Political leanings of forensic psychiatrists

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sloop

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I want to start out by saying I’m not at all trying to start a political debate or discussion here but just wanted to discuss an observation I have made.

I’ve recently been rotating at a forensic hospital and have encountered far more forensic psychiatrists than I had prior to this. In general, I get the impression that psychiatrists are a pretty liberal group. On average, they seem more supportive of various liberal policies than the average physician and definitely more than the average person. On the other hand, while I don’t think I would call the forensic psychiatrists broadly conservative, they generally seem more conservative than the most of the other psychiatrists I’ve met. Perhaps even conservative is the wrong word and they just seem more institutionalist than the others.

I guess I was just curious if this has been an observation others have had or if I’ve just encountered a biased sample.

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I think radical bomb-throwers are much less likely on average to want to invest a lot of time and effort into achieving expertise in the detailed workings of Leviathan.
 
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I think radical bomb-throwers are much less likely on average to want to invest a lot of time and effort into achieving expertise in the detailed workings of Leviathan.
I think that seems pretty likely. Assuming I’m not just imagining a difference, though, I’ve also been wondering if there is some temperamental difference from the broader cohort that might explain it. Specifically, I would be curious if forensic psychiatrists, owing either to the practical requirements of the job or philosophical undercurrents of the field, tend to score higher on orderliness, lower on openness or both.
 
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Forensic psychiatrists are more conservative than psychiatrists in general. You are far more likely to meet gun-toting trump supporting psychiatrists in forensics than in any other psychiatric subspecialty.

that said there are some very left leaning forensic psychiatrists too. Not surprisingly those who predominantly work for the prosecution in criminal cases tend to lean conservative and those who predominantly or exclusive work for the defense are more liberal.
 
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I think radical bomb-throwers are much less likely on average to want to invest a lot of time and effort into achieving expertise in the detailed workings of Leviathan.
What does this mean??
 
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What does this mean??
To invert the sentence, It means forensic psychiatrists are keep-your-head-down squares who want to enjoy and not jeopardize their success.

Read the original way, it means aimless people with a lot of bombast but not actual goals are unlikely to methodically approach something as complicated as the human brain, especially that of someone caught up in the legal system.
 
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I think that generally speaking, the attention to detail that is required in performing a forensic evaluation and writing a report would select for practitioners who would be in the "analytical subtype" of any particular party. The ones who would likely have differing opinions based on specific issues rather than be the rah rah rah emotional poster child for any party.
 
I would imagine it's a weird combination of:

1) Falling on one side of the openess dimension of personality that you are open to learning about the horrific underbelly of things while also falling enough on the other side of this personality dimension that remain practical.
2) Having sufficient conscientiousness to professionally use two different taxonomies of thinking (i.e., clinical and legal).
3) Being low enough on agreeableness that you can ruthlessly defend your personal safety, professionally defend your opinion under aggressive questioning and threats YET still being high enough on agreeableness to enter a field whose primary clinical instrument requires one to establish rapport.

Or maybe one's politics and personality change when you deal in that line of work. Not too many lines of work combine: solitary work, a duty to not tell anyone about the details of your work, an inability to share information with your social support network when you need it, repeated exposure to horrific stuff, regular challenges to your beliefs about human nature, threats to your safety, threats to your livelihood, aggressive legal interactions, and any resulting honest self assessments about how you would react to any of those.
 
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Is there a way to suss out political leanings of psych residencies? Not that it is very important, but this thread piqued my interest. I would imagine there are some interesting differences in psychiatry philosophies, and getting a window into those may be even more interesting than the simple political affiliation question.
 
Is there a way to suss out political leanings of psych residencies? Not that it is very important, but this thread piqued my interest. I would imagine there are some interesting differences in psychiatry philosophies, and getting a window into those may be even more interesting than the simple political affiliation question.
I'm sure 90% will be leaning left
 
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I'm sure 90% will be leaning left
Though within that left, you do have quite the spectrum from "basic Joe Biden liberals" to "over the top performatively woke" to "Jimmy Dore-watching nutjobs".
 
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I would also add that "the left" means something different in American politics than it does in the rest of the world, and many people (myself included) do not fall on the Democrat vs Republican spectrum at all
 
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