LIES IN
THE COURT Manufacturing Excuses
In her book, Manufacturing Victims, Canadian psychologist Dr. Tana Dineen,
provides the following examples where psychologists and psychiatrists were paid
to pathologize criminal behavior. Numbers in parentheses indicate the DSM-
IV
classification code.
Telephone scatologia (302.90): A psychiatrist argued that Richard Berendzen,
forced to resign his presidency of American University after being arrested
for making obscene phone calls, suffered from paraphilia (perverted sexual behavior).
Sleepwalking disorder (307.46): This diagnosis was used successfully
in the 1980s defense of a Canadian man charged with the murder of his wife’s
parents, after he drove 15 miles across Toronto in the middle of the night to
commit the act.
Somatoform disorder (330.81): A university professor was ordered to
pay his adult daughter $1,500 per month until he retires because she is unable
to work due to a “disorder” that makes her focus on her physical disability.
Not all of psychiatry’s bizarre defense arguments have made it into the
DSM , yet they still hold weight in our courts. For example:
Clerambault-Kandinsky syndrome: A psychologist testified that a chief
judge of New York State, charged with extortion and threatening to kidnap the
teenage daughter of his ex-lover, “was manifesting advanced symptoms of CKS,”
described as involving an irresistible lovesickness or “erotomania.”
Cultural psychosis: A defense lawyer in Milwaukee argued that a teenage
girl charged with the shooting and killing of another girl during an argument
over a leather coat suffered from “cultural psychosis” which caused her to think
that problems are resolved by gunfire.
Fan Obsession Syndrome: First invoked by psychiatrist Park Elliot Dietz
in 1992 to defend Robert Bardo, who had murdered actress Rebecca Schaeffer.
Gone with the Wind Syndrome: Named after the movie and used by rape
experts to explain why rapists believe sex has to be spontaneous and done after
some resistance on the part of the woman.
Superjock Syndrome: This formed a part of the O.J. Simpson trial. Dr.
Susan Forward, the therapist who treated Simpson’s murdered wife, Nicole, testified
for the prosecution that the likelihood of Simpson’s guilt was based on her
unproven theory that athletes, especially superstars, are prone to violence
when frustrated.
Accounting Anxiety: In 2003, a Norwegian psychologist claimed he suffered
from “accounting anxiety” to explain why he had violated financial and tax laws.
Moral Insanity: In 1998, psychiatrist William Cone was sentenced to
133 years in prison for sexual and deviate sexual assault of two female patients.
Cone claimed that he suffered from “moral insanity” brought on by his “obsessive
preoccu- pation with work, power and perfection ….”
This might explain why, in 1995, New Mexico state senator Duncan Scott proposed
an amendment to a psychiatrists and psychologists’ licensing bill, which read:
“Whenever a psychologist or psychiatrist testifies during a defendant’s competency
hearing, the psychologist or psychiatrist shall wear a cone-shaped hat that
is not less than two feet tall. The surface of the hat shall be imprinted with
stars and lightning bolts. Additionally, the psychologist or psychiatrist shall
be required to don a white beard that is not less than 18 inches in length and
shall punctuate crucial elements of his testimony by stabbing the air with a
wand.”
The amendment was approved by the Senate but was rejected by the New Mexico
House of Representatives.
On a more serious note, Dr. Szasz says: “Crimes are acts we commit. Diseases
are biological processes that happen to our bodies. Mixing these two concepts
by defining behaviors we disapprove of as diseases is a bottomless source of
confusion and corruption.”
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