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Theodore Whitfield's avatar

"Does, say, ADHD or narcissistic personality disorder necessarily disqualify someone from leadership?"

If we're going to disqualify politicians on the basis of narcissism then we won't have any politicians. (This is not a joke.)

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JQXVN's avatar

I wonder if you saw this piece in the NYT today? https://archive.ph/FY8e7

It irked me quite a bit that basic observations of the human condition like "poor memory" were conflated, I think intentionally in this case, with delivering dementia diagnoses. Though it's mostly just a matter of running political interference here, the assumption that everyday statements about personality or behavior either must come in the form a diagnostic entities or are somehow concealing medical implications is not a good turn in the discourse. I've seen similar non sequiturs with psychiatric conditions; Alice says that Bob has been anxious lately, and Carol interjects that anxiety disorders are serious conditions that can't be diagnosed by laypeople. The expectation that psychiatrists can or should provide assessments of public figures when plain observation of their public actions is pretty adequate to assess capacity contributes to this kind of nosological imperialism.

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