It’s All Related: The MMPI, Amber Heard, & Family Court Evaluations
For some, there is a lack of understanding at the visceral reaction to Amber Heard being portrayed as the perpetrator in the U.S. Heard/Depp case. I say “U.S.”, lest people forget that Depp was found guilty of 12/14 domestic violence incidences in the U.K. The U.K. judge highlighted three incidences stating that Depp had put Ms. Heard in “fear of her life.”
It is no secret that I support Amber Heard and I am honored to be included in the Amicus Brief for her appeal. I briefly unpack her experiences as a victim of coercive control in Reframing Heard/Depp from the Coercive Control lens — She is the victim (https://medium.com/@christine_34019). Depp used classic DARVO on Amber Heard: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender (Freyd, 1997). Like most coercive controllers, Depp’s focus became revenge at any cost — including a public trial in the U.S. with money funneled into social media platforms depicting Ms. Heard in a negative light. He made good on his promise: After she received a restraining order in 2016 and subsequently filed for divorce, Depp texts, “She’s begging for total global humiliation… She’s gonna get it.” Revenge, written into the Coercive Controllers playbook.
However, beyond Depp’s offenses, this case highlights the complicit coercive control of victims, a compound complex trauma when the court systems are exerting this coercive control with various actors participating. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is a psychological test that assesses personality traits and psychopathology. Mental health practitioners use it to assess the mental health of clients. Its [purported] use is to determine people’s reactions to stress. Yet, it often pathologizes them. Along with reviewing prior psychological assessments and conducting clinical interviews, the MMPI was used to assess Ms. Heard’s mental health.
The MMPI is the most widely used assessment in custody proceedings. In 1937, Starke R. Hathaway, a clinical psychologist, and J. Charnley McKinley, a neuropsychiatrist, began to develop this instrument for use in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota Hospital. There are 567 true and false questions on this test originally created in 1943 and updated in 1989 as the MMPI-2 (https://www.upress.umn.edu/test-division/bibliography/mmpi-history).
A 1996 survey study found that 70% of psychologists use the MMPI for custody evaluations. The MMPI-2, the second version of the test, updated in 1989, found that 90% of psychologists use this assessment for custody evaluations (Gitlin, 2016). The instrument was originally created to predict if adolescents would become “delinquents” (Hathaway & Monachesi, 1961). This sounds all too archaic and familiar at the same time. Predict delinquency? We know that most if not all adolescents who are involved in the justice system have suffered trauma, including domestic violence (Felitti, 2009). The MMPI was supposed to alleviate subjectivity found in self-reporting inventories (Gitlin, 2016). Apparently, a True False test would create less ambiguity.
As with most domestic violence victims, complex post-traumatic stress is typical. It often creates behaviors that may be perceived as problematic, such as depression, self-harm, and anger. This is known as a traumatic response — a normal reaction to being controlled, feeling unsafe, and feeling off balance due to coercion. As I expressed in Reframing Heard/Depp from the Coercive Control Lens — She is the Victim, Depp is a partner who exerts coercive control. Heard’s behaviors were within the realm of how we may see victims behave, after as she [Ms. Heard] said, “years of controlling behavior.” As the article highlights, Ms. Heard may not be a “likeable” victim. But that does not discount her as the victim.
Dr. Shannon Curry, hired by Depp is the forensic and clinical psychologist who evaluated Ms. Heard. She stated to the court, “Ms. Heard did not have PTSD,” “And there were also pretty significant indications that she was grossly exaggerating symptoms of PTSD when asked about them.” Many of us in the field understand that most diagnosed disorders are trauma based and that most victims of domestic violence suffer PTSD. During cross-examination, Dr Curry said she was not board-certified and that she has never testified about violence between partners previously.
Additionally, Curry met with Johnny Depp prior to her hire, in his home for dinner and drinks. For most of us in the clinical field, being vetted at a dinner party to evaluate an opposing party seems at the least poor judgement and more like an ethical violation. The American Psychological Association addresses this in the guideline 1:17. Multiple relationships “Multiple Relationships”: A psychologist refrains from entering into or promising another personal, scientific, professional, financial, or other relationship with such persons if it appears likely that such a relationship reasonably might impair the psychologist’s objectivity or otherwise interfere with the psychologist’s effectively performing his or her functions as a psychologist, or might harm or exploit the other party (https://www.apa.org/ethics/code/code-1992).
Separations and divorces that appear contentious are beyond high conflict, they are abuse, coercive control. When a coercive controller feels control slipping through his hands, the coercive control intensifies with post separation abuse ensuing (Sharps-Jeffs, et al., 2018). Those of us familiar with family court know that financial resources give one person an advantage in these circumstances with vexatious litigation a common occurrence — including various evaluations — custody battles par for the course. As Rosenfeld and colleagues found (2019) abusers are drawn towards conflict rather than away from it.
Exposing and dismantling complicit coercive control in our judicial system that harms adult and child victims needs to be addressed. It is time to wake up. None of us are immune. Not our mothers, sisters, girlfriends, or daughters. Not Amber Heard. Misogynistic diagnoses and the tools used to evaluate those who have suffered significant trauma need to be thrown out of our judicial system. Any evaluators who refuse to acknowledge the insidious nature of coercive control are complicit and need to be held accountable. This is not rocket science. Our children are counting on us.
