Court Opinion

ID: 9853559
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:50:21.179895+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:51.116551
License: Public Domain

*170LEVINE, Justice,
concurring in the result.
Because I agree that it is the trial court’s function, not mine, to weigh the evidence, I concur in the result. I write separately to expose the issue of gender bias and to suggest that much needs to be done to educate and familiarize all judges and lawyers (and psychologists too, as this ease suggests) on the subject, so that when gender bias is present it can be recognized and diffused.
Dr. Darveaux applied two very different standards in evaluating Randy and Carla’s MMPI test results and interviews. For Randy’s, the psychologist reasonably took into account the stress and fear inherent in a child custody dispute. So, Randy’s “defensive manner” to the test questions “is not uncommon ... on custody evaluations.” Indeed, Randy was “appropriately guarded and concerned” during the interview and tests. While his tests showed “considerable degrees of anger and resentment,” Dr. Darveaux concluded that completion of the custody dispute would alleviate Randy’s “current stress and hostility” and that he would “feel less anxiety and hopefully be less likely to self-medicate his anger and tension with cigarettes and alcohol.” Randy was simply “reacting normally to the stress related to his physical separation from Carla, the current custody issues, and the current legal issues Randy [was] having with Carla’s father and mother.”
On the other hand and in telling contrast, Carla’s parallel anger was attributed not to the tension and stress of the custody dispute or the break-up of the marriage or the fear of losing custody, but to “hysteria”:
“Carla’s reactivity, in the form of crying, mental inflexibility, and anger, were suggestive of individuals with hysterical reactions .... The most common topics of emotional distress for Carla related to efforts by this psychologist to negotiate a visitation schedule (which gave Randy more time than he has currently), and to questions about how or why she broke up with Randy.”
Part of the “hysteria” was the fact that, on two occasions, Carla “teared up and cried,” especially “when she felt ... Randy was trying to take advantage of her [whom she accused of stalking her].” Carla “felt that Randy was trying to harrass her in a number of ways” and “maintained a substantial demeanor of resentment toward [him].” “During these angry periods of time, her voice tone became quite sharp, volume would raise (sic), and her thinking style became quite rigid.”
Both Carla and Randy had mild elevations on several scales of the MMPI. But Randy’s elevations suggest “healthy levels,” or “mild personalty trait[s],” not “clinical problem[s].” Carla’s elevations provoke the conclusion that she is “emotionally engulfed by the particular circumstances of a situation” and “reacts hysterically in emotional, behavioral, and cognitive ways.”
Commenting on Dr. Darveaux’s obviously disparate interpretation of Randy and Carla’s test scores and interviews, Dr. Podrygula, a psychologist retained by Carla to evaluate the evaluator and his evaluations, testified:
“And I think that’s an issue for women and that’s one of the issues ... our profession is facing.... Specifically, women in child custodies will come across as disturbed. Maybe not often, but a significant amount of time and there’s concern what that means and how it is interpreted or misinterpreted.”
“[Women] might look paranoid, very angry, very suspicious, and one of the real concerns that many of the people in our field have is how is this information interpreted? ... [One] of the possibilities psychologists in active research and lecturing and thinking are saying is that perhaps this reflects some reality. Perhaps there is some abuse, perhaps there is some stalking, perhaps there is some harassment and that the women [sic ] is expressing it in the form of suspiciousness and anger. And you put it hysterical — I prefer not to use that word. So that’s a very real issue for us, how do we interpret elevations, particularly for women in these kinds of situations.”
See also Carol Tavris, The Mismeasure of Woman (1992) [arguing that countless psychiatric diagnoses contained in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disor*171ders (DSM) derive from societal biases about, men and women rather than scientific data]; A History of Women: Silences of the Middle Ages 48 (Christiane Klapisch-Zuber ed., 1992) [discussing the origin of the term “hysterical” which derived from the ancient belief that a woman’s uterus traveled throughout her body and caused “the choking sensation sometimes experienced by hysterics.”]. Modern anatomy and physiology have debunked some ancient views about women, not all. Men and women alike still believe that “typically male” emotions and responses are normal, while “typically” female emotions and responses are not. Tavris, supra; Jodie Waisberg, Stuart Page, Gender Role Nonconformity and Perception of Mental Illness, 14 Women & Health 3 (1988); Christiane Brems, Robert S. Schlottmann, Gender-Bound Definitions of Mental Health, 122 J.Psyeh. 5 (1987). See also Lynn Heeht Schafran, Gender Bias in Family Courts, 17 Fam.Advocate 22 (1994) [“there is a predilection on the part of some males to see women as hysterical or particularly vindictive”]; Carolyn A. Goodzeit, Rethinking Emotional Distress Law: Prenatal Malpractice and Feminist Theory, 63 Fordham L.Rev. 175 (1994) [women’s complaints of pain are undervalued and dismissed as emotional or hysterical]. Such thinking clouds objective analysis about who will actually make a better custodial parent and what type of parent is in a child’s best interests.
“When men have problems, it’s because of their upbringing, personality, or environment; when women have problems, it’s because of something in their very psyche. When men have problems, society tends to look outward for explanations; when women have problems, society looks inward.” Tavris, supra at 175.
In addition to questioning the competence of Dr. Darveaux to act as a clinical psychologist, Dr. Podrygula roundly criticized Dr. Darveaux for assessing credibility to Randy but not to Carla. Dr. Darveaux apparently believed Randy’s denial that he harassed Carla. As Dr. Podrygula put it, a psychologist is not an investigator and “there was nothing psychological” that could answer the question of whether Randy did harass Carla by stalking her. Dr. Podrygula also criticized Dr. Darveaux’s attempt to mediate visitation without the presence of both parties. He concluded that Dr. Darveaux’s labelling of Carla’s refusal to accept Dr. Darveaux’s visitation schedule as irrational was a “subjective judgment” not justified by the data. But Dr. Podrygula’s greatest criticism of Dr. Darveaux was that there was simply inadequate evidence to assert that Carla was “paranoid” and “delusional,” very serious, major psychoses, mental disorders.
A custody dispute can be a very stressful time for everyone. The anger and emotion, or repression of them, exhibited by the parties ought to be viewed and evaluated by experts in the context they are expressed. I believe Dr. Darveaux did just that with Randy. I am very skeptical that he gave the same consideration to Carla. But the trial judge weighed the evidence and I defer to his ability to cut through the bias of Dr. Darveaux.
I concur in the result.