It was a presidential election year. A magazine called "Fact" had reached out to all 12,356 members of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) about the Republican presidential candidate, who hailed from the party's extreme right-wing and was intensely disliked by liberals. Of the 2,417 psychiatrists who responded, nearly half said the Republican nominee was psychologically unfit to be president (1,189), with the rest split almost evenly between saying that he was fit (657) and demurring altogether (571). Even though this means that fewer than 10 percent of the APA members actually denounced the Republican candidate as mentally unfit for office, the ones who did so used such colorful and memorable language that it made headlines. To understand why, simply look at one of the choice quotes from the anti-Goldwater psychiatrists:
"He is a mass-murderer at heart and ... a dangerous lunatic. ... Any psychiatrist who does not agree with the above is himself psychologically unfit to be a psychiatrist."
