Bay Buchanan Is A Nut-job Just Like Her Brother

How's that for a clinical DX ?


Bay Buchanan: The Doctor Is In
by Diane Dees at MOJO Blog

A few years ago, when Bush on the Couch was published by psychiatrist Justin A. Frank, his publicist invited me to review it. I declined on ethical grounds. Frank, having never met George W. Bush, is not qualified to diagnose him, despite his using the technique of "applied psychoanalysis" which permits the psychological analysis of a public figure, but which--in my opinion--shoud be limited to analysis of the dead. (I am a psychotherapist, and I know that if I did such a thing, my board would come down hard on me.)

Huh. I saw Frank's book more as profiling. Our government does it all the time.

Enter Bay Buchanan, who is most definitely not a mental health practitioner of any kind, but who has provided us with a casual diagnosis of Sen. Clinton. In her book, The Extreme Makeover of Hillary (Rodham) Clinton, Buchanan hints that Clinton may have narcissistic personality disorder. (Buchanan calls it "narcissistic personality style," a term which does not exist in the mental health repretoire.)

This Dx is about as far off the mark as anything I have ever read. Buchanan nees to keep her pundit job, where it is, obviously, not a requirement that you have a clue what you are talking about.

In describing how she reached that conclusion, Buchanan refers to an endnote in the book that does not exist. All the same, Buchanan says that "[W]e are talking about a clinical condition that could make her [Clinton] dangerously ill-suited to become President and Commander-in-Chief." She then covers herself by saying "I pass no judgment as to whether this shoe fits the Lady Hillary."

Oh, pulleze. I can't imagine anything more dangerous to the country than the socio/psychopathology we've had in the White House for the past 6 1/2 years.

Diagnosing someone from afar, especially if you are not a mental health expert, is wildly irresponsible, even if you say "I don't really mean it, I'm just saying...."

There are plenty of former presidents who weren't quite right, like Kennedy (drug addiction and sexual compulsion) and Nixon (alcoholism and violence), and Buchanan's colleagues are ga-ga about at least one of them, and sometimes both of them. It wouldn't be too difficult to apply phony mental health language to other candidates, but I could have guessed that an armchair psychotherapist would go after Clinton. She is an "ambitious" woman, and she is married to Bill. Who needs more information than that?

Nixon was paranoid as hell. I have no way of knowing whether he was an alcoholic or not. His drinking, during the Watergate scandal, may well have been an adult-situational reaction to a very nigtmarish time in his life. I have never heard the term, "violence" used as a psychiatric DX.

Kennedy had myriad health problems, not easily treated in his day, which accounts for some of the drugs that were prescribed for him. If he was a drug addict, he was certainly a high functioning one. Sexual compulsion or addiction is rather epidemic in D.C., is it not?

I don't see disintegration to a point anywhere near mental illness in Hillary Clinton. While I may or may not agree with her, or even like her, she seems quite stable to me.

Bay Buchanan, not unlike her brother, is an authortarian personality type and those folks are capable of some extremely dangerous disintegration.


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