conditions to navigate their way in the world. What I am calling a moral illness, on the other hand, does not disable a person who has it from functioning in the world. Clinicians might therefore say, “This is not what we treat and, so, this is not mental illness.”
There is plenty more to add to Gardner’s listing of behaviors that allow us to ask if the current president is a psychologically healthy person. I would ask, if he has what I am calling a moral condition (as distinct from a mental condition), then how might we best speak to that? An approach to the task could involve learning, from experiences with mental illness, to continue to describe what we see, and to do so without aggression.
We probably might not want anyone with a serious mental illness or a serious moral pathology to occupy the White House. When the latter appears to be the case, questions of how to use clinical descriptions —including clinical descriptions that may be steeped in some controversy— to help ourselves to cope with such a person can both challenge and encourage us as we move ahead.
Mary H. Hall
South Hadley