“Exploding the biggest myth of all: that human beings are rational.” I was so pleased to be part of this important documentary series by filmmakers Kristin Pichaske and Danny Alpert on conspiracy thinking, which explodes in times of turmoil, when people feel unprotected, overcome with unsustainable levels of novelty, uncertainty, insecurity. You can join the the conversation with @WorldChannel and the filmmakers, August 27th, 2020 @ 7pm Eastern.
I enjoyed talking with Max Zheng on his Human Prosperity Podcast. We discussed empathy and how it differs from compassion (both are necessary for capable leadership). And then we segued to one of my favorite subjects, sensation seeking. This is a more or less inborn personality trait defined by psychologist Marvin Zuckerman that helps each of us identify where we stand in terms of our tolerance for sameness versus novelty, our need for stimulation and variety, our interest in or distaste for thrill seeking. You will be much happier at work if you match your job and career to your need to seek or avoid stimulation and novelty. You can read more about this personality variable in my Forbes.com post here.
Max has conversations about leadership from the perspective of maximizing happiness and prosperity. I’ve wondered a lot about the place happiness has in human goals and priorities so I’m looking forward to our conversation.
I’m looking forward to rejoining the Human Prosperity podcast on September 17 to talk more about the psychology of leadership.
This panel at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting is a reprise of a similar panel organized two years ago by Dr. Nassir Ghaemi, Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University and author of A First-Rate Madness. I will be speaking along with Dr. Ghaemi, Dr. Charles Dike from Yale University and Retired Army Brigadier General and psychiatrist Stephen N. Xenakis. Dr. Alan Stone, Professor of Law and Psychiatry at Harvard University.
We will be discussing the Goldwater Rule and the 25th Amendment, as a way to organize various perspectives on the role psychiatrists should or shouldn’t take in contributing to the understanding of fitness for duty in political leaders.
In my remarks, I’m going to open with the story of my own professional relationship with the Goldwater Rule; I was an adamant supporter until the 2016 election campaign. I believe it has become an albatross for Psychiatry and an unfortunate public meme, inhibiting our ability to contribute our expertise in public conversations about the very troubled and troubling behavior of the current president and others. The public is hungry for understanding and it is, I believe, our ethical obligation to contribute what we can as psychiatrists. I’ll touch on my own work devising a way to assess fitness for duty, which is required for the implementation of the 25th amendment in the case of presidential impairment. This approach is detailed in the chapter I wrote in the second edition of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump entitled, “Is the Commander In Chief Fit to Serve? A Nonpartisan Test from Marrying U.S. Army Leadership Standards with Psychoanalytic Theory.”
I will close with my own speculation about why the American Psychiatric Association chose to double down on the Goldwater Rule, adding to previous understanding that commenting on the behavior or affect of a public figure was unethical (not just diagnosing.) I believe this was a conceptual and organizational error, arising from a model of psychiatry that too often limits itself to an identity with the sole function of diagnosing illness and medicating that diagnosis. With that limited framework, psychiatrists should not join public conversations. But a more expansive view of psychiatry using a bio-psych-social perspective allows and even demands that psychiatrists contribute their knowledge to public discussions.
Winnetka Women’s Exchange. May 8, 2019, 12 noon. CIBC Bank, 1255 Green Bay Road. With Treasa Moran, Financial Advisor with Morgan Stanley. For more information or to register visit the Winnetka Women’s Exchange website.
U.S. News and World Report writer Ruben Castaneda interviewed me for a story on work-related anxiety for the magazine’s consumer health focus. I appreciate opportunities to talk about what Freud called “the psychology of everyday life.” There’s a lot we can understand about the psychological pressures we are all subject to at work and in relationships without veering into the realm of psychopathology. In other words, it is normal to have a lot going on both consciously and unconsciously in your emotional world, including, at work and we shouldn’t wait until things get so bad someone needs therapy before figuring out how to deal with these ubiquitous forces. To read the article, which appeared on December 13, 2018, click here.