For my first series of posts in the New Year, I want to continue commenting as both a forensic and clinical psychologist on some of the high-profile criminal cases covered and the sometimes dubious psychological commentary dished up daily on popular cable television programs like
The Nancy Grace Show and
Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell. Viewers who religiously watch these shows are regularly exposed to a wide variety of mental health practitioners opining glibly and at times totally irresponsibly about serious criminal cases. Tragic, heinous and psychologically complex forensic cases. Unfortunately for fans, with a few exceptions, most of these presumed experts are not seasoned
forensic psychologists or psychiatrists specifically skilled and experienced in competently evaluating violent offenders like those being reported on. Not only are some of their very public armchair diagnoses unethical without having first carefully examined these defendants and their alleged crimes, but many simply don't seem to know what they're talking about. For example, one frequent commentator, who redundantly and tellingly calls himself a "clinical psychotherapist" (whatever that is, since, by definition, psychotherapists are clinicians, unlike say, research or academic psychologists/psychiatrists who do not directly provide treatment as do clinical psychologists) repeatedly refers to the accused murder defendant Joran van der Sloot as being "psychotic" when, to my knowledge, there is no evidence available to even suggest such a diagnosis from afar or otherwise. (See my
prior posts about psychosis.)
My purpose here is to provide readers of Psychology Today, regular consumers of these popular programs, and the general public with alternate voices and a more balanced viewpoint to those espoused by the usual psychological pundits on these high-profile criminal cases. Hopefully, my distinguished fellow forensic and clinical psychology bloggers here at PT, of which there is now a growing number, and others will feel free to participate in this open forum and post their learned comments, opinions and reactions to those proffered by the presumed expert panels on these crime programs. I would also invite and encourage PT readers to post their own questions much like the television viewers call in theirs, with our specific focus here being on both forensic and clinical psychology. Ongoing online conversation can provide a necessary alternative and complement to what consumers are being exposed to every day in the mass media.
One sensational criminal case discussed at some length late last year on The Nancy Grace Show is that of so-called "blue-eyed butcher" Susan Wright. Ms. Wright, now 34, was convicted in 2004 of killing her husband, Jeffrey, then age 34 in 2003, and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. She fatally stabbed her husband some 200 times after dripping hot wax on him while he was tied to their bed as their two children slept. She then buried his bloody body in the backyard. It was later determined that she had slipped him GHB, the so-called date rape drug, perhaps to render him more passive. But due to reported ineffective legal representation at that time, Wright was being retried as regards the penalty phase of those proceedings, with her new psychiatric defense including a purported "break with reality"and being the alleged victim of "battered woman syndrome." Another disturbing story covered every gruesome detail of the alleged murder and dismemberment of ten-year-old Zahra Baker--a deaf cancer victim with a prosthetic leg-- possibly by her stepmother and/or biological father. There was also the appalling recent case of a bizarre young man, Matthew Hoffman, who allegedly brutally killed two women and an eleven-year-old boy, concealed their dismembered bodies in a dead tree trunk, and kept one of the victim's thirteen-year-old daughter as a presumed sexual captive. (See my prior posts for additional closely covered cases including the so-called Craig's List Killer, Drew Peterson, Casey Anthony, Joran van der Sloot and several others.)
What is our collective fascination with these unsettling yet titillating criminal cases? How could they do it? Who commits such evil deeds? What attorneys, judges, juries, and the television audience consciously or unconsciously wish to know is how to make sense of senseless violence: Is the perpetrator evil? What is evil? Where does evil originate? Or is the defendant mentally ill? If she or he is not evil, but rather mentally ill, what causes such illness? Can it be treated and cured, and if so, how? What is the likelihood of this individual's destructive behavior recurring in the future? Should this person be held fully responsible for his or her evil deeds? And, if so, what is the appropriate punishment? By virtue of posing such subtle and far-reaching queries, our criminal justice system seeks to better comprehend the broad context and psychiatric precursors of the violent criminal behavior being alleged and prosecuted. It amounts to no less than a heroic human effort to comprehend evil. The very fact that our system permits such consultation with specialized mental health experts demonstrates a significant level of psychological sophistication: The forensic psychologist and psychiatrist can and do directly imbue the legal process with valuable information regarding destructive human behavior and dangerous states of mind, including the archetypal phenomenon of evil.
