CHAPTER 1: A KILLING IN MILLARD COUNTY, UTAH
1. Anthony St. Peter, The Greatest Quotations of All-Time (Xlibris, 2010), p. 212.
2. Alois Pichler and Herbert Hrachovec, eds., Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Information: Proceedings of the 29th International Ludwig Wittgenstein-Symposium 2006 (Frankfurt am Main: Ontos Verlag, 2008), p. 140.
3. Recent research has shown that the pits near snakes’ noses (“pit organs”) contain special protein channels that react to the infrared given off as heat by mammalian prey. In humans, these protein channels are also known as wasabi receptors—they are the same molecules that allow humans to enjoy the pungent accompaniment to sushi. Who knew? Janet Fang, “Snake Infrared Detection Unravelled,” NatureNews, March 14, 2010, http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100314/full/news.2010.122.html (accessed August 11, 2010).
CHAPTER 2: MIKE MCGRATH’S DISTURBING REVELATION
1. Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself, 2nd ed. (Center City, MN: Hazelden, 1986), p. 32.
2. These quotes and reminiscences, unless otherwise noted, are from e-mail correspondence between Michael McGrath and the author during 2010.
3. Michael McGrath, “Codependency and Pathological Altruism,” in Pathological Altruism, edited by B. Oakley et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, in press).
4. P. Mellody, A. W. Miller, and K. Miller, Facing Codependence: What It Is, Where It Comes from, How It Sabotages Our Lives (HarperOne, 1989).
5. A reviewer on Amazon's page for the book; the review is titled “I'm Finally Understanding Quirks About Myself,” Amazon.com, 2000, http://www.amazon.com/Facing-Codependence-Where-Comes-Sabo-tages/dp/0062505890 (accessed November 22, 2009).
6. S. J. Katz and A. Liu, The Codependency Conspiracy: How to Break the Recovery Habit and Take Charge of Your Life (Grand Central Publishing, 1991).
7. R. Subby, Lost in the Shuffle: The Co-Dependent Reality (Health Communications, 1987).
8. Benjamin James Kaplan, Virginia Alcott Sadock, and Pedro Ruiz, eds., Kaplan & Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, 9th ed. (Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2009), p. 1264.
9. McGrath, “Codependency and Pathological Altruism.”
10. Ibid.
11. L. L. Stafford, “Is Codependency a Meaningful Concept?” Issues in Mental Health Nursing 22, no. 3 (2001): 273–86; J. P. Morgan, “What Is Codependency?” Journal of Clinical Psychology 47, no. 5 (1991): 720–29.
12. Dana N. Jackson, “Admissibility of Evidence of Battered Woman's Syndrome Evidence on Issue of Self-Defense,” Georgia State University “Research Guides” website, http://libguides.law.gsu.edu/content.php?pid=110018&sid=829255 (accessed August 28, 2010); David L. Faigman, Legal Alchemy: The Use and Misuse of Science in the Law (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1999), p. 72.
CHAPTER 3: MAYBERRY WITH AN EDGE
1. Stella H. Day and Sebrina C. Ekins, Milestones of Millard: A Century of History of Millard County, 1851–1951 (Art City Publishing Company, 1951), p. 598.
2. Ibid., p. viii.
CHAPTER 4: TOUGH LOVE
1. Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (Plain Label Books, 1925), p. 125.
2. What follows is based on Sergeant Morris Burton's and Josie Greathouse's testimonies, as recorded in the Fourth Judicial District Court, in and for Millard County, State of Utah, State of Utah, Plaintiff, v. Carole Alden Sessions, Defendant, Case No. 061700168, before the Honorable Donald J. Eyre, Fourth District Court, 765 South Highway 99, Fillmore, Utah 84631, transcript, preliminary hearing, January 8, 2007.
CHAPTER 5: MIKE MCGRATH’S DISTURBING REVELATION, CONTINUED
1. Sander Greenland and Charles Poole, “Problems in Common Interpretations of Statistics in Scientific Articles, Expert Reports, and Testimony,” Jurimetrics (in press).
2. These quotes and reminiscences, unless otherwise noted, are from e-mail correspondence between Michael McGrath and the author during 2010.
3. S. F. Brosnan, “Nonhuman Species' Reactions to Inequity and Their Implications for Fairness,” Social Justice Research 19, no. 2 (2006): 153–85; ibid.; M. D. Hauser et al., “Food-Elicited Calls in Chimpanzees: Effects of Food Quantity and Divisibility,” Animal Behaviour 45, no. 4 (1993): 817–19.
4. Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Modern World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), p. 86.
5. Linda G. Mills, Violent Partners: A Breakthrough Plan for Ending the Cycle of Abuse (New York: Basic Books, 2008), p. xi.
6. Lenore E. A. Walker, The Battered Woman Syndrome, 3rd ed. (New York: Springer, 2009), p. 42.
7. Ibid., specifically, Walker notes: “After analyzing reported details about past and present feelings, thoughts, and actions of the women and the violent and nonviolent men, the data led me to conclude that there are no specific personality traits that would suggest a victim-prone personality for the women (see also Brown, 1992; Root, 1992), although there may be an identifiable violence-prone personality for the abusive men …” And on page 6: “Although there are ‘risk-markers’ for both men and women, increasing the probability of each group becoming involved in a violent relationship, the most common risk-marker is still the same one that the battered woman syndrome research study found; for men it is the exposure to violence in their childhood home (Hotaling & Sugarman, 1986) and for women, it is simply being a woman (APA, 196a). Other studies have found that poverty, immigration status, and prior abuse, are also risk factors for women to become battered, although they are not predictive (Walker, 1994).” Page 15: “Although certain childhood experiences seemed to leave the woman with a potential to be susceptible to experiencing the maximum effects from a violent relationship, this did not necessarily affect areas of the battered women's lives other than her family life. Most of the women interviewed were intelligent, well-educated, competent people who held responsible jobs.”
8. Purists may be concerned about the use of the term “control group” when “comparison group” would actually be the proper term here. But as epidemiologist and statistician Sander Greenland (see more specifics as to his bona fides below) points out, “In all health-science (and for that matter, social-science) research I know, over the past 40 or so years the term ‘control group’ has become watered down to mean the same as comparison group. That usage is what you'll find in scores of textbooks (including for example all the best-sellers in research methodology in health sciences, such as Modern Epidemiology by Rothman, Greenland, and Lash). Modern usage, it should be noted, no longer means the investigator is controlling anything (at least in a valid or physical sense), and so the comparison may be providing little information about the effect under study.” E-mail communication, August 28, 2010.
9. Walker's preface to the third edition of her book begins:
When I wrote the first edition of The Battered Woman Syndrome in the early 1980s there were very few articles and no books that described empirical data about conducting research with battered women. There was a great deal of interest in learning more about domestic violence and although some were interested in the psychological theories, more wanted to hear directly from the women themselves. Our original research team had learned a lot about how to obtain reliable and valid data from the women and I wrote the first edition to share our knowledge. For example, we chose to ask both open-ended as well as forced-choice questions. These women had a lot to say and we wanted to capture it all in this first exploratory study. Over 4000 variables later, we learned an enormous amount of information about what living in a battering relationship was like for the women. We emphasized the areas that the original 400 women had in common and shared the numerous descriptive statistics to demonstrate what they said to compare them with each other. As we understood it would be as difficult for other researchers to obtain a matched sample of non-battered women as a control group, we explained how we solved that problem by using each woman who also had a non-violent relationship to be her own control and used statistical techniques to manipulate the many variables that would help us develop those important comparisons. This turned out to be over half of the sample. At the time, this was considered innovative research methodology but today, holding variables constant with various statistical techniques is much more commonly used with large samples.
Fifteen years later, I wrote the second edition of the book, after there was much new research that supported our original conclusions. I used the same categories as in the first edition but integrated the newer data into the sections. I also demonstrated that scientific support continued to exist for the theories I proposed earlier. (Walker, The Battered Woman Syndrome, pp. xv–xvi)
However, Sander Greenland, professor of epidemiology, UCLA School of Public Health, and professor of statistics, UCLA College of Letters and Science, a leading authority on quantitative methods and statistical theory in epidemiology, notes the following:
First: “At the time, this was considered innovative research methodology but today, holding variables constant with various statistical techniques is much more commonly used with large samples.”
This doesn't sound right. “Holding variables constant with various statistical techniques” was well under development by the 1960s and prevalent by the 1970s, so if there was anything innovative about her research methodology it isn't that. And by the 1970s expressions of concern about the outputs of these methods were starting to appear, which became a groundswell in the 1980s. Since then, innumerable pitfalls in the methodology have been discovered and elaborated, and most apply even in large samples. (This topic is one of my specialties and I've lectured about it all over the world.)
Second, one of the biggest concerns of critics is that all techniques available in standard software before very recently would start to break down without warning as the number of variables increases, gradually producing more and more misleading results. That breakdown can set in with just a few ill-chosen variables and is virtually guaranteed to be well underway when the number of variables becomes an appreciable fraction of the number of subjects. She stated “Over 4000 variables later, we learned an enormous amount of information about what living in a battering relationship was like for the women.” While I have no doubt there was some worthwhile information in there, with 4000 variables—ten times the number of subjects—I have no idea what techniques she was using to guard against these problems. But I do know that there were no valid techniques known at the time that could assuredly work well in such a situation. Even today, certain problems (like misreporting) have no general solution and can throw results off tremendously.
Third, and most candidly, my alarm went off when I read
“given the finite resources available, it was decided to sacrifice the traditional empirical experimental model, with a control group, for the quasiexperimental model using survey-type data collection. It was seen as more important to compare battered women to themselves than to a nonbattered control group. Comparing battered and nonbattered women implies looking for some deficit in the battered group, which can be interpreted as a perpetuation of the victim-blaming model.”
Sounded like use of ideology to shore up weak arguments for not collecting potentially important information. I see much of this sort of rationalization for weak research, especially in psychosocial areas where ideology becomes most intrusive.
Everyone has finite resources. Say you go to your HMO doctor concerned about a suspicious lump you found in your breast, and she gives you two aspirin with instructions to take them and come back in a year if the lump isn't gone. You question this prescription and she responds, “Well I know a biopsy would be better, but we have finite resources.” While we are always limited by resources, sometimes the argument is used as an excuse to do something that is hardly better than nothing. That something is often proposed in the misguided notion that doing something is better than doing nothing. Well, it is if you are trying to dodge the unpleasant reality that to make any further progress on a topic, something else much more expensive will be needed. I doubt her case is this extreme, but she does seem to be trying [to] rationalize not obtaining half the data she would need to convince moderate skeptics.
Of course her underlying methods and rationale may be stronger than it looks in these quotes. I am only saying that the passages you cited set off a three-alarm warning for me. Close study of her actual work might reveal them to be false alarms, or at least not as serious as they look at first glance.
See also S. Greenland, “The Need for Critical Appraisal of Expert Witnesses in Epidemiology and Statistics,” Wake Forest Law Review 39, no. 2 (2004): 291–310; Greenland and Poole, “Problems in Common Interpretations of Statistics in Scientific Articles.”
10. Lenore E. A. Walker, The Battered Woman Syndrome, 2nd ed. (Springer, 1999), p. 146.
11. J. W. Dixon and K. E. Dixon, “Gender-Specific Clinical Syndromes and Their Admissibility under the Federal Rules of Evidence,” American Journal of Trial Advocacy 27 (2003): 25; M. McMahon, “Battered Women and Bad Science: The Limited Validity and Utility of Battered Woman Syndrome,” Psychiatry, Psychology and Law 6, no. 1 (1999): 23–49.
12. Walker herself noted that because of the high percentage of abused females, it would be too demanding to do a controlled experiment that matched four hundred battered women with four hundred non-battered women. Personal communication with the author, September 22, 2009.
CHAPTER 6: A COMPULSION TO CARE
1. Stella H. Day, Builders of Early Millard: Biographies of Pioneers of Millard County 1850 to 1875 (Art City Publishing; repr. 1998 by J. Mart Publishing, Spanish Fork, UT, 1979), p. 451.
2. These quotes and reminiscences are from a personal interview with “Penny Packer” (a pseudonym), June 2009.
3. Cornelia deBruin, “Bad Taste? Critics Say Art Gives Wrong View of Utah Women,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 5, 1993.
4. Jean Decety, Philip L. Jackson, and Eric Brunet, “The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Empathy,” in Empathy in Mental Illness, edited by Tom F. D. Farrow and Peter W. R. Woodruff (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
5. Y. Cheng et al., “Expertise Modulates the Perception of Pain in Others,” Current Biology 17, no. 19 (2007): 1708–13. The discerning critic might wonder whether the acupuncture experts reacted differently because they had naturally different reactions to watching others experience pain. But Decety provides convincing evidence that was not the case. The hypothesized timing of the sequence described here is currently under study.
6. J. Decety and J. A. Sommerville, “Shared Representations between Self and Other: A Social Cognitive Neuroscience View,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7, no. 12 (2003): 527–33.
7. J. L. Goetz, D. Keltner, and E. Simon-Thomas, “Compassion: An Evolutionary Analysis and Empirical Review,” Psychological Bulletin 136, no. 3: 351–74.
8. L. Rueckert and N. Naybar, “Gender Differences in Empathy: The Role of the Right Hemisphere,” Brain and Cognition 67, no. 2 (2008): 162–67.
9. Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself, 2nd ed. (Center City, MN: Hazelden, 1986), p. 29.
CHAPTER 7: EMPATHY’S ECHOES
1. Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Modern World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), p. 86, citing King Lear, act 3, scene 5, lines 34–35.
2. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes from Carolyn Zahn-Waxler are from Carolyn Zahn-Waxler, “The Legacy of Loss: Depression as a Family Affair,” in Breaking the Silence: Mental Health Professionals Disclose Their Personal and Family Experiences of Mental Illness, edited by Stephen P. Hinshaw (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
3. A recent book, Delusions of Gender, by Cordelia Fine, ostensibly “debunks the myth of hardwired differences between men's and women's brains, unraveling the evidence behind such claims as men's brains aren't wired for empathy and women's brains aren't made to fix cars.” Fine does a good job at poking holes in problematic research, although her one-sided reading of the research literature and condescension for those who disagree with her thesis is troubling. The real story is far more complex than her presentation would make it appear.
For example, David Reimer was a boy who, because of a horrific accident during circumcision, was raised as a girl following the advice of Dr. John Money, a well-known Johns Hopkins psychologist. Money subsequently claimed that the treatment was highly successful, which implied that the differences between the sexes must be primarily cultural in origin.
Nothing could have been further from the truth, as John Colapinto relayed in his book As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl. Rather than the effortless transformation claimed by Dr. Money, David did everything he could as a child to fight the gender reassignment—tearing off frilly dresses, beating up his brother and taking his toy guns, rolling in the mud with the other boys, stomping on the dolls he had been given, complaining to his parents and teachers that he felt like a boy—and all this without ever having been informed of his biological sexual identity. David's identical twin, Brian, noted that his brother “walked like a guy. Sat with her legs apart. She talked about guy things, didn't give a crap about cleaning house, getting married, wearing makeup. We both wanted to play with guys, build forts and have snowball fights and play army. She'd get a skipping rope for a gift, and the only thing we'd use that for was to tie people up, whip people with it. She played with my toys: Tinkertoys, dump trucks. This toy sewing machine she got just sat. [Until, because she] loved to take things apart to see how they worked, [she] sneaked a screwdriver from her dad's tool kit and dismantled the toy.”
As one reviewer, Jill Lightner, commented: “Reading over interviews and reports of decisions made by [Dr. John Money], it's difficult to contain anger at the widespread results of his insistence that natural-born gender can be altered with little more than willpower and hormone treatments.” Dr. Milton Diamond, the prescient psychologist who exposed Dr. Money's misleading account of the gender change, concluded that “if all these combined medical, surgical, and social efforts could not succeed in making that child accept a female gender identity, then maybe we really have to think that there is something important in the individual's biological makeup; that we don't come to this world neutral; that we come to this world with some degree of maleness and femaleness which will transcend whatever the society wants to put into it.”
Neuroscientist Lise Eliot, on the other hand, points out that the David Reimer case is in some ways quite weak, since Reimer wasn't converted to a girl until nearly two years old, when children already have a pretty sophisticated understanding of gender. Also, Reimer's tight bond with his identical twin brother would have complicated matters. Other cases of boys raised as girls (due to cloacal exstrophy) show more successful conversion, especially if it begins at birth. And girls with CAH (congenital adrenal hyperplasia), exposed to extremely high androgen levels before birth, are generally happy with their female gender identity. As Eliot cogently summarizes in Pink Brain, Blue Brain, “So it's all biology, whether the cause is nature or nurture. Sex differences in behavior must be reflected as sex differences in the brain, but the older children are, the less confidently their differences can be ascribed exclusively to genes and hormones. There are, to be sure, a few truly innate differences between the sexes—in maturation rate, sensory processing, activity level [and] fussiness …
“However, the male-female differences that have the most impact—cognitive skills, such as speaking, reading, math, and mechanical ability; and interpersonal skills, such as aggression, empathy, risk taking, and competitiveness—are heavily shaped by learning. Yes, they germinate from basic instincts and initial biases in brain function, but each of these traits is massively amplified by the different sorts of practice, role models, and reinforcement that boys and girls are exposed to from birth onward.”
It's notable that Fine seems to play some of the same games noted by Murray A. Straus in “Processes Explaining the Concealment and Distortion of Evidence on Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence,” European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research 13 (2007): 227–32, to wit, creating “evidence” through citations that don't actually support the assertion. For example, on page 263 of Delusions of Gender, Fine notes that “the use of the digit ratio as a marker of prenatal testosterone exposure is controversial and lacks clear empirical support. For review see (McIntyre, 2006).” But McIntyre's review concludes “The validity of digit ratios as markers for perinatal androgen action is supported by a number of lines of recently reported evidence, but further support is needed.” In other words, Fine implies that McIntyre is supporting her conclusion that the digit ratio is very problematic, when that's not what he concludes at all. See endnote 22, chapter 16, p. 353 for more discussion of Straus's findings regarding concealment and distortion in research literature. J. Colapinto, As Nature Made Him (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), pp. 57–58, 174–75. C. Fine, Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (W. W. Norton & Company, 2010). Jill Lightner was a reviewer for Amazon.com. Lise Eliot, Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps—and What We Can Do about It (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt [HMH], 2009).
4. Carolyn Zahn-Waxler and Carole Van Hulle, “Empathy, Guilt, and Depression: When Caring for Others Becomes Costly to Children,” in Pathological Altruism, edited by Barbara Oakley et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, in press).
5. The author's husband, Philip, for one. He's also a master mechanic. In other words, Philip is both an empathizer and a systemizer. There's a reason she likes to point out that she went to the end of the earth to meet that man. (They met at the South Pole Station in Antarctica.)
6. S. Baron-Cohen, The Essential Difference (New York: Basic Books, 2004); Simon Baron-Cohen, “Autism, Empathizing-Systemizing (ES) Theory, and Pathological Altruism,” in Pathological Altruism, edited by B. Oakley et al.
7. It can actually get more complicated. (Can't it always?) For example, there are various ways that tissue can be more sensitive to testosterone rather than there simply being more testosterone. Underlying Baron-Cohen's E-S theory is another, perhaps deeper one—that “the human brain makes a fundamental distinction between the living and non-living world, and that distinct cognitive networks and rule systems operate when processing subjects and objects…. [In Baron-Cohen's formulation, e]mpathizing refers to the psychological processes involved in making sense of the living world, most notably other human beings (e.g. mentalizing, empathy, sympathy). Systemizing refers to the understanding of mostly non-social systems governed by orderly input-operation-output relationships.” As Baron-Cohen explains, one “advantage of the E-S theory is that it can explain what is sometimes seen as an ‘inability to generalise’ in autism spectrum conditions…. According to the E-S theory, this is exactly what you would expect if the person is trying to understand each system as a unique system.” S. Baron-Cohen, “Autism: The Empathizing-Systemizing (E-S) Theory,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1156 (March), The Year in Cognitive Neuroscience 2009 (2009): 68–80. For dissenting views about Baron-Cohen's work, see, for example, J. Andrew and M. Cooke, “The Relationship between Empathy and Machiavellianism: An Alternative to Empathizing-Systemizing Theory,” Personality and Individual Differences 44, no. 5 (2008): 1203–11, and E. Pellicano et al., “Children with Autism Are Neither Systemic nor Optimal Foragers,” PNAS 109, no. 1 (2011): 421–26.
8. The theory was kicked off by the father of American behavioral neurology—brilliant, charismatic Norman Geschwind (1926–1984)—and Albert Galaburda, as described in detail in Norman Geschwind and Albert Galaburda, Cerebral Lateralization: Biological Mechanisms, Associations, and Pathology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986). See also W. H. James, “Further Evidence That Some Male-Based Neurodevelopmental Disorders Are Associated with High Intrauterine Testosterone Concentrations,” Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology 50, no. 1 (2008): 15–18, and references therein.
9. See C. Zahn-Waxler et al., “The Origins and Development of Psychopathology in Females and Males,” Development and Psychopathology 1 (2006): 76, wherein it is noted:
Beginning in adolescence, females are two to three times more likely than males to experience unipolar depressive disorders, as seen [in] both community-based and clinically-referred samples (Kessler, McGonagle, Swartz, Blazer, & Nelson, 1993; Nolen-Hoeksema, 1990; Weissman & Klerman, 1977; Weissman, Leaf, Bruce, & Florio, 1988). It is also present whether depression is diagnosed as a disorder or measured along a continuum of symptom severity.
…
After puberty, the lifetime prevalence in females is twice that of males (Lewinsohn, et al., 1993). Comorbidity of depressive and anxiety disorders is much more common in girls than boys (Lewinsohn, et al., 1995b); moreover depression that is comorbid with more than one anxiety disorder is virtually exclusive to females (Lewinsohn, Zinbarg, Seeley, Lewinsohn, & Sack, 1997). Female gender and presence of a coexisting anxiety disorder are also related to severity of initial depression (McCauley, et al., 1993). Co-occurrence of symptoms is even higher when subclinical levels also are considered. Although depression and anxiety can be clearly differentiated at biological, cognitive, behavioral, and affective levels, the extent to which they overlap and cooccur suggests that the combination represents a unique but common form of depression, particularly in females.
Females show a different constellation of depressive symptoms than males, notably more anxiety, more somatic symptoms, hypersomnia, weight gain, increased appetite, fatigue, psychomotor retardation, and body image disturbance (see review by Zahn-Waxler, et al., in press). Increased appetite and weight gain seem to be the most distinct symptoms in women and adolescent girls. Higher rates of crying, sadness, and negative self-concept have been noted for school-age and adolescent girls.
In research by Gjerde and Block (1995), dysphoric males often expressed their unhappiness directly and without hesitation, by acting on the world in an aggressive, hostile manner. Dysphoric symptoms in female adolescents, in contrast, were characterized by introspection, absence of open hostility, and a mostly hidden preoccupation with self. As early as age 7, boys who later showed dysthymia were aggressive, self-aggrandizing, and undercontrolled, whereas dysthymic girls were intropunitive, oversocialized, overcontrolled, anxious and introspective (Block, Gjerde, & Block, 1991). Young girls who later became depressed also had close relationships. The sadness and anxiety in depressed girls and hostility in depressed boys can be seen as exaggerations of normative sex differences. These studies focus on subclinical depression. Further studies of males and females with clinical depression are needed to determine whether their symptomatology shows a similar pattern. Other research suggests that young, depressed boys show a pattern of acting out (Kovacs 1996). In a recent observational study of young children, boys, but not girls, with both subclinical and clinical depression were likely to show anger relative to controls (Luby et al., 2005).
Genetic/Biological Explanations. Some studies report similar heritability estimates for depressive disorders in males and females, several others find differences (e.g. Bierut, et al., 1999; Jacobson & Rowe, 1999; Kendler, Gardner, Neale, & Prescott, 2001a; Tambs, Harris, & Magnus, 1995). Kendler, et al. (2001) suggest that in genetic linkage studies, the impact of some loci on risk for major depression will vary in men and women. Genetics are also involved in the etiology of depression through their effect on sensitivity to environmental events. Silberg, Rutter, Neale, & Eaves (2001) found that genetics had a larger effect on the development of depression in adolescent girls who had experienced a negative event in the previous year than on those who did not. Kendler and colleagues (Kendler, 1998; Kendler, et al., 1995) found that persons at greater genetic risk were twice as likely to develop major depression in response to severe stress than those at lower genetic risk. Genetic risk also altered sensitivity to the environment for women only (Kendler, et al., 1995a). At puberty, girls' negative life events and stability of depression over time are more genetically mediated than for boys (Silberg et al., 1999).
See also C. Zahn-Waxler, E. A. Shirtcliff, and K. Marceau, “Disorders of Childhood and Adolescence: Gender and Psychopathology,” Annual Review of Clinical Psychology 4 (2008): 275–303. This paper, as Zahn-Waxler points out, “is about the origins of sex differences in different forms of psychopathology in males and females. Internalizing problems (anxiety and depression) are much more common in females than males and externalizing problems (Conduct problems, ADHD, etc.) are much more common in males than females. These differences hold across cultures, though the relative differences may vary.” (E-mail communication with the author, August 27, 2010.)
Also see C. Zahn-Waxler, E. Race, and S. Duggal, “Mood Disorders and Symptoms in Girls,” in Handbook of Behavioral and Emotional Problems in Girls, edited by Debora J. Bell, Sharon L. Foster, and Eric J. Mash (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum, 2005), which notes:
The rates of depression in childhood are comparable for boys and girls (with boys showing slightly higher rates), but while the rates dramatically increase around puberty for girls, they remain the same for boys or increase to a lesser extent (Anderson, Williams, McGee, and Silva, 1987; Angold and Rutter, 1992). Studies based both on diagnostic interviews and standardized self-reports indicate that this change in prevalence rates begins around ages 13–15 (Angold, Costello, and Worthman, 1998; Ge, Lorenz, Conger, Elder, et al., 1994; Petersen, Sargiani, Kennedy, 1991; Wichstrom, 1999). There is a 4–23% increase in diagnosed depression in adolescents between the ages of 15 to 18 (Hankin, Abramson, Moffitt, Silva, & McGee (1998). After puberty, the lifetime prevalence of depression in females is two times that of adolescent males, and one-year first incidence of depression is 1.6% greater for females than males (Lewinsohn, et al., 1993). Sex differences in depression are found consistently across cultures within the United States and the world, controlling for income, education, and occupation (McGrath, Keita, Strickland, & Russo, 1990; Weissman, Bland, Canino, Faravelli, et al., 1996).
See also M. Altemus and L. Epstein, “Sex Differences in Anxiety Disorders,” in Sex Differences in the Brain: From Genes to Behavior, edited by Jill B. Becker et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); M. H. J. Bekker and J. van Mens-Verhulst, “Anxiety Disorders: Sex Differences in Prevalence, Degree, and Background, but Gender-Neutral Treatment,” Gender Medicine 4 (2007): S178–S193; M. Altemus, “Sex Differences in Depression and Anxiety Disorders: Potential Biological Determinants,” Hormones and Behavior 50, no. 4 (2006): 534–38; K. McRae et al., “Gender Differences in Emotion Regulation: An fMRI Study of Cognitive Reappraisal,” Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 11, no. 2 (2008): 143–62; I. Esther, T. W. Fop Verheij, and F. F. Robert, “Differences in Finger Length Ratio between Males with Autism, Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified, ADHD, and Anxiety Disorders,” Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology 48, no. 12 (2006): 962–65; H. W. Hoek and D. van Hoeken, “Review of the Prevalence and Incidence of Eating Disorders,” International Journal of Eating Disorders 34, no. 4 (2003): 383–96.
10. A. Von Horn et al., “Empathizing, Systemizing and Finger Length Ratio in a Swedish Sample,” Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 51, no. 1 (2009): 31–37. Citing E. Herrmann et al., “Humans Have Evolved Specialized Skills of Social Cognition: The Cultural Intelligence Hypothesis,” Science 317, no. 5843 (2007): 1360. M. H. McIntyre, “The Use of Digit Ratios as Markers for Perinatal Androgen Action,” Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology 4, no. 10 (2006): 1–9; Baron-Cohen, “E-S Theory.” But see S. A. Berenbaum et al., “Fingers as a Marker of Prenatal Androgen Exposure,” Endocrinology 150, no. 11 (2009): 5119.
A quick way to tell how much testosterone someone was exposed to in the womb is by looking at the right hand. The longer the ring finger in comparison with the index finger, the more testosterone. Although this technique seems like it should be about as accurate as palm reading, the science underlying the digit-ratio phenomenon is real and well studied—although still highly controversial. See John Manning's Digit Ratio: A Pointer to Fertility, Behavior, and Health (Rutgers University Press, 2002).
11. E-mail communication with the author, May 1, 2010.
12. McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary. It is worthwhile to note that Baron-Cohen attributes systemizing thinking to the right side of the brain, and empathizing to the left. See S. Baron-Cohen, The Essential Difference (New York: Basic Books, 2004); McGilchrist makes a far better case for the converse: systemizing is on the left, while empathizing is on the right. In support of this latter thesis, see also L. Shlain, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict between Word and Image (Penguin, 1999). E. Goldberg, The New Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes in a Complex World (Oxford University Press, 2009).
13. Helen Thomson, “We Feel Your Pain: Extreme Empaths,” New Scientist no. 2751 (March 15, 2010).
14. R. Bachner-Melman et al., “The Relationship between Selflessness Levels and the Severity of Anorexia Nervosa Symptomatology,” European Eating Disorders Review 15, no. 3 (2007).
15. E. Bachar et al., “Selflessness and Perfectionism as Predictors of Pathological Eating Attitudes and Disorders: A Longitudinal Study,” European Eating Disorders Review 18, no. 6 (November–December 2010): 496–506.
16. Rachel Bachner-Melman, “The Relevance of Pathological Altruism to Eating Disorders,” in Pathological Altruism, edited by B. Oakley et al.
17. Ibid.
18. Lynn E. O'Connor et al., “Empathy-Based Pathogenic Guilt, Pathological Altruism, and Psychopathology,” in Pathological Altruism, edited by Barbara Oakley et al.
19. Zahn-Waxler and Van Hulle, “Empathy, Guilt, and Depression.”
20. The thoughts in this paragraph are slightly paraphrased from e-mail correspondence from Joseph Carroll, Curators' Professor of English, University of Missouri, St. Louis, August 28, 2010.
21. Olga Klimecki and Tania Singer, “Empathic Distress Fatigue Rather Than Compassion Fatigue?—Integrating Findings from Empathy Research in Psychology and Social Neuroscience,” in Pathological Altruism, edited by Barbara Oakley et al. Klimecki and Singer's work is based on developmental theories of Dan Batson and Nancy Eisenberg. See C. D. Batson, “Empathy-Induced Altruistic Motivation,” in Prosocial Motives, Emotions, and Behavior, edited by M. Mikulincer and P. R. Shaver (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2009); C. D. Batson, “These Things Called Empathy: Eight Related but Distinct Phenomena,” in The Social Neuroscience of Empathy, edited by J. Decety and W. Ickes (Cambrdige: MIT Press, 2009); C. D. Batson et al., “Is Empathic Emotion a Source of Altruistic Motivation?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 40, no. (1981): 290–302; C. Daniel Batson et al., “Influence of Self-Reported Distress and Empathy on Egoistic Versus Altruistic Motivation to Help,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 45, no. 3 (1983): 706–718; C. D. Batson, J. Fultz, and P. A. Schoenrade, “Distress and Empathy: Two Qualitatively Distinct Vicarious Emotions with Different Motivational Consequences,” Journal of Personality 55, no. 1 (1987): 19–39; N. Eisenberg, “Emotion, Regulation, and Moral Development,” Annual Review of Psychology 51, no. 1 (2000): 665–97; N. Eisenberg et al., “Relation of Sympathy and Personal Distress to Prosocial Behavior: A Multimethod Study,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 57, no. 1 (1989): 55–66.
22. L. W. McCray et al., “Resident Physician Burnout: Is There Hope?” Family Medicine 40, no. 9 (2008): 626–32.
23. Matthieu Ricard, a monk who collaborates with Tania Singer and Olga Klimecki, gave a short interview in which he talks about the distinction between empathic distress and compassion: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthieu-ricard/could-compassion-meditati_b_751566.html. (The quotes in the figure caption are from the video accompanying this story.)
24. Madeline Li and Gary Rodin, “Altruism and Suffering in the Context of Cancer Caregiving: Implications of a Relational Paradigm,” in Pathological Altruism, edited by Barbara Oakley et al.; Klimecki and Singer, “Empathic Distress Fatigue Rather Than Compassion Fatigue?” in Pathological Altruism, edited by Barbara Oakley et al.; M. Paris and M. A. Hoge, “Burnout in the Mental Health Workforce: A Review,” Journal of Behavioral Health Services and Research 37, no. 4 (2009): 519–28; D. Edwards et al., “Stress and Burnout in Community Mental Health Nursing: A Review of the Literature,” Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 7, no. 1 (2000): 7–14; L. W. McCray et al., “Resident Physician Burnout: Is There Hope?” Family Medicine 40, no. 9 (2008): 626–32.
25. Klimecki and Singer, “Empathic Distress Fatigue Rather Than Compassion Fatigue?” citing T. D. Shanafelt et al., “Burnout and Self-Reported Patient Care in an Internal Medicine Residency Program,” Annals of Internal Medicine 136, no. 5 (2002): 358; J. J. Hillhouse, C. M. Adler, and D. N. Walters, “A Simple Model of Stress, Burnout and Symptomatology in Medical Residents: A Longitudinal Study,” Psychology, Health & Medicine 5, no. 1 (2000): 63–73; C. P. West et al., “Association of Perceived Medical Errors with Resident Distress and Empathy: A Prospective Longitudinal Study,” JAMA 296, no. 9 (2006): 1071; C. R. Figley, “Compassion Fatigue: Psychotherapists' Chronic Lack of Self Care,” Journal of Clinical Psychology 58, no. 11 (2002): 1433–41.
26. Klimecki and Singer, “Empathic Distress Fatigue Rather Than Compassion Fatigue?” citing R. Schulz et al., “Patient Suffering and Caregiver Compassion: New Opportunities for Research, Practice, and Policy,” Gerontologist 47 (2007): 4–13.
27. E-mail communication between Margaret Cochran and the author, February 8, 2010.
28. Ibid.
29. Zahn-Waxler, “The Legacy of Loss: Depression as a Family Affair.”
30. See Barbara Oakley, Ariel Knafo, and Michael McGrath, “Pathological Altruism—an Introduction,” in Pathological Altruism, edited by B. Oakley et al., which notes: “Pathological altruism—in the sense of an unhealthy focus on others to the detriment of one's own needs—may have a very early start, and can be seen in developmental personality processes. This can be seen in data from toddler-age twins. Children were designated as highly altruistic if they were in the top 20 percent in measured prosocial behavior. Another category is related to self-actualizing behavior, such as ‘shows pleasure when s/he succeeds,’ ‘continues trying, even when something is hard,’ or ‘wants to do things by him/herself.’ Children were rated as low in self-actualizing behaviors if they ranked in the bottom 20 percent of that category. Twins were thought to potentially show the beginning of a form of pathological altruism if they simultaneously ranked in the top 20 percent of altruistic behaviors and the bottom 20 percent of self-actualizing behaviors. Of 2,496 children, 73 (3 percent) met both criteria. That is, these children were very likely to share, care for other children, and help around, but were not at all likely to be characterized by ‘shows pleasure when s/he succeeds,’ ‘continues trying, even when something is hard,’ or ‘wants to do things by him/herself.’” This passage references A. Knafo, “The Longitudinal Israeli Study of Twins (List): Children's Social Development as Influenced by Genetics, Abilities, and Socialization,” Twin Research and Human Genetics 9, no. 6 (2006): 791–98, and R. Goodman, “The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: A Research Note,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 38 (1997): 581–86.
31. M. Reuter et al., “Investigating the Genetic Basis of Altruism: The Role of the COMT Val158Met Polymorphism,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (2010) (E-pub ahead of print). But also see the wonderful article by I. Dar-Nimrod and S. J. Heine, “Genetic Essentialism: On the Deceptive Determinism of DNA,” Psychological Bulletin, December 13 (2010) (Epub ahead of print), which cautions against determinism in thinking about issues related to genetics.
32. Zahn-Waxler, “The Legacy of Loss: Depression as a Family Affair.”
CHAPTER 8: CARING STARTS EARLY
1. Linda Lawrence Hunt, Bold Spirit: Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk across Victorian America (New York: Random House, 2003), p. 251.
2. B. S. McEwen, “Steroid Hormones and Brain Development: Some Guidelines for Understanding Actions of Pseudohormones and Other Toxic Agents,” Environmental Health Perspectives 74 (1987): 177; C. Viglietti-Panzica et al., “Organizational Effects of Diethylstilbestrol on Brain Vasotocin and Sexual Behavior in Male Quail,” Brain Research Bulletin 65, no. 3 (2005): 225–33.
3. E. J. O'Reilly et al., “Diethylstilbestrol Exposure in Utero and Depression in Women,” American Journal of Epidemiology 171, no. 8 (2010): 876–82.
4. Carole's mother was eight months pregnant—past the usual stage when chicken pox is generally found to affect the fetus. But as it turns out, chicken pox can cause severe damage even in late pregnancy. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Varicella Vaccine—Q & A's about Pregnancy,” http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/varicella/vac-faqs-clinic-preg.htm (accessed June 30, 2009); Gideon Koren, “Congenital Varicella Syndrome in the Third Trimester,” Lancet 366, no. 9497 (2005). J. W. Gnann Jr., “Varicella-Zoster Virus: Atypical Presentations and Unusual Complications,” Journal of Infectious Diseases 186, no. S1 (2002); A Yaramis et al., “Cerebral Vasculitis and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Following Varicella Infection in Childhood,” Turkish Journal of Pediatrics 51, no. 1 (2009): 72–75. Smith et al. note: “If VZV transmission occurs as a consequence of maternal infection during the perinatal period, from approximately two days before delivery to five days after, the infant is at risk of severe life-threatening varicella disease.” C. K. Smith and A. M. Arvin, “Varicella in the Fetus and Newborn,” Seminars in Fetal and Neonatal Medicine 14, no. 4 (2009): 209–17. Narkeviciute notes: “Although the risk of foetal abnormalities, herpes zoster in early childhood or neonatal varicella following maternal varicella is small, the outcome for the affected infant may be very serious.” Irena Narkeviciute, “Consequences of Varicella in Pregnancy: A Report of Four Cases,” Acta Paediatrica 96, no. 7 (2007): 1099–1100.
5. S. B. Barnett and H. D. Rott, “The Sensitivity of Biological Tissue to Ultrasound,” Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology 23, no. 6 (1997): 805–12; G. Haar, “Ultrasound Bioeffects and Safely,” Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part H: Journal of Engineering in Medicine 224, no. 2 (2010): 363–73; J. S. Abramowicz, “Ultrasound Imaging of the Early Fetus: Is It Safe?” Imaging 1, no. 1 (2009): 85–95; J. P. Spencer and M. S. Blumberg, “Short Arm and Talking Eggs: Why We Should No Longer Abide the Nativist-Empiricist Debate,” Child Development Perspectives 3, no. 2 (2009): 79–87; M. S. Blumberg, Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell Us about Development and Evolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Mark S. Blumberg, Basic Instinct: The Genesis of Behavior (New York: Basic Books, 2006); Mark S. Blumberg, Body Heat: Temperature and Life on Earth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). Mark Blumberg's works in particularly masterful in their depiction of the complex interactions of the environment and the developing body.
6. P. V. Gejman, A. R. Sanders, and J. Duan, “The Role of Genetics in the Etiology of Schizophrenia,” Psychiatric Clinics of North America 33, no. 1 (2010): 35–66. See also M. F. Fraga et al., “Epigenetic Differences Arise during the Lifetime of Monozygotic Twins,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102, no. 30 (2005): 10604.
7. Sharon Begley, “DNA as Crystal Ball: Buyer Beware,” Newsweek, May 18, 2010, http://www.newsweek.com/2010/05/18/dna-as-crystal-ball-buyer-beware.html (accessed December 19, 2010). Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Modern World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), p. 53.
It's wise to be careful when interpreting data related to genes. We just don't know enough yet. For example, just knowing whether someone has genes that have been associated with a disease can't help predict whether a person will actually get the disease. In discussing this counterintuitive finding, Newsweek's Sharon Begley observes this “must reflect the fact that the effect of a gene depends on a person's ‘genetic background’—all the other genes he or she has. And it also reflects a person's environment. In some environments a gene does lead to disease; in others, it doesn't.”
This desire to categorize—that is, to think in a categorical, deterministic fashion about genes and their effects—also reflects neatly on the differing strengths of the left and right brain. As psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist observes in The Master and His Emissary, the left brain has a categorizing drive that is at work all the time in all of us—this is particularly apparent in patients with conditions such as stroke that tend to favor the left hemisphere over the right.
8. T. F. D. Farrow and P. W. R. Woodruff, Empathy in Mental Illness (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
CHAPTER 9: THE PRELIMINARY HEARING BEGINS
1. W. H. Auden, “The Guilty Vicarage,” in Harper's, May 1948, pp. 406–12.
2. What follows is an abbreviated version of the court records in the Fourth Judicial District Court, in and for Millard County, State of Utah, State of Utah, Plaintiff, v. Carole Alden Sessions, Defendant, Case No. 061700168, before the Honorable Donald J. Eyre, Fourth District Court, 765 South Highway 99, Fillmore, Utah 84631, Reporter's Transcript of Proceedings, Preliminary Hearing, January 8, 2007. Misspoken words have been largely eliminated, and the text has been tightened, but care has been taken to preserve context. The order in which witnesses and issues were presented has in some instances been changed.
3. Voir dire is a phrase most often used to refer to the preliminary questions put to potential jurors before they are selected to sit on the jury. However, voir dire can also be used to refer to the preliminary questions of a witness—most often an expert witness—concerning the expert's qualifications.
As Mike Wims would later point out: “For those of us familiar with the French language who attended the University of Texas School of Law, it was sometimes difficult not to shudder when a law professor with a strong Texan accent pronounced the term ‘voir dire’ so that the ‘voir’ rhymed with the first syllable of voracious and ‘dire’ rhymed with the first syllable of the musical group ‘Dire Straits.’”
Though the term voir dire is properly pronounced like the modern French verbs voir (“to see”) and dire (“to say”), the term precedes even Norman French. The word voir in this usage actually derives from the Latin verum, “that which is true,” and is not really related to the modern French word voir.
CHAPTER 10: MARTY SESSIONS
1. Ewan McGregor played Renton in Danny Boyle's 1996 drama, Trainspotting, which follows the adventures of a group of friends immersed in Edinburgh's drug scene, based on the novel by Irvine Welsh.
2. These reminiscences are based on interviews with Denny Sessions in August 2010. As Denny notes, the events described here have been passed down into family lore, and so may diverge to some extent from actual facts.
3. Guestbook of Thomas LeRoy Sessions, http://www.legacy.com/guestbook/deseretnews/guestbook.aspx?n=martin-sessions&pid=18714546 (accessed August 24, 2010).
4. Steven Okazaki, Black Tar Heroin, the Dark End of the Street, 1999, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yt4Mmn7ofI (accessed August 24, 2010).
5. Anna Ruttenbur's recollections here are based on telephone conversations between Anna Ruttenbur and the author, August 2010.
6. Comments throughout the chapter from Anna Ruttenbur and Edee Sessions-Wagers are from telephone conversations between them and the author during August–September 2010.
7. Edee Sessions's recollections here are based on telephone conversations between Edee Sessions and the author, August 2010.
8. This statement is according to Edee and Denny Sessions and Anna Ruttenbur, speaking from their knowledge of the family as a whole.
9. Patty Henetz, “Spurned Advances Led to Killings, Records Say,” Deseret News, November 6, 1991.
10. “Judge Declares W. V. Man Incompetent,” Deseret News, June 3, 1992, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/230163/JUDGE-DECLARES-WV-MAN-INCOMPETENT.html (accessed August 15, 2010).
11. Stephen Hunt, “1991 Shootings: Woman Who Survived Testifies about Murderous Rampage,” Salt Lake Tribune, February 27, 2008.
12. Linda Thomson, “Details of Killings Emerge: After Years at Utah State Hospital, Tiedemann on Trial for 1991 Slayings,” Deseret News, February 27, 2008, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/695256762/Details-of-killings-emerge.html (accessed August 15, 2010).
13. “Attorney Says W.V. Man Who Is Charged in 2 Murders, Rape May Not Be Competent,” Deseret News, November 27, 1991, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/196074/ATT0RNEY-SAYS-WV-MAN-WH0-IS-CHARGED-IN-2-MURDERS-RAPE-MAY-NOT-BE-COMPETENT.html (accessed August 15, 2010).
14. Geoffrey Fattah, “High Court to Hear ‘91 Homicide Case,” Deseret News, August 28, 2006, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/645196757/High-court-to-hear-91-homicide-case.html (accessed August 15, 2010).
15. Stephen Hunt, “Lone Survivor Testifies in 1991 Slayings,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 11, 2003.
16. Linda Thomson, “Tiedemann Gets Prison for Slayings,” Deseret News, May 3, 2008, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/695276101/Tiedemann-gets-prison-for-slayings.html (accessed August 15, 2010).
17. Linda Thomson, “Details of Killings Emerge: After Years at Utah State Hospital, Tiedemann on Trial for 1991 Slayings.” See also Geoffrey Fattah, “Jury Delivers Guilty Verdicts on All Counts in Tiedemann Trial,” Deseret News, February 28, 2008, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/695257234/Jury-delivers-guilty-verdicts-on-all-counts-in-Tiedemann-trial.html (accessed August 15, 2010); Laura Hancock, “Man Charged in ‘91 Slayings of 3,” Deseret News, November 14, 2002, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/948553/Man-charged-in-91-slayings-of-3.html (accessed January 13, 2011).
18. Ben Winslow, “Convicted Double Murderer Asks for Release,” Deseret News, October 3, 2008, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700263584/Convicted-double-murderer-asks-for-release.html (accessed August 16, 2010). See also State v. Tiedemann, no. 20050676, Supreme Court of Utah, 2007.
During his first hearing for a release in front of the Board of Pardons and Parole in 2008, Tiedemann refused to take an oath, said he was of no risk to anyone, and asked to be released to go to Norway. Parole board member Chuck Harms told Tiedemann: “I don't think the citizens of this state ought to bear the risk of you being free for a single moment between now and the time you pass away.” As Ben Winslow of the Deseret News then reported: “The announcement appeared to stun Tiedemann, who sat silently, blinking his eyes rapidly from behind thick glasses. ‘Uh, OK,’ he replied. ‘You'll be sorry.’”
CHAPTER 11: A DETECTIVE AT WORK
1. Michael D. Wims, Charles Ambrose, and Jack B. Rubin, How to Prepare and Try a Murder Case: Prosecution and Defense Perspectives (American Bar Association, in press).
2. Quotations and events described here are based on the recollections of Richard Jacobson during interviews with the author in 2009 and 2010.
3. Personal interview between Relda Jacobson and the author, June 5, 2010.
4. Brent E. Turvey and Wayne Petherick, Forensic Victimology: Examining Violent Crime Victims in Investigative and Legal Contexts (New York: Elsevier, 2009), p. xvii. The substance of the paragraph is as laid out in the original—only the tense has been changed.
CHAPTER 12: CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. SLAVENS—WHY THE HOUSE WAS A WRECK
1. P. J. Buchanan, Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency (St. Martin's Griffin, 2005), p. 125.
2. Biographical information in this brief section follows from a telephone interview with James Slavens, October 8, 2010.
3. What follows is an abbreviated version of the court records in the Fourth Judicial District Court, in and for Millard County, State of Utah, State of Utah, Plaintiff, v. Carole Alden Sessions, Defendant, Case No. 061700168, before the Honorable Donald J. Eyre, Fourth District Court, 765 South Highway 99, Fillmore, Utah 84631, Reporter's Transcript of Proceedings, Preliminary Hearing, January 8, 2007. Misspoken words have been largely eliminated, and the text has been tightened, but care has been taken to preserve context.
CHAPTER 13: FLASHBACK
1. Stella H. Day and Sebrina C. Ekins, Milestones of Millard: A Century of History of Millard County, 1851–1951 (Art City Publishing Company, 1951), p. 47.
2. State's Memorandum in Opposition to Defendant's 402 Motion to Reduce Conviction, Case No. 061700168 in the Fourth Judicial District Court of Millard County, State of Utah, State of Utah, Plaintiff, v. Carole Elizabeth Alden, Defendant, August 20, 2007, pp. 3–5, Judge Donald J. Eyre Jr.
3. Ibid. (The text is taken virtually verbatim from an e-mail Carole wrote to a friend.)
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Police inventory, items from inside home, item 20-B.
7. Dialogue reconstructed from the recollections of officials affiliated with the investigation of the gun purchase.
CHAPTER 14: THE SANCTITY OF THE VICTIM
1. Edward Mendelson, “‘We Are All Here on Earth to Help Others … ,’” The W. H. Auden Society, http://audensociety.org/vivianfoster.html (accessed October 19, 2010). Auden, it seems, never claimed credit for the quote, though it was often attributed to him. As noted in Mendelson's article, the source was finally tracked to an audio recording of English musichall and radio comedian John Foster Hall (1867–1945), who called himself the Reverend Vivian Foster, the Vicar of Mirth.
2. Malcolm Gladwell, “Dangerous Minds,” New Yorker, November 12, 2007, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/11/12/071112fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all (accessed September 17, 2010).
3. Brent E. Turvey and Wayne Petherick, Forensic Victimology: Examining Violent Crime Victims in Investigative and Legal Contexts (New York: Elsevier, 2009).
4. B. E. Turvey, Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis (New York: Academic Press, 2008).
5. Turvey and Petherick, Forensic Victimology, pp. xxv–xxvi.
6. Ibid., p. xxxii.
7. David R. Koon, “Politics and Legislation,” in Career Development in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, edited by G. Madhavan, B. Oakley, and L. Kun (New York: Springer, 2008).
This happened to eighteen-year-old Jennifer Koon, the daughter of David Koon, an industrial engineer at Bausch and Lomb, in New York State. In November 1993, “Jennifer, who was a college sophomore, decided to stop for bagels at a nearby shopping plaza after finishing her shift at the psychology clinic where she worked. As she was leaving the shop at about 11:30 a.m., she was abducted. After being held captive for a time, Jennifer managed to dial 911 on her car phone, but her urgent call for help was for naught—she was raped and shot to death in bright daylight. In this moment of life and death urgency, the 911 dispatcher and her supervisor could not even determine which cell tower was transmitting Jennifer's signal; they had no idea where she was.” All they could do was helplessly listen to the last twenty minutes of Jennifer's life.
Jennifer's phone, as it turned out, did not contain location-enabled GPS technology. After Jennifer's death, Koon carried a tape of his daughter's last helpless struggle in his briefcase to inspire him as he waged an engineer's battle to prevent others from being victimized as had his Jennifer. He ran for the New York State Assembly and, after he won, waged a decade-long battle to implement an enhanced 911 system that included GPS technology. This system has since spread to save lives nationwide.
8. Turvey and Petherick, Forensic Victimology, p. 20.
9. Ibid., p. xxi, citing J. A. Holstein and G. Miller, “Rethinking Victimization: An Interactional Approach to Victimology,” Symbolic Interaction 13, no. 1 (1990): 103–22.
10. Brent E. Turvey, “Pathological Altruism: Victims and Motivational Types,” in Pathological Altruism, edited by B. Oakley et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, in press), p. xxii.
11. “Illegal Alien Makes ‘Living’ Filing Hundreds of Frivolous (ADA) Lawsuits,” LiveLeak, 2010, http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cb6_1284398099 (accessed September 14, 2010).
12. Charlie Deitch, “Cashing In … Or Catching Up: Do Some ADA Lawsuits Potentially Pit Disability Activists against Businesses?” Pittsburgh City Paper, May 22, 2008, http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A46860 (accessed September 14, 2010).
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Joe Johnson, “Fake Crime Reports Becoming Real Pain: Police, Fed up with Wasting Time, Money, Vow to Charge Pretenders,” Athens Banner-Herald, February 28, 2010, http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/022810/new_568808185.shtml (accessed September 11, 2010); Nancy Martinez, “DPS Hopes to Crack Down on False Crime Reports,” University of Southern California Daily Trojan, March 23, 2010, http://dailytrojan.com/2010/03/23/dps-hopes-to-crack-down-on-false-crime-reports/ (accessed September 16, 2010).
16. Carey Roberts, “Domestic Violence Fairytales Threaten Constitutional Protections: The Violence against Women Act Includes a Definition of Domestic Violence That Is So Wide You Could Drive a Mack Truck through It,” Pajamas Media, September 2, 2010, http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/domestic-violence-fairytales-threaten-constitutional-protections/ (accessed September 16, 2010).
17. Ibid.
18. Skip Downing, “On Course,” http://www.oncourseworkshop.com/ (accessed June 13, 2010); S. Downing, On Course: Strategies for Creating Success in College and in Life, 6th ed. (Boston: Wadsworth Publishing, 2010).
CHAPTER 15: HELL ON WHEELS
1. Letter from Carole Alden to author.
2. Personal interview with “Penny Packer,” July 2009.
3. E-mail from Richard Senft to author, July 8, 2010.
CHAPTER 16: MIKE MCGRATH APPLIES CRITICAL THINKING
1. Seymour Barofsky, ed., The Wisdom of Mark Twain (New York: Citadel Press, 2003), p. 72.
2. These quotes and reminiscences, unless otherwise noted, are from e-mail correspondence between Michael McGrath and the author during 2010.
3. Later researchers agreed there was a problem. See D. V. Canter et al., “The Organized/Disorganized Typology of Serial Murder: Myth or Model?” Psychology Public Policy and Law 10, no. 3 (2004): 293–320, which notes that “Despite weaknesses in the organized/disorganized classification of serial killers, it is drawn on for ‘offender profiles,’ of offending, and in murder trials. This dichotomy was therefore tested by the multidimensional scaling of the co-occurrence of 39 aspects of serial killings derived from 100 murders committed by 100 US serial killers. Results revealed no distinct subsets of offense characteristics reflecting the dichotomy.” L. B. Schlesinger et al., “Ritual and Signature in Serial Sexual Homicide,” Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online 38, no. 2 (2010), noted that
[r]itual and signature are fantasy-driven, repetitive crime scene behaviors that have been found to occur in serial sexual homicide. Notwithstanding numerous anecdotal case reports, ritual and signature have rarely been studied empirically. In a national sample of 38 offenders and their 162 victims, we examined behavioral and thematic consistency, as well as the evolution and uniqueness of these crime scene actions. The notion that serial sexual murderers engage in the same rituals and leave unique signatures at every scene was not supported by our data. In fact, the results suggest that the crime scene conduct of this group of offenders is fairly complex and varied.
Malcolm Gladwell, “Dangerous Minds,” New Yorker, November 12, 2007, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/11/12/071112fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all (accessed September 17, 2010).
4. As noted in Brent E. Turvey, “Criminal Profiling in Court,” 2007, Forensic Solutions LLC, http://www.corpus-delicti.com/prof_archives_court.html#pd (accessed July 26, 2010), citing Gregg McCrary's January 24, 2000, deposition related to Alan Davis et al. v. State of Ohio, no. 312322, p. 121.
5. Investigation of Allegations of Cheating on the FBI's Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (DIOG) Exam (US Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, Oversight and Review Division, 2010).
6. See also Gladwell, “Dangerous Minds”; B. Snook et al., “The Criminal Profiling Illusion: What's Behind the Smoke and Mirrors?” Criminal Justice and Behavior 35, no. 10 (2008): 1257; Craig Jackson et al., “Against the Medical-Psychological Tradition of Understanding Serial Killing by Studying the Killers,” Amicus Curiae (2010), article in press; Ian Sample, “Psychological Profiling ‘Worse Than Useless,’” Guardian, September 14, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/14/psychological-profile-behavioural-psychology (accessed January 11, 2011).
7. Turvey, “Criminal Profiling in Court.”
8. In reality, there is no hard number. Estimates of false allegations of sexual assault vary from “never” to 90 percent. McGrath has always found problems with the lowball estimates and has equal difficulty believing estimates that exceed 40 to 50 percent. He feels a reasonable estimate, based on careful analysis of the studies cited in this endnote, as well as many other studies, is 25 percent. As noted by Brent E. Turvey and M. McGrath, “False Reports,” in Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis, 4th ed., edited by Brent E. Turvey (London: Academic Press, in press):
[F]alse reports of crime occur in many contexts and for many reasons. This is far from a small problem of isolated reports. The University of Southern California Department of Public Safety (campus police) has recently warned students that it will no longer tolerate false crime reports and will bring in the LAPD to prosecute such claims. [Martinez.] A campus police spokesman stated that one pattern that has emerged is students falsely reporting a crime, such as a robbery, to elicit sympathy from parents when grades are poor. Police in Clarke County, Georgia, are fed up with the phenomenon: “This is becoming an epidemic and we're taking a stance” [Johnson.]
Examples of false reports from Clarke County include: a UGA female law student reported a robbery and beating to garner sympathy during a divorce; a male UGA student reporting a beating and robbery to obtain free medical care after injuring himself while intoxicated; a soldier on leave who reported a robbery at knifepoint because he had spent too much money and did not want his wife to know. An Athens-Clarke police spokesman noted accurately that false reports of crime not only waste taxpayer money and police time, they also harm the community by inflating crime rates and perceptions of safety.
Every so often, a notable false report will be mentioned in the press, and unofficial false report rates will be disclosed to the public…. Those studying rape and sexual assault do not typically examine false reports, let alone talk about them. This is due in no small part to the fact that many researchers fear being maligned, blacklisted, or professionally sanctioned should their results not agree with the prevailing sexual-political climate. [Footnote within the original text states: “This opinion is based on discussions with fellow investigators and forensic examiners. It is also based on the fact that a number of the articles reviewed for this paper received scathing commentary from the professional community unrelated to reliability and validity. A common complaint was that the identification and prosecution of false reporters causes legitimate victims to fear reporting their crime to law enforcement. As such, it has been argued that presenting the false report numbers, any numbers, harms victims and casework by preventing legitimate victims from coming forward for fear of not being believed, or even being prosecuted for a crime.”] For the reader who till now has assumed that false reports of crime in general, and sexual assault specifically, are nonexistent or extremely rare, nothing could be further from the truth.
Turvey and McGrath, “False Reports,” also reviews the provenance of many of the different statistics generally given for false rape reporting. See within that review the following and other studies: J. Baeza and Brent E. Turvey, “False Reports,” in Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis, 2nd ed., edited by Brent E. Turvey (London: Academic Press, 2002); Brent E. Turvey, “False Reports,” in Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis, 3rd ed., edited by Brent E. Turvey (London: Academic Press, 2008); M. McGrath, “False Allegations of Rape and the Criminal Profiler,” Journal of Behavioral Profiling 1, no. 3 (2000); Brent E. Turvey and M. McGrath, “False Allegations of Crime,” in Forensic Victimology: Examining Violent Crime Victims in Investigative and Legal Contexts, edited by B. E. Turvey and W. Petherick (London: Academic Press, 2009); E. Greer, “The Truth behind Legal Dominance Feminism's Two Percent False Rape Claim Figure,” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 33 (1999): 947; D. P. Bryden and S. Lengnick, “Rape in the Criminal Justice System,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 87, no. 4 (1997); M. D. Feldman, C. V. Ford, and T. Stone, “Deceiving Others/Deceiving Oneself: Four Cases of Factitious Rape,” Southern Medical Journal 87, no. 7 (1994): 736; K. L. Gibbon, “False Allegations of Rape in Adults,” Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine 5, no. 4 (1998): 195–98; D. Haws, “The Elusive Numbers on False Rape,” Columbia Journalism Review 36, no. 4 (1997): 16–18; Joe Johnson, “Fake Crime Reports Becoming Real Pain: Police, Fed Up with Wasting Time, Money, Vow to Charge Pretenders,” Athens Banner-Herald, February 28, 2010; J. Jordan, “Beyond Belief? Police, Rape and Women's Credibility,” Criminology and Criminal Justice 4, no. 1 (2004): 29; E. J. Kanin, “False Rape Allegations,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 23, no. 1 (1994): 81-92; D. B. Kennedy and M. Witkowski, “False Allegations of Rape Revisited: A Replication of the Kanin Study,” Journal of Security Administration 23 (2000): 41–46; K. A. Lonsway, J. Archambault, and A. Berkowitz, “False Reports: Moving Beyond the Issue to Successfully Investigate and Prosecute Non-Stranger Sexual Assault,” National Center for the Prosecution of Violence Against Women (circa 2007), http://www.ndaa.org/publications/newsletters/the_voice_vol_3_no_1_2009.pdf (accessed September 11, 2010); K. A. Lonsway, “Unfounded Cases and False Allegations, Chapter in the National Center for Women and Policing: Successfully Investigating Acquaintance Sexual Assault: A National Training Manual for Law Enforcement,” National Center for the Prosecution of Violence against Women, 2001, http://www.womenandpolicing.org/publications.asp (accessed September 11, 2010). P. N. S. Rumney, “False Allegations of Rape,” Cambridge Law Journal 65, no. 1 (2006): 128–58.
9. Interestingly, some feminists who have read this manuscript have objected to the citation of the “one in four college students is raped” statistic, saying it presents a straw man argument that no one believes. As Christina Hoff Sommers notes, based on the 1988 Koss study,
“One in four” has since become the official figure on women's rape victimization cited in women's studies departments, rape crisis centers, women's magazines, and on protest buttons and posters. Susan Faludi defended it in a Newsweek story on sexual correctness. Naomi Wolf refers to it in The Beauty Myth, calculating that acquaintance rape is “more common than lefthandedness, alcoholism, and heart attacks.” “One in four” is chanted in “Take Back the Night” processions, and it is the number given in the date rape brochures handed out at freshman orientation at colleges and universities around the country. Politicians, from Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, a Democrat, to Republican Congressman Jim Ramstad of Minnesota, cite it regularly, and it is the primary reason for the Title IV, “Safe Campuses for Women” provision of the Violence against Women Act of 1993, which provides twenty million dollars to combat rape on college campuses. [References omitted.]
C. H. Sommers, Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women (Touchstone Books, 1995), p. 212, see in general chap. 10, pp. 209–26. The recent (2010) ABC News/Nightline article cited in the text, purportedly based on Department of Justice statistics, shows that the one in four rape statistic has real staying power. The crux of the problem revolves around a definition of rape that is worded so loosely and ambiguously that it encompasses events that few would consider to be rape—see Sommers's book for a detailed analysis. For a sense of current widespread use of the “one in four” statistic, see: One in Four Inc., 2008, national organization headquarters: New London, Connecticut, http://www.oneinfourusa.org/index.php (accessed September 12, 2010); UCSC Rape Prevention Education Rape Statistics, http://www2.ucsc.edu/rape-prevention/statistics.html (accessed September 12, 2010); Crisis Connection: College Campuses and Rape, http://www.crisisconnectioninc.org/sexualassault/college_campuses_and_rape.htm (accessed September 12, 2010); feminist.com, 2008, http://www.feminist.com/antiviolence/facts.html (accessed September 12, 2010). But also see: Michael P. Wright, “Deflating the Date Rape Scare: A Look at Campus Police Records,” 1998, Responsible Opposing.com, http://www.responsibleopposing.com/comment/1in4.html (accessed September 12, 2010); Chris (last name not given), “Rape Statistics: 1 in 4?” September 11, 2009, http://aspiringeconomist.com/index.php/2009/09/11/rape-statistics-1-in-4/ (accessed September 12, 2010).
10. McGrath refers readers to Sommers, Who Stole Feminism? chap. 10, pp. 209–26; J. W. Dixon and K. E. Dixon, “Gender-Specific Clinical Syndromes and Their Admissibility under the Federal Rules of Evidence,” American Journal of Trial Advocacy 27 (2003): 25–54; M. McMahon, “Battered Women and Bad Science: The Limited Validity and Utility of Battered Woman Syndrome,” Psychiatry, Psychology and Law 6, no. 1 (1999): 23–49; Mary Ann Dutton, “What Is Battered Woman Syndrome?” 2009, Wings of a Dove Domestic Violence Shelter, http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=150816125945&topic=11377 (accessed May 8, 2010). See also Wendy McElroy, “Rape Scandal Turns Sympathy into Skepticism,” April 21, 2004, Fox News, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,117690,00.html (accessed May 13, 2010); S. Taylor and K. C. Johnson, Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case (St. Martin's Griffin, 2008); Ampersand (pseudonym), “No, Ms Magazine Never ‘Hired’ Mary Koss,” Alas! A Blog, July 31, 2010, http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2010/07/31/no-ms-magazine-never-hired-mary-koss/ (accessed August 11, 2010).
11. Even though the “free pass” idea may push emotional hot buttons for feminists, it is a proposition for which abundant evidence exists. (See the following section “Suppressing the Evidence.”) There are inadvertent negative consequences to well-meaning but overwrought efforts to draw attention to rape as a major societal problem. As McGrath points out with his typically no-nonsense demeanor, “If I were a woman I would be so annoyed with this crap, for three reasons: 1) it is BS 2) it belittles the real women who have suffered an actual sexual assault and 3) it infantilizes women when someone else decides they were raped and they were apparently too stupid to realize it.”
12. Cynthia McFadden, “Many Campus Assault Victims Stay Quiet, or Fail to Get Help: One in Four College Women Will Be Raped before They Graduate, According to Justice Department Study,” ABC News/Nightline, 2010, http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/college-campus-assaults-constant-threat/story?id=11410988 (accessed September 11, 2010). Citing Rana Sampson, “Acquaintance Rape of College Students: Problem-Oriented Guides for Police Series No. 17,” US Department of Justice, http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/e03021472.pdf (accessed September 15, 2010).
13. Anny Jacoby, “College Campus ape Rate 10 Times Higher Than Detroit's? Don't Believe Everything the Justice Department Tells You … ,” September 19, 2010, http://annyjacoby.wordpress.com/2010/09/19/college-campus-rape-rate-10-times-higher-that-detroit%E2%80%99s-don%E2%80%99t-believe-everything-the-justice-department-tells-you (accessed February 4, 2011).
14. Brent E. Turvey and Wayne Petherick, Forensic Victimology: Examining Violent Crime Victims in Investigative and Legal Contexts (New York: Elsevier, 2009), pp. 239–40. Specifically, Walker states that battered woman syndrome was listed in the DSM-III-TR (1987) under section 309.81, but there is no section 309.81. The Forensic Victimology discussion from pages 237–48 describes many other problems with Walker's work from a scientific perspective.
15. Sporadic criticism of Walker's work has been published, but her standard response is a deflection: an accusation that critics are against battered women. See, for example, Michael McGrath, Lenore Walker, and Arnold Robbins, “More on Battered Women Syndrome: The Debate Continues …” Psychiatric Times, October 26, 2009, http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/1481281 (accessed May 1, 2010).
In related work, Diana Russell put her research assistants through sixty hours of “consciousness-raising” as part of their training for the data collection underpinning her book Rape in Marriage. There was enormous variability in the resulting data—one assistant, for example, discovered rape history in 90 percent of her respondents. In this regard, sociologist Augustine Brannigan observes, “In other words, she [Russell] didn't take ‘no’ for an answer. The problem is that it doesn't seem to be sufficient to conclude there is a grave problem, but it has to be framed as an epidemic in order for it to be taken seriously. Such a strategy can lead to the trivialization of the academic reports.” Personal communication between Augustine Brannigan and the author, May 5, 2010. See also Murray A. Straus, Richard J. Gelles, and Suzanne K. Steinmetz, Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family, Transaction revised from original 1980 edition (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2006). Straus has felt the brunt of career blackballing for publication of his findings.
16. E-mail communication, Mike McGrath to the author.
17. For far more detail, see the following: Straus, “Bucking the Tide in Family Violence Research”; M. A. Straus, “Women's Violence toward Men Is a Serious Social Problem,” Current Controversies on Family Violence 2 (2005): 55–77; Murray A. Straus, “Current Controversies and Prevalence Concerning Female Offenders of Intimate Partner Violence: Why the Overwhelming Evidence on Partner Physical Violence by Women Has Not Been Perceived and Is Often Denied,” Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma 18 (2009): 552–71; Murray A. Straus, “Processes Explaining the Concealment and Distortion of Evidence on Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence,” European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research 13 (2007): 227–32.
18. M. A. Straus, Beating the Devil Out of Them: Corporal Punishment by Parents and Its Effects on Children (Boston: Macmillan, 1994).
19. Straus, “Bucking the Tide in Family Violence Research.”
20. Ibid.
21. Straus, “Partner Physical Violence.”
22. Examples of studies and results include the following (data from ibid.):
Social workers involved with battered women feel certain that it could not be true that women initiate partner violence at the same rates as men—after all, their experience and all their training leads them to feel that women for sure are the main recipients of domestic violence. Others are simply left bewildered—how can it be true that “the percentage of women who physically assaulted a male partner is as high or higher than the percentage of men who physically assaulted a female partner, and that this applies to severe violence such as kicking, choking, and attacks with objects and weapons, as well as to minor violence … women initiate [partner violence] at the same or higher rates as men, and they are the sole perpetrator at the same or higher rates.” (Murray A. Straus, “Current Controversies and Prevalence Concerning Female Offenders of Intimate Partner Violence: Why the Overwhelming Evidence on Partner Physical Violence by Women Has Not Been Perceived and Is Often Denied,” Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma 18 [2009]: 552–71.) If that really were true, wouldn't everybody know it?
In two incisive journal articles, “Why the Overwhelming Evidence on Partner Physical Violence by Women Has Not Been Perceived and Is Often Denied” and “Processes Explaining the Concealment and Distortion of Evidence on Gender-Symmetry in Partner Violence,” Straus tackled precisely that question. (Ibid.; Straus, “Processes Explaining the Concealment and Distortion of Evidence on Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence,” pp. 227–32.) Straus found that researchers are unwilling to accept that partner violence is equally perpetrated by both men and women because men predominate in almost all other crimes—especially violent crimes. Women are also more likely to be hurt in any violent encounter, which brings them more into the public eye. But the most serious reason that many remain unaware of the true statistics involved in male and female partner violence is due to “the efforts of feminists to conceal, deny, and distort the evidence … these efforts include intimidation and threats, and have been carried out not only by feminist advocates and service providers, but also by feminist researchers who have let their ideological commitments overrule their scientific commitments” (ibid.).
In methodical fashion, Straus laid out seven methods used by feminists to conceal, deny, and distort evidence—providing copious documentation for each charge (ibid.). These methods included:
- Suppressing evidence
- Avoiding the gathering of data inconsistent with the belief that partner violence is caused by a patriarchal social and family system. (In reality, there are many causes of partner violence and types of violent relationships.)
- Citing only studies that show male perpetration of violence
- Concluding that results support feminist beliefs when they do not
- Creating “evidence” through citations that don't actually support the assertion (See also endnote 3, chap. 7 for an example.)
- Obstructing the publication of articles and funding of research that might contradict the idea that male dominance is the cause of partner violence
- Harassing, threatening, and penalizing researchers who produce evidence that contradicts feminist beliefs
Straus is not alone in his charges. Feminist Erin Pizzey, who founded the UK domestic violence charity Refuge, has received death threats and boycotts as a consequence of her statements that domestic violence is reciprocal between the sexes, with women just as capable of violence as men (Erin Pizzey, “How Feminists Tried to Destroy the Family,” Mail Online January 22, 2007, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-430702/How-feminists-tried-destroy-family.html (accessed October 29, 2010). Sociology professor Suzanne Steinmetz, author of the book The Battered Husband and coauthor of the “First National Family Violence Survey,” has also received death threats, and an ACLU meeting she spoke at received a bomb threat (Wendy McElroy, “Feminists Deny Truth on Domestic Violence,” FoxNews.com, May 30, 2006, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,197550,00.html [accessed October 30, 2010].) Lenore Walker's work, in other words, may well be the tip of the iceberg in lack of solid scientific research regarding battered women.
23. Shannan Catalano, Intimate Partner Violence in the United States (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2006); C. M. Rennison and S. Welchans, “Intimate Partner Violence (No. NCJ-178247)” (Washington, DC: Department of Justice, 2000); Straus, “Women's Violence toward Men Is a Serious Social Problem.”
24. As Straus notes:
In the 1970's, cases of child abuse had increased by about 10% per year and hundreds of shelters for battered women were opened. There was virtually complete consensus that the United States was experiencing an epidemic of child abuse and wife-beating. This did not seem right to me because of the tremendous growth of “protective factors” such as the increasing educational level of the population, increasing age at marriage and age at birth of the first child, fewer children per couple, growing availability and use of family therapy, decreasing use of [corporal punishment], national programs to increase awareness of child abuse, and the nation-wide establishment of child protective services which presumably provide assistance that will lower the probability of subsequent abuse. These same changes are also protective factors for wife-beating, to which must be added increased gender equality and the efforts to end domestic violence by the women's movement….
In 1985, the second National Family Violence Survey allowed Richard Gelles and me to test that theory. We found that child physical abuse had decreased by 47%, and wife-beating had decreased by 27% (Straus & Gelles, 1986). These results were greeted with doubt by child protective workers and hostility by feminists. The doubt was because it contradicted their daily experience of more and more cases. The hostility occurred because we found a large decrease in male violence toward female partners, but no decrease for [partner violence] by women, and because we suggested this might be the result of the domestic violence campaign ignoring female perpetration. The Christian Science Monitor interviewed Richard Berk, a leading feminist criminologist, wherein (18 November 1985, pp. 3–4) he said, “Given all we know about the pattern of crime statistics, a 47% drop is so unprecedented as to be unbelievable. Never before has there been a drop of that magnitude, that rapidly.” On the contrary, other crime rates did change that much and that fast. The homicide rate increased by more than 100% between 1963 and 1973. Then, between 1980 and 1984, homicide dropped at a faster annual rate than our studies found for male [partner violence]. I believe this is another example of an ideological or theoretical commitment blinding social scientists to the evidence. Since then, a national survey by Kaufman Kantor using the same questions in 1992 found a continuation of the decrease in assaults by men, and again no decrease for women (Straus, 1995; Straus, Kaufman Kantor, & Moore, 1997). Most recently, the research of Finkelhor and Jones has found sustained decreases in rates of child physical abuse (Finkelhor, 2008; Jones & Finkelhor, 2003).
Straus, “Bucking the Tide in Family Violence Research.”
CHAPTER 17: A LOVE AFFAIR WITH ART, WOOING THE PRESS, AND A CONVENIENT DEATH
1. Jeremy McCarter, “Drama Queen: Sarah Bernhardt Was Part Gaga, Part Streep,” Newsweek, September 27, 2010, p. 59, http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/16/palin_is_a_pale_imitation_of_this_sarah.html (accessed February 2, 2011).
2. Vince Horiuchi, “Artist's Works Are Her Therapy,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 26, 2005.
3. Ibid.
4. Letter from Carole Alden to the author.
5. “Beware of Lizard,” Deseret News, 1993, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/267732/CAPTION-ONLY—BEWARE-OF-LIZARD.html (accessed June 2, 2010).
6. Richard P. Christenson, “Artists Define, Break Down Boundaries,” Deseret News, March 7, 1993, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/279329/ARTISTS-DEFINE-BREAK-DOWN-BOUNDARIES.html?pg=2 (accessed June 2, 2010).
7. Brandon Griggs, “Arts Festival Comes Alive,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 23, 2006.
8. “Doll Museum Featuring Dinosaur, Dragon Exhibit,” Deseret News, October 11, 1994, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/380691/DOLL-MUSEUM-FEATURING-DINOSAUR-DRAGON-EXHIBIT.html (accessed June 2, 2010).
9. “Bike Was Boy's Only Possession,” Deseret News, September 8, 1991, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/181980/BIKE-WAS-BOYS-ONLY-POSSESSION.html (accessed June 2, 2010).
10. Dennis Lythgoe, “Replacement of Boy's Bike Proves Bad News Can Have a Happy Ending,” Deseret News, September 26, 1991, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/print/185059/REPLACEMENT-OF-BOYS-BIK-PROVES-BAD-NEWS-CAN-HAVE-A-HAPPY-ENDING.html (accessed June 2, 2010).
11. Ibid.
12. Francisco Kjolseth, “Hatching a Surprise—Holiday Spirit Brings Exotic Emus to Young Bird Lover Battling Cancer; Holden Girl Is Given a Surprising Present: Exotic Emu Chicks,” Salt Lake City Tribune, January 2, 2002.
13. Ibid.
14. Lynn Arave, “New Pets, Good News Cause for Celebration,” Deseret News, January 2, 2002, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/887315/New-pets-good-news-cause-for-celebration.html (accessed June 2, 2010).
15. E-mail from Krystal Rusek to author, September 28, 2010.
16. W. R. Anderson et al., “The Urologist's Guide to Genital Piercing,” BJU International 91, no. 3 (2003): 245–51.
17. Ibid.
18. C. Young and M. L. Armstrong, “What Nurses Need to Know When Caring for Women with Genital Piercings,” Nursing for Women's Health 12, no. 2 (2008): 128–38.
19. Ibid.
20. Letter from Carole Alden to the author.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Sheila Isenberg, Women Who Love Men Who Kill (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 138.
24. Ibid., pp. 199–200.
25. Personal interview with “Penny Packer,” July 2009.
26. “Forced to Wear a Chastity Belt!” Pick Me Up, February 7, 2008, http://www.pickmeupmagazine.co.uk/real_lives/Forced_to_wear_a_chastity_belt_article_177843.html (accessed June 10, 2010).
27. Letter from Carole Alden to the author.
28. Personal interview between Rosemary Salyer and the author, June 6, 2010.
29. Letter from Carole Alden to the author.
30. Telephone interview, LaRee Bristow and the author, July 2, 2010.
CHAPTER 18: WHY SO DIFFERENT?
1. G. Apollinaire and P. F. Read, The Cubist Painters (University of California Press, 2004), p. 9.
2. Personal interview between Irene Scott and the author, April 30, 2009
3. Although no one saw Ed Gein kill his brother, there were a number of oddities at the scene. For example, Henry was supposedly asphyxiated during a brushfire on the property, bruising his head on a rock as he fell. But although the body was lying on scorched earth, there were no burns. At the time, no one had reason to suspect the soft-spoken, mild-mannered, ever-helpful Ed. Harold Schechter, Deviant: The Shocking True Story of the Original “Psycho” (Pocket, 1998), pp. 31–32.
4. Robert D. McFadden, “Prisoner of Rage—A Special Report: From a Child of Promise to the Unabom Suspect,” New York Times, May 26, 1996, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B05E7D91139F935A15756C0A960958260&pagewanted=all (accessed September 4, 2010).
5. J. Hinckley and J. A. Hinckley, Breaking Points (Chosen Books, 1985).
6. N. C. Sharp, “The Human Genome and Sport, Including Epigenetics, Gene Doping, and Athleticogenomics,” Endocrinology & Metabolism Clinics of North America 39, no. 1 (2010): 20–15.
7. A. Knafo and S. Israel, “Genetic and Environmental Influences on Prosocial Behavior,” in Prosocial Motives, Emotions, and Behavior: The Better Angels of Our Nature, edited by M. Mikulincer and P. R. Shaver (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Publications, 2009).
8. Personal interview with Irene Scott.
CHAPTER 19: CAROLE AT WORK
1. Stella H. Day and Sebrina C. Ekins, Milestones of Millard: A Century of History of Millard County, 1851–1951 (Art City Publishing Company, 1951), p. 601.
2. Randy Morris's recollections ensue from a telephone interview between Randy Morris and the author, July 9, 2010, and e-mail communication from Randy Morris to the author, August 11, 2010.
3. Scott Ross's recollections are from a telephone interview between Scott Ross and the author, July 9, 2010.
4. Leonard Hardy's recollections are from a telephone interview between Leonard Hardy and the author, July 10, 2010.
5. All quotes from Richard Senft are from e-mails and a telephone interview with the author during July–September 2010.
6. Jane Nathanson and Gary Patronek, “Animal Hoarding—How the Semblance of a Benevolent Mission Becomes Actualized as Egoism and Cruelty,” in Pathological Altruism, edited by Barbara Oakley et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, in press).
7. Allan N. Schore, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994), p. 104.
8. A. N. Schore, Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self, edited by Daniel J. Siegel, Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), p. 37.
9. Nathanson and Patronek, “Animal Hoarding,” citing S. Bonas, J. McNicolas, and G. M. Collis, “Pets in the Network of Family Relationships: An Empirical Study,” Companion Animals and Us: Exploring the Relationships between People and Pets (2000): 209–36.
10. A nice overview that gives insight into the many factors involved is M. Radke-Yarrow and E. Brown, “Resilience and Vulnerability in Children of Multiple-Risk Families,” Development and Psychopathology 5, no. 4 (2009): 581–92. See also E. E. Werner, “Risk, Resilience, and Recovery: Perspectives from the Kauai Longitudinal Study,” Development and Psychopathology 5, no. 4 (2009): 503–15.
11. Nathanson and Patronek, “Animal Hoarding.”
12. Ibid.
13. Sue-Ellen Brown, “Self Psychological Theoretical Constructs of Animal Hoarding,” Society & Animal, Journal of Human-Animal Studies (2009), as cited in Nathanson and Patronek, “Animal Hoarding.”
CHAPTER 20: ALLEN LAKE
1. L. Chang, Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (Washington, DC: Gnosophia Publishers, 2006), p. 284.
2. A pseudonym.
3. This chapter is based on a personal interview by the author in Delta, Utah, with Allen Lake, June 19, 2009; and also a telephone conversation, September 2010.
CHAPTER 21: I’M RIGHT AND YOU’RE WRONG
1. K. J. Connolly and M. Martlew, Psychologically Speaking: A Book of Quotations (Leicester, UK: British Psychological Society, 1999), p. 5.
2. Robert Burton, On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not (St. Martin's Griffin, 2008).
3. Robert Burton, “Pathological Certitude,” in Pathological Altruism, edited by B. Oakley et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, in press).
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. David Brin, “Self-Addiction and Self-Righteousness,” in Pathological Altruism, edited by B. Oakley et al.
9. Burton, “Pathological Certitude.”
10. Madeline Li and Gary Rodin, “Altruism and Suffering in the Context of Cancer Caregiving: Implications of a Relational Paradigm,” in Pathological Altruism, edited by Barbara Oakley et al.
11. Karen G. Jackovich, “Sex, Visitors from the Grave, Psychic Healing: Kubler-Ross Is a Public Storm Center Again,” People 12, October 29, 1979, http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20074920,00.html (accessed July 29, 2010).
12. Ibid.
13. “Behavior: The Conversion of K,” Time, November 12, 1979, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,946362-2,00.html (accessed July 29, 2010).
14. Ibid.
15. Li and Rodin, “Altruism and Suffering in the Context of Cancer Caregiving.”
16. Robert Burton, “Pathological Certitude.”
17. D. L. Smith, The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2009), p. 114.
18. Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Modern World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 25–28.
19. Ibid., pp. 27–28.
20. Ibid., pp. 72, 77–79.
21. Ibid., p. 84.
22. Ibid., p. 234. citing V. S. Ramachandran and S. Blakeslee, Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind (Quill, 1999), pp. 131–32.
23. McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary, p. 235.
24. Ibid., pp. 192–93.
CHAPTER 22: A VICTIM’S SUPPORTERS
1. J. Winokur, The Big Curmudgeon: 2,500 Irreverently Outrageous Quotations from World-Class Grumps and Cantankerous Commentators (New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007), p. 36.
2. Ben Winslow, “Woman to Take Plea Deal in Murder Case,” Deseret Morning News, June 22, 2007.
3. Ibid.
4. Quotes in this section are based on a telephone interview between Sylvia Huntsman and the author, May 5, 2009.
CHAPTER 23: THE WAR ROOM
1. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Maxims and Reflections of Goethe (A translation of Sprüche in Prosa: zum ersten Mai erläutert und auf ihre Quellen zurückgeführt von G. v. Loeper, Berlin, 1870), New Edition, translated by Bailey Saunders (New York: Macmillan, 1906), p. 90.
2. All “War Room” conversations are based on composite recollections of those involved and portray a general sense of attitudes and opinions.
3. Letter from Stephen L. Golding, PhD, to James Slavens RE: State v. Sessions, January 8, 2007.
CHAPTER 24: MARTY’S SECRETS
1. Leo F. Buscaglia, Born for Love: Reflections on Loving (New York: Ballantine, 1994), p. 232.
2. The stories of Marty's grandmother, and related stories of Marty's younger years, are based on the recollections of Marty's younger brother Dennis Sessions, from interviews conducted in August–September 2010.
3. Denny attributes his own redemption to the kindness of strangers. Out of prison in a halfway house, he went to buy a snack from the catering truck. Unbeknownst to Denny, two $20 bills he had crumpled in his pocket slipped out as he was stuffing in change. The caterer saw the bills fall and called out, but Denny didn't hear and disappeared around the corner.
That $40 was all Denny had for lunch for two weeks, so he simply had to do without. Two weeks later, money once again in hand, Denny went back out to the truck—he was bowled over when the caterer handed him the two twenties from two weeks before.
“If it had been me,” Denny says ruefully, “I would have kept that money. It made me stop right there and rethink my life. I realized I wanted to be as honest as that guy was. It didn't happen overnight. But I changed my path. Now, seventeen years later, I have a good life—I like to think I'm almost the way that caterer was.”
Just as deception ruined Marty's life, honesty helped heal Denny.
Denny offers up the psychological outlook he's found that helps steer him away from addiction—even as he realizes it's not the full answer: “If you can let go of your anger,” he says, “you can move on. A lot of it is basically that simple. The way we feel is a direct result of the way we think, and the only way we can change how we feel is to change the way we think.”
4. Based on extensive correspondence with Carole Alden.
CHAPTER 25: MEDIA MAESTRO
1. Michael D. Wims, Charles Ambrose, and Jack B. Rubin, How to Prepare and Try a Murder Case: Prosecution and Defense Perspectives (American Bar Association, in press).
2. “Wife Kills ‘Depraved’ Hubby Who Made Her Wear Chastity Belt,” National Enquirer, UK ed., March 26, 2007, pp. 36–37.
3. Ibid.
4. Letter from Carole Alden to the author.
5. “Forced to Wear a Chastity Belt!” Pick Me Up, February 7, 2008, http://www.pickmeupmagazine.co.uk/real_lives/Forced_to_wear_a_chastity_belt_article_177843.html (accessed June 10, 2010).
6. John Cooke, “Woman Marries for Love-Then Kills for Survival,” National Enquirer, April 7, 2008, p. 48.
7. “Forced to Wear a Chastity Belt!”
8. Ibid.
9. Bruce E. Wexler, Brain and Culture: Neurobiology, Ideology, and Social Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), p. 96.
10. Ibid., p. 109.
11. Ibid., p. 104.
12. Ibid. See also E. Nagy et al., “The Neural Mechanisms of Reciprocal Communication,” Brain Research 1353 (2010): 59–67.
13. Carolyn Zahn-Waxler and Carole Van Hulle, “Empathy, Guilt, and Depression: When Caring for Others Becomes Costly to Children,” in Pathological Altruism, edited by Barbara Oakley et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, in press).
14. Ibid.
15. Letter from Carole Alden to the author.
CHAPTER 26: PRELIMINARY HEARING—THE GRAND FINALE
1. Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum, trans. William Weaver (New York: Harcourt, 2007), p. 49.
2. The information regarding Michael Wims is based on a personal interview, telephone interviews, and e-mails between Michael Wims and the author, 2010.
3. Personal interview with Pamela Wims, May 10, 2010.
4. Michael D. Wims, Charles Ambrose, and Jack B. Rubin, How to Prepare and Try a Murder Case: Prosecution and Defense Perspectives (American Bar Association, in press).
5. The following information is based on testimony recorded in the Fourth Judicial District Court, in and for Millard County, State of Utah, State of Utah, Plaintiff, v. Carole Alden Sessions, Defendant, Case No. 061700168, before the Honorable Donald J. Eyre, Fourth District Court, 765 South Highway 99, Fillmore, Utah 84631, transcript, preliminary hearing, January 8, 2007.
6. Letter from Carole Alden to the author.
7. Ruling on State's Motion to Disqualify Defense Counsel, Case No. 061700168, Judge Donald J. Eyre, August 28, 2006.
8. Letters from Carole Alden to the author; police sources.
9. Letters from Carole Alden to the author.
10. Motion to Stay the Proceedings and Supporting Memorandum, Case No. 061700168 in the Fourth Judicial District Court of Millard County, State of Utah, State of Utah, Plaintiff, v. Carole Elizabeth Alden, Defendant, September 21, 2006, p. 3, Judge Donald J. Eyre Jr. citing the August 14 hearing, 2006.
11. Interview, Mike Wims and the author, July 20, 2010.
CHAPTER 27: MARTY’S GOOD SIDE
1. Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Modern World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), p. 133.
2. Comments throughout the chapter from Anna Ruttenbur and Edee Sessions-Wagers are from telephone conversations between them and the author during August–September, 2010.
3. Lisa Rosetta, “Killer Paints Picture of Marriage Gone Bad,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 3, 2006.
4. Ibid.
5. Interview between Russ Crook and the author, June 16, 2009.
6. All quotations from Joe Trujillo are from a telephone interview between Joe Trujillo and the author, July 8, 2010.
7. State's Memorandum in Opposition to Defendant's 402 Motion to Reduce Conviction, Case No. 061700168 in the Fourth Judicial District Court of Millard County, State of Utah, State of Utah, Plaintiff, v. Carole Elizabeth Alden, Defendant, August 20, 2007, pp. 3–5, Judge Donald J. Eyre Jr., p. 7.
8. This beautiful campground features sweeping views of the Pahvant range and backs onto pasture land with idyllic grazing herds of cattle and horses. When friendly hosts Ann and Dick Flones happily chat with visitors during the evening ice cream socials, it looks like a Norman Rockwell painting. The campground also offers (if you know where to look) a view of the back of the Millard County Jail, where Carole was housed in the year following the homicide.
9. Nate Carlisle, “Wife Sentenced in Manslaughter,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 7, 2007.
10. Nate Carlisle, “Accused Slayer of Husband Calls Him Abusive, Depraved,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 9, 2007.
11. All quotes and reminiscences from Edee Sessions are from telephone interviews between Edee Sessions and the author, August–September 2010.
12. These reminiscences are based on interviews with Denny Sessions in August 2010.
13. Ibid.
14. Rosetta, “Killer Paints Picture of Marriage Gone Bad.”
CHAPTER 28: HOW LITTLE WE KNOW ABOUT PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS
1. Daily Reflections: A Book of Reflections by A. A. Members for A. A. Members (Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 1990), p. 336.
2. Daniel Carlat, Unhinged: The Trouble with Psychiatry—A Doctor's Revelations about a Profession in Crisis (New York: Free Press, 2010), p. 80.
3. Ibid.
4. Yu Gao and Adrian Raine, “Successful and Unsuccessful Psychopaths: A Neurobiological Model,” Behavioral Sciences & the Law 28, no. 2 (2010): 194–210.
5. Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Modern World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), p. 85.
6. S. Akhtar and H. Parens, Lying, Cheating, and Carrying On: Developmental, Clinical, and Sociocultural Aspects of Dishonesty and Deceit (Jason Aronson, 2009).
7. H. R. Agrawal et al., “Attachment Studies with Borderline Patients: A Review,” Harvard Review of Psychiatry 12, no. 2 (2004): 94–104.
8. W. M. Dinn et al., “Neurocognitive Function in Borderline Personality Disorder,” Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry 28, no. 2 (2004): 329–41.
9. E-mail communication from Joseph Carroll to the author, August 29, 2010. See “What Is Literary Darwinism,” interview with David DiSalvo, Neuronarrative, http://neuronarrative.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/what-is-literary-darwinism-an-interview-with-joseph-carroll/, posted February 27, 2009 (accessed January 13, 2011).
10. Ibid.
11. Paul T. Mason and Randi Kreger, Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 1998), p. 19.
12. “Wife Kills ‘Depraved’ Hubby Who Made Her Wear Chastity Belt,” National Enquirer, UK ed., March 26, 2007.
13. Nate Carlisle, “Accused Slayer of Husband Calls Him Abusive, Depraved,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 9, 2007.
14. Letter from Carole Alden to the author.
15. Akhtar and Parens, Lying, Cheating, and Carrying On.
16. R. B. Krueger, “The DSM Diagnostic Criteria for Sexual Sadism,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 39, no. 2 (2010): 325–45.
17. F. M. Saleh and F. S. Berlin, “Sexual Deviancy: Diagnostic and Neurobiological Considerations,” Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 12, no. 3 (2004): 53–76.
18. Ibid.
19. F. M. Saleh and F. S. Berlin, “Sex Hormones, Neurotransmitters, and Psychopharmacological Treatments in Men with Paraphilic Disorders,” Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 12, no. 3 (2004): 233–53.
20. P. A. Cross and K. Matheson, “Understanding Sadomasochism,” Journal of Homosexuality 50, no. 2 (2006): 133–66.
21. Personal interview with “Penny Packer,” July 2009.
22. B. A. Aguirre, Borderline Personality Disorder in Adolescents: A Complete Guide to Understanding and Coping When Your Adolescent Has BPD (Beverly, MA: Fair Winds, 2007), p. 119.
23. Richard C. W. Hall and Ryan C. W. Hall, “False Allegations: The Role of the Forensic Psychiatrist,” Journal of Psychiatric Practice (September 2001): 343–46.
24. E-mail from Randi Kreger to the author, November 2010.
25. Ibid.
26. The musings about how to better understand battered women are based on ideas outlined by Carolyn Zahn-Waxler, August, 2010.
27. Linda G. Mills, Violent Partners: A Breakthrough Plan for Ending the Cycle of Abuse (New York: Basic Books, 2008), p. xii.
28. E-mail correspondence between Mike Wims and the author, September 2010.
One might think that preexisting personality traits could make a person less culpable for murder in legal terms, but that's generally not the case. That makes sense—after all, wouldn't any personality traits figure in any crime?
In fact, in most jurisdictions only a severe mental disease or defect that renders a person unable to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of his acts can serve as a defense. Just having a personality disorder doesn't automatically mean someone has a severe mental disease. A person who has been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, for example, is not automatically considered to have a severe mental disease or defect. For instance, central features of “antisocial personality disorder,” as defined by the psychiatrist's bible, the DSM, include deceit, manipulation, and a persistent pattern of violating the basic rights of others by destroying property, stealing, or pursuing illegal occupations. But viewed from a legal perspective, “antisocial personality disorder” is simply a description of a personality—not necessarily a disease. Whether it qualifies as a mental disease, and further, a severe mental disease, can be an issue argued in court. So a forensic mental health expert would give an opinion, perhaps supported or contradicted by other experts, and the judge or jury would determine whether the criminal defendant has a personality disorder and if so, whether it is a “severe mental disease” and the defendant is as a result of the severe mental disease unable to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of his acts. Few personality disorders ultimately qualify for this defense. As a consequence, prisons are full of people who show the traits of antisocial personality disorder. As Wims points out: “Some mental health experts have called ‘anti-social personality disorder’ the same as a diagnosis of ‘classic son-of-a-bitch.’ So if the bad apple won't turn itself back into a good apple, perhaps we need to pull that apple out of our apple barrel and stick the apple in prison where it belongs.”
29. Lenore Walker, The Battered Woman (New York: Harper and Row, 1979).
30. Lenore Walker, Battered Woman Syndrome (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1984).
31. David L. Faigman, Legal Alchemy: The Use and Misuse of Science in the Law (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1999), pp. 72–75.
32. Mills, Violent Partners, p. xi.
33. Richard A. Friedman, “Accepting That Good Parents May Plant Bad Seeds,” New York Times, July 12, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/health/13mind.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=bad%20seed&st=cse (accessed July 16, 2010).
CHAPTER 29: THE DEAL
1. Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society (New York: New York Review of Books, 2008; original ed., 1950), p. 220.
2. R. M. Bilder, “Phenomics: Building Scaffolds for Biological Hypotheses in the Post-Genomic Era,” Biological Psychiatry 63, no. 5 (2008): 439; R. M. Bilder et al., “Phenomics: The Systematic Study of Phenotypes on a Genome-Wide Scale,” Neuroscience 164, no. 1 (2009): 30–42.
3. B. Levin, Women and Medicine, 3rd ed. (Scarecrow Press, 2002).
4. E-mail communication from Michael Wims, July 19, 2010.
5. Personal interview with Pat Finlinson and Richard Jacobson, June 17, 2009, at the Millard County Sheriff's Office.
6. Brent E. Turvey and Wayne Petherick, Forensic Victimology: Examining Violent Crime Victims in Investigative and Legal Contexts (New York: Elsevier, 2009), pp. xxxii–iii.
7. Carole Alden, letter to author.
CHAPTER 30: CLOSURE
1. Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society (New York: New York Review of Books, 2008; original ed., 1950), p. 220.
2. John Cooke, “Woman Marries for Love—Then Kills for Survival,” National Enquirer, April 7, 2008, p. 48.
3. Although I've made a note to myself to never again commit to having two books with the same deadline.
4. Marc D. Hauser, Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong (New York: Ecco, 2006).
5. Nicholas Wade, “Harvard Finds Scientist Guilty of Misconduct,” New York Times, August 20, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/education/21harvard.html?_r=1&ref=nicholas_wade (accessed September 3, 2010). Nicholas Wade, “Harvard Researcher May Have Fabricated Data,” New York Times, August 27, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/science/28harvard.html# (accessed September 3, 2010). Nicholas Wade, “Difficulties in Defining Errors in Case against Harvard Researcher,” New York Times, October 25, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/science/26hauser.html (accessed October 29, 2010).
6. E-mail communications with Marc Hauser, December 22–23, 2010.
7. Ibid.
8. E-mail communication from Joseph Carroll to the author, September 4, 2010.
9. Jonah Lehrer, “The Truth Wears Off: Is There Something Wrong with the Scientific Method?” New Yorker, 2010, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all (accessed January 4, 2011).
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. A prescient study in this regard is Augustine Brannigan, The Rise and Fall of Social Psychology: The Use and Misuse of the Experimental Method (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2004). See also Stephen Cole, ed. What's Wrong with Sociology? (Transaction Publishers, 2001); Rogers Wright and Nicholas Cummings, eds., Destructive Trends in Mental Health: The Well-Intentioned Path to Harm (Brunner-Routledge, 2005); D. Carlat, Unhinged: The Trouble with Psychiatry—A Doctor's Revelations about a Profession in Crisis (Free Press, 2010).
13. Some text in footnote taken directly from my original article: B. Oakley, “Kiss My APA!” Psychology Today, August 10, 2009, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/scalliwag/200908/kiss-my-apa (accessed January 3, 2011).
My theory—call it the “Oakley effect”—is that highly intelligent people are often less experienced in accepting and reacting constructively to criticism. (A neuroscientist might say they “have underdeveloped neurocircuitry for integrating negatively valenced stimuli.”) If you are often or nearly always right in your interactions with others as you mature, your increased confidence in your own abilities would be accompanied by an inadvertent decrease in your capacity to deal effectively with criticism. After all, your experience would have shown that your critics were usually wrong.
As brilliant people mature and move naturally into positions of authority, they begin to encounter richly complex problems—so complex that no single person can faultlessly teach himself or herself all the key concepts involved, which are often both contradictory and important. Yes, the gifted have an advantage in dealing with such problems, because they've got natural brainpower that allows them to hold many factors in mind at once, bringing formidable problem-solving skills to bear. But smart people have a natural disadvantage, too: they're not used to changing their thinking in response to criticism when they get things wrong.
In fact, natural smarties—the intellectual elite—often don't seem to learn the art of soliciting the criticism necessary to grasp the core issues of a complex problem and then making vital adaptations as a result. Instead, they fall in naturally with people who admire, rather than are critical of, their thinking. This further strengthens their conviction they are right, even as it distances them from people of very different backgrounds who grasp very different, but no less crucial, aspects of complex problems.
14. Ed Douglas, “Darwin's Natural Heir,” Guardian.co.uk, February 17, 2001, http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2001/feb/17/books.guardianreview 57 (accessed December 30, 2010).
15. Gillilan, “There's Always a Way.”
16. John Cooke, “Woman Marries for Love—Then Kills for Survival,” National Enquirer, April 7, 2008.
17. Sheryl Gillilan, “There's Always a Way: Carole Alden Continues the Artistic Life Behind Bars,” 15 Bytes: Utah's Art Magazine, 2010, http://www.artistsofutah.org/15bytes/10july/page1.html.
18. Jennifer W. Sanchez, “Utah Inmates Escape through Art,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 13, 2010, http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/50179924-78/art-prison-says-inmates.html.csp (accessed September 19, 2010).
19. Letter from Carole Alden to Prometheus Books, dated August 8, 2010.
20. Ibid.
21. Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Modern World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 55–56.
22. Ibid., p. 151.
23. E-mail from Krystal Rusek to the author, September 28, 2010.