I watched the J. Behar show last night and found the interview with Dr. Welner, psychiatrist, very interesting regarding ICA. Explains some of her behavior (detached) and discussion of the videotape being released.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1107/12/joy.01.html
DR. MICHAEL WELNER, CHAIRMAN, THE FORENSIC PANEL: Thank you. NYU is a great school.
(CROSSTALK)
BEHAR: Ok, yes.
WELNER: And the Forensic Panel is wonderful.
BEHAR: I mean, I have so many things that are still bugging me. Like this is going to break someone reminds me that Baez -- he opened his statements with an accusation. The father molested her and da, da, da. Shouldn`t he be accountable for that accusation?
How come a defense attorney can just throw something out like that and get away with it? I mean it doesn`t seem right.
WELNER: Well, this brings to mind the question that people had of why was she acquitted? Why was she found not guilty and then people would come back and say you have to create reasonable doubt.
BEHAR: Yes.
WELNER: How do you -- how do you create reasonable doubt? Three ways: taking the prosecutors off the high road by doing risky things, forensic science, taking chances. Two, creating distractions. Taking people`s attention off the bottom line issue so that they`re thinking about odors and aromas and -- and this and that.
BEHAR: Right.
WELNER: And the third is theater. Theater, and that`s part of the theater, whether it`s Baez or whether its Johnnie Cochran saying it`s --
(CROSSTALK)
BEHAR: Oh yes.
WELNER: -- you know, Hitler, invoking Hitler. So -- so theater is an essential part of arguments.
BEHAR: And poetry.
WELNER: And poetry, whatever it takes. So he`s doing his job.
BEHAR: Yes.
WELNER: He`s doing his job. Some people may feel that it`s unorthodox, but that`s what he`s supposed to do.
BEHAR: Well then, you know what, why doesn`t Cindy Anthony -- not Cindy -- George Anthony sue him? Why not sue the defense attorney? You threw that out, you make me look like a child molester when I don`t know if you are or not -- I`m sure he would deny it, there`s no proof. Why can sue him from putting that out there. He`s ruined that man`s reputation.
WELNER: You know, of course, George is going to wrestle with these things. But one of the things that he`ll confront is if there`s a lot of pain associated with this case, whether it`s his pain, whether it`s others` pain, whether it`s even Casey Anthony, they`ll get more mileage by putting it behind them as far and as fast as they can.
BEHAR: Ok, I figured that.
Ok. Now let`s talk about Casey. Have you ever seen this type of behavior before in other people? What you observed in this particular girl?
WELNER: Well, mothers who kill their children, it`s an unusual event, but it happens. Sometimes it happens in a setting of confrontation. And sometimes, if we believe Casey Anthony and it happened in an accident, that the child died, the level of regret, the level of grief, the level of guilt, the level of emotion --
(CROSSTALK)
BEHAR: Right.
WELNER: Is obvious for all to see. I remember a case in which --
(CROSSTALK)
BEHAR: And wait, we didn`t see that.
WELNER: And what we saw --
BEHAR: We didn`t see that.
WELNER: -- was 30 days of the police not being called and hot body contests and shacking up with a boyfriend. And if she didn`t have parents to raise concerns with her, she might never have brought it to anyone`s attention. Why did she bring it in the first place is because her parents were pressuring her.
So what we saw was indifference, detachment, and detachment and alienation is what you see from parents who kill their children who were anticipating doing it and getting to that place where they decided to finally go forward with it. And they were comfortable with a decision before so they were comfortable with the decision after.
BEHAR: So I mean -- the girl was found not guilty. But your implication is that it was premeditated.
WELNER: Never mind what I think. Never mind if I think she`s guilty. I`ll tell you what the problem is.
BEHAR: Yes.
WELNER: The fantasy of mothers to kill their children is a lot more common than we recognize. I will tell you there are thousands of women in the United States who have that fantasy, and they`re horrified by it so they don`t do it.
But what they see --
(CROSSTALK)
BEHAR: Thank God.
WELNER: Joy, they believe she`s guilty. And they recognize that she was not held accountable. And so that barrier --
(CROSSTALK)
BEHAR: Uh-huh. Because they have those fantasies themselves. Is that what you`re saying?
WELNER: No, no, no. They have those fantasies, they recognize -- they recognize that she`s guilty. But the message to them is that a woman who kills her child -- the concept is so unusual --
(CROSSTALK)
BEHAR: Yes.
WELNER: -- unfathomable to a jury that if they aren`t absolutely positively beyond, beyond a reasonable doubt that they`ll acquit her. And the idea that they could do it and not be held accountable is something for them to think about. It becomes an option. How many people consider the unthinkable because they think maybe I won`t be held accountable? Maybe won`t people believe that it`s possible --
(CROSSTALK)
BEHAR: Yes, yes. A lot of people, I think.
Ok, now these other cases like Andrea Yates. That woman killed her five children by drowning them. And she was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Do you think that you have to be insane to kill your children?
WELNER: There are women who kill their children who are laboring under mental illness. There are women who kill their children who are drug addicted, and who may be depressed but who are overwhelmed. They can`t bear. And even in the Yates case, there was a lot of conflict between her and her husband.
BEHAR: Right.
WELNER: And she killed her children as soon as he withdrew the support of his mother saying, you know, it`s time for you to take care of these kids on your own. Mother leaves, boom. First opportunity that Andrea`s alone with them, she drowns the children.
And then you have cases like Susan Smith.
BEHAR: Yes.
WELNER: And others who --
(CROSSTALK)
BEHAR: Opportunistic.
WELNER: Well, they -- they -- they feel that it is an opportunity for them to perhaps have a different life.
BEHAR: Yes.
WELNER: And they see their children as a hindrance.
Now, of course, what Casey Anthony`s motivation has been is a mystery. And that`s why we don`t really know what happened.
BEHAR: We don`t know. We don`t know.
WELNER: But we know that she said she was there and she was comfortable with the idea -- consider this -- of going off and living her life as if nothing was changed while maggots were eating the flesh of her child.
BEHAR: Ok. On that note, we`ll take a break. We`ll have more with Dr. Welner in just a minute.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BEHAR: I`m back with noted psychiatrist Dr. Michael Welner. You know, Doctor, there was a motion filed to release this video of Casey where she`s reacting when she learned that the child`s remains were found. She doubles over, she hyperventilates, she becomes hysterical before she knows that it`s Caylee. A lot of people saying that suggests guilt. What do you say?
WELNER: You can`t tell.
BEHAR: You can`t tell?
WELNER: You can`t tell. You just can`t tell. Those are the kinds of things that an evaluation actually sits down -- in an evaluation, you sit down with someone, you go through a video, and you say can we talk about this, and what were you thinking then? And what were you thinking them.
Look, I`m the first person to point out --
BEHAR: But she thought that the kid -- she says that the child died by accident. So then what was she so upset about when they found the remains? Ah.
WELNER: Well, I`m with you on that. How can you not --
BEHAR: That`s very suspicious.
WELNER: You know, again, I had mentioned before about this whole maggot issue. The attachment of a caring mother, accident even on purpose to a child, burial, respect, not discarding like yesterday`s trash, that`s the detachment. That`s the indifference. It isn`t just the idea of whether she killed the child or not. She seems to be comfortable having signed on to the account that she simply discarded this child.
BEHAR: Yes.
WELNER: And that`s unsettling.
BEHAR: Yes.
WELNER: At the very least.
BEHAR: It makes me think about movies that I`ve seen where people are doing ethnic cleansing or things like that, where they just willy-nilly will shoot somebody, shoot the whole family, have no affect whatsoever, go along, have no guilt.
It`s interesting that some -- a whole country, whole groups of people could be in that kind of lacking in empathy, sort of a psychotic break with themselves.
WELNER: Well, you`re on to something. What you`re tapping into is the notion that these people will kill complete strangers.
BEHAR: Yes.
WELNER: Genocidalyists (ph) and ethnic cleansers, they cease to look at them as people. They detach. And for some people who you would never expect to kill, they`re only able to kill because they detach from the victim.
BEHAR: Right.
Do you think that her relationship with her parents could ever be repaired? She doesn`t seem to want to talk to her mother at all. And as I said before, her mother really helped her because her mother gave that whole *advertiser censored* and bull story about the -- about the chloroform that she was looking into it, and they now say the mother was at work that day.
WELNER: Here`s the only thing that someone who hasn`t examined Casey Anthony can say. How much does attachment matter to her? Let`s say that she didn`t --
BEHAR: Exactly, apropos of the conversation --
WELNER: Let`s say she didn`t kill Caylee. Even if she didn`t kill her, if attachment is so unimportant to her that she could be indifferent without her, how important indeed is her attachment to her parents?
BEHAR: So what`s the future for this girl? She can`t attach to anybody, it sounds like. She can`t attach to another man. God forbid she has another child, she won`t be able to attach to another child.
WELNER: Well, there are plenty of people who have attachment problems and they find a way because they get their needs met and they go about their life and she has to go on. She`s going to be reminded of this because of a public sense of suspicion. In a way it`s like O.J., only she doesn`t have O.J.`s support, she doesn`t have O.J.`s charm. She doesn`t have O.J.`s connections. She doesn`t have O.J.`s history.
BEHAR: Doesn`t have the celebrity.
WELNER: Oh, she has a perverse kind of celebrity. But she doesn`t have the personal qualities of people and hangers on who will shield her. So she`s going to find and have to find a way to start a life where her past won`t come to her because she`s so visible and people are aware of where she`s been.
BEHAR: Ok. Thank you so much. You`re always a pleasure to have on and always so interesting.
We`ll be back in a minute.
I was just there two days ago...
