Please support the blog via Swish (Sweden) or MobilePay (Finland).
On June 17, NBC will broadcast an hour-long interview with Amber Heard. Here's a 2 minute and 35 second snapshot of the interview: Amber Heard Breaks Silence: I Don't Blame The Jury. Here's NBC:s Today's own article about the interview: Exclusive: Amber Heard says role of social media in Johnny Depp trial was not ‘fair’). Here's another article covering the story: Patten, 2022. Amber Heard Sets Primetime Sit-Down With NBC’s Savannah Guthrie On Depp Trial; Special Will Air This Week. Here's third article: Nolan, 2022: Amber Heard Team Defends Her Upcoming Interview: Depp 'Did the Same' Online.
There are also a lot of valuable commentary on the interview published on YouTube. These commentaries are found at the bottom of this article.
Now remember the background. And there's at least two pieces to take into consideration.
First, a legal process is not like a scientific process where researchers make a discovery and then use replication and disjunctive reasoning to confirm the findings. A legal process is mainly based on word battles where each legal team use leading statements to frame the witnesses to confirm their side of the story for the purpose of defending a viewpoint. Therefore, we don't get the whole picture and the real facts from such an approach.
Second, in some cases a legal process also uses evidence which are documented facts about certain events. During the trial evidence was presented that showed that Ms was the perpetrator of domestic violence in other cases. For example, this article from 2016: AMBER HEARD ARRESTED FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AGAINST GIRLFRIEND. There's also phone recordings where Ms Heard is verbally abusing Mr Depp. So evidence shows that Ms Heard was a perpetrator of domestic abuse in at least two of her relationsships.
Each legal team has consulted experts on forensic psychology and psychiatry to assess Ms Heard's mental state. The reason these assessments where made, was because Ms Heard herself has claimed that she suffered from mental issues. The big question was, when did those mental issues emerge?
Now during the process, the legal teams tried to question these experts expertise. For example, during her interview with forensic psychologist Dr. Curry, Elaine Bredehoft tried to reduce Dr Curry's role. First, Bredehoft did not recognize Dr Curry as a forensic psychologist and expert on assessment about personality disorders. That is of course an indication that Bredehoft had an understanding about Ms Heard's mental disorders. Bredehoft also tried to imply that an interview Dr. Curry had with Mr. Depp's legal team in his house, was about something else.
Another strange thing was that both legal teams asked the expert witnesses about how long they had been in active service. But experience per se is not a marker for being able to get the facts right. Long experience may actually increase the probability for something called continued Influence Effect - when misinformation continues to influence memory and reasoning about an event, despite the misinformation having been corrected.
Third, some presentations lacked explicit information. For example, Dr. Hughes, who have long experience of forensic psychology and who was Ms Heard's expert witness regarding Ms Heard's mental health, claimed that her assessment of Heard's mental state was based on "what we know" about domestic violence. Now here's the strange part. No one went on to ask Dr. Hughes any follow up questions about that, so the question is: what was and is Dr. Hughes understanding about domestic violence?
From her response, it's likely that Dr. Hughes has conformed to the feminist factoid which claim that in any case of domestic violence, women are always the victims. That's probably the belief held by people working at ACLU, the organization which participated in writing the famous op-ed in the Washington Post for which Ms Heard was sued by Mr. Depp.
From a research perspective, this is what is known about domestic violence:
- physical domestic violence is evenly distributed between the sexes; women account for at least half of the incidence and injuries.
- Psychological domestic violence is typically a female phenomenon.
- lethal domestic violence. It is as unlikely for a man as for a woman to be the victim.
- Also, the typical perpetrator of domestic violence is a person between 20 - 30 years of age.
any in a group of disorders involving pervasive patterns of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and the self that interfere with long-term functioning of the individual and are not limited to isolated episodes. DSM–IV–TR recognizes 10 specific personality disorders organized within three clusters: Cluster A includes paranoid, schizoid, and schizotypal; Cluster B includes antisocial, borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic; and Cluster C includes avoidant, dependent, and obsessive-compulsive; each disorder has its own entry in the dictionary. These constructs emerged from different theoretical perspectives of the early 20th century. They do not, however, exhaust the list of possible clinically significant maladaptive personality traits, and many of the DSM–IV–TR disorders are themselves often difficult to diagnose reliably; indeed, research has shown that many people diagnosed with a PD qualify for more than one. Conversely, personality disorder not otherwise specified, a residual category included within the DSM–IV–TR classification, is a highly common PD diagnosis in clinical settings, applied to patients whom clinicians determine to have a personality disorder but who do not meet the diagnostic criteria for any of the 10 disorders within the classification. DSM–5 retains the same clusters of disorders, as well as the same diagnostic criteria for them, but includes, for “further study,” a new model for PD classification, proposing impaired personality functioning and pathological personality traits as the main criteria for identifying the presence of a personality disorder.But instead of giving up, admitting, and moving on, Mr Heard sustains her conflict. Before the trail she stated that she just wanted to move on and that she hoped that Mr Depp would do that too. After she lost the trial, she expressed the opposite view (from Ms Heard's Twitter):
Ms Heard's sustained conflict now becomes visible during the interview where she continues to project and attribute everything that didn't go her way on injustice, Depp’s fame, and social media. Why does she do that?
Of course, if you have a personality disorder, which in most cases originates from your childhood, your reptile brain and mind has been in charge for a very long time. Read Johnson (2021) for an orientation.
Ms Heard is probably unable to activate her rational mind including the elaboration of scenarios forward in time, which likely would conclude that the process has ended, not necessarily as a failure for her, but more like a closing.
Now remember, Ms Heard is an actress by training. That means she is very good at putting herself in a specific role, pretending if you like. That's how she makes part of her money. But most of the money in her possession actually comes from Mr Depp.
But during the interview, Ms Heard's facial expressions most likely display a fight - flight mode, that is, her reptile brain and mind is in control. If true, it must be an exhausting wrestling game going on in her head.
Also, when suffering from a strong conviction, people tend to turn away from those who question them and from facts that go against their conviction. This is what social psychologist's Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schacter wrote in When Prophecy fails (1956/2008):
A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts and figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.Facts and figures. According to Dr. Curry's assessment, Ms Heard has a cluster B personality disorder. That disorder is probably the reason she can't give up, admit and move on. Instead the disorder is activating her reptile brain and mind and thus sustains her conflict. Because she’s famous, other women may follow suit.
Also read about another famous woman who refuse to give up, admit, and move on: Brad Pitt says Angelina Jolie 'sought to inflict harm' with vineyard sale
Elaine Bredehoft has seen all the evidence showing that Ms. Heard is a perpetrator of domestic violence, and the explanation - personality disorder. Despite this, she don't advise her client to accept the outcome and seek help, which must unethical. Instead Bredehoft tours various talk shows to promote the social media hypothesis an to continue to victimize Mr Heard, and to some extent, herself. The people working at ACLU also seem to promote that factoid. And they are joined by Michele Dauber, a professor of law at Stanford university:
Read: Michele Dauber professor of law, attacks Camille Vasquez on Twitter after the evidence showed that Amber Heard was the perpetrator of Domestic abuse
During the interview with Savannah Guthrie, Ms Heard contradicts herself, and so do her facial expressions. She says she don't care what people think about her. Then she goes on with a mix of defensive and offensive argumentation. It's very similar to her appearance during the trial.
These facial expressions do not display giving up, admitting, and moving on. In my view they confirm Dr. Curry's assessment about cluster B personality disorder.
For interpretations in detail:
Body Language Analyst REACTS to Amber Heard's INTERVIEW PREVIEW
Amber Heard Today Show Body Language: She Doesn't Blame the Jury?
Amber Heard Today Show Body Language Festival of Lies Continues
Amber Heard Speaks! Criminal Lawyer Reacts to Amber Heard's Interview With Savannah Guthrie
PR/SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERT REACTS: Amber Heard's Today Show Interview
Body Language Analyst REACTS to Amber Heard NBC/Today Show Interview! Is She Lying?!
Amber Heard accused of defaming Johnny Depp again
Please support the blog via Swish (Sweden) or MobilePay (Finland).
No comments:
Post a Comment