Douglas Whaley

Senator Barry Goldwater When the very conservative Senator Barry Goldwater ran for president against Lyndon Johnson in 1964, a time when liberalism was ascendant in this country, Fact Magazine published an article entitled “The Unconscious of a Conservative: A Special Issue on the Mind of Barry Goldwater.”  In it over two thousand psychiatrists responded to a poll and 1,200 of them said that the Senator was mentally unfit for office.  Goldwater sued for libel and was eventually awarded $75,000 in punitive damages. This ugly incident led the American Psychiatric Association to adopt §7.3 to its Code of Ethics stating: On occasion psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself/herself through public media. In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. However, it is unethical fo...

I have just finished updating the post that I created April 29, 2013, entitled “A Guide to the Best of My Blog”;  http://douglaswhaley.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-guide-to-best-of-my-blog.html .   I had been neglecting it and consequently it was quite out-of-date.  Now I’ve reorganized it and, most importantly, put in links to all of the entries, making it easier to navigate the posts through the years (the blog started in late December of 2009 with a scary post called “Dog Meat” [ http://douglaswhaley.blogspot.com/2009/12/dog-meat.html ]).  I still need to add links to the ending of some of the individual posts and cleanup some duplications, all of which should happen in the next week, but for now the Guide is in much better shape. Here are a list of the topics with my favorite post from each as a tease (and it was hard to make these choices): 1.  The Heart Transplant and Other Medical Matters “Mama Cat Saves My Life,” October 23, 20...