In a message dated 7/25/00 9:29:22 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< I agree with Howard Eisman about not practicing wild analysis, but I don't
think it's necessarily ethical for mental health professionals to sit by in
silence while the public discourse sinks to its customary level of wild
personal  speculation, repeated slogans, and focus on who looks attractive on
a TV screen.   What if any of us had been living and practicing in Germany
during the rise to power of Hitler?  Would silence have been ethical?  I
would be very interested in exploring an ethics for media participation by
mental health professionals that goes beyond abstinence... >>

==As a mental health professional, and as a Jew who lived in Germany during
the early Hitler years (and obviously survived) I am appaled at this mudied
thinking.  Neither Al Gore nor George W. Bush--not even Pat Buchanan--can in
any logical, ethical or historical sense be compared to the thinking, the
attitudes or the behaviors of the Nazis.  Any such comparison is perverted,
dangerous and foolish.

==Perhaps Dr. Fitzpatrick can tell us something about the 1934 primaries in
Germany, or the democratic general election.  Or were these somehow erased
from history by the then psychologists who refused to have opinions?

==To condemn Hitler at that time, one did not need to claim to be a
psychologist (or psychoanalyst) to make one's point.  It was self evident.
And making it was mortally dangerous.  There is no reason why any one of us
should not stand up and say of one of the candidates "I believe so-and-so is
a fool (or a threat, or God's gift to humanity)."

==By all means say so, in your own behalf but without butteressing you
personal views with your professional/academic stance or associations.  But
please, until you have a two-thirds majority of us behind you, don't even
hint that you're somehow privy to a "special truth" based on psychology,
medicine or psychoanalysis.

Michael Bernet, Ph.D.
New Rochelle, NY