by Liam Kloef

Created on: June 28, 2010

I should only hope that whoever posed this question is wholly unconcerned and even opposed to popular notions like freedom, right, duty, privilege, and democracy.  Maybe in the 1940s and early 1950s, when Freudianism, modern psychiatry, and its progenitors were at their zenith was this question possible, but in the technologically and scientifically sophisticated 21st century, we might as well be asking whether blacks and women should be allowed to vote. 

In fact, questions like this were asked during those times, and the answers were the resounding “No!”  As Japan and Germany colonized their respective (East Asia, Europe) regions during the 1930s and a second world war seemed imminent, our guys in the US of A wondered just who would be fit to fight in that war.  Freudian psychology had inundated the American mindscape, and military (mainly, Army) psychiatrists were tasked with coming up with a questionnaire to separate the right men from the wrong ones. 

And so thousands of incipient recruits were disqualified at the induction centers in the early 1940s for answering in the affirmative questions of “suicidal ideation” and what we’d now call periods of “emotional funk.”  It mattered not that few of these people had ever been formally admitted to a psychiatric ward or hospital; it mattered not that few of these volunteers were formally diagnosed: we couldn’t afford to take the chance. 

Of course, this all sounds dangerously like profiling; something—topic question aside—that’s the cause of a good deal of debate today.  What, however, it does not sound like is psychiatry; or, more generally, medicine.  Would you like to be chosen for cardiac surgery or treatment for diabetes based solely on answering a questionnaire? 

But diagnosis of a mental illness by way of a questionnaire still goes on today, to which any criminal suspect remanded by court order to a psychiatric evaluation may attest: maybe we are not so scientifically sophisticated in the 21st century.  A 10-minute Q-&-A session with a contract psychiatrist in an interview cell almost always results in a diagnosis of mental illness, and the results are reported to the court. 

Should we prohibit anyone so evaluated and so diagnosed from voting?  Well, a better question might be: Is that even evaluation and diagnosis?  The answer is “No.” 

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