4.Michael Brannon — Direct/Cross/Redirect

MICHAEL BRANNON: Sure.

So I'm a psychologist, licensed in the state of Florida. I have a bachelor's degree in psychology. That's from a university called Nova University. I also have a master's degree in psychology. I received that in 1980, also in psychology. And I received my doctoral degree in psychology after a year internship, where I worked with severely mentally ill individuals in Hialeah, Florida. [In 1988, I finished my degree requirements for my doctorate in psychology. And in 1990, I was licensed as a psychologist. I've been operating as a psychologist since then, since 1990.

Originally, I started off doing the work that most people kind of think about when they think about psychologists, doing therapy, counseling with people, helping them through with their problems, things like that. In 1994, I began on a career, almost quite accidentally, as a forensic psychologist and I testified in my first case in front of a jury. And from that time on, I've been doing mostly forensic psychology. My practice very quickly changed from that time on.

I'm currently the codirector of the Institute for Behavioral Sciences & the Law, and anywhere between 80 and 90 percent of all my work now is related to some legal or court-related matter in the ways in which mental health interfaces or impacts or helps to give opinions about various legal issues.

I've taught rather extensively in the area of forensic psychology. I teach to mostly legal audiences, but oftentimes, too, I speak to groups of psychology students wanting to sit up here and do what I'm doing as well. I make long drives and come up here and talk to people about cases.

I also -- currently, I'm on the staff -- on the adjunct faculty staff for the School of Psychiatry at Florida Atlantic University. I help to train their forensic psychiatrists. So not just psychologists, but psychiatrists in terms of doing this work as a psychologist or as a psychiatrist, a mental health professional who gives opinions in the courtroom.

MICHAEL BRANNON: So the DSM is the -- it stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. It's kind of our codebook, if you will, to help us to know what the different symptoms are for different mental health disorders, whether it's major depression or schizophrenia or anxiety. So it gives us a codebook of, here's the criteria you have to meet in order to have that diagnosis. And then we're able to utilize that in terms of either treatment, even insurance billing, but being able to inform patients, too, about what condition we think that they're suffering from.

It's been updated many times over the years. It started just DSM and now it's at the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fifth Edition, Text Revised. So we've gone through a lot of revisions over the years to try to fine-tune an empirical or scientific way what the elements are, if you will, of various mental health conditions.

MICHAEL BRANNON: Yes.

So battered spouse syndrome is a woman -- usually a woman's response. Doesn't have to be, but that's the classic, historical research relating to how women respond in situations in which there's intimate partner violence when they've been the victim of violence. Now we know, of course, in other kinds of relationships, men can be a victim of it as well, whether it's a heterosexual or homosexual relationship, that both men and women can be victims. We still know the majority of those individuals that are diagnosed with that condition or given that condition, classified with that condition are women.

We do know that it's a reaction, a strategy that's developed by the person who's being abused to someone who's abusing them in an intimate partner situation, and essentially what they're doing is they're -- they've made a determination that they can't effectively escape from the abuse. They can't just leave for some reason. They feel in danger or they've been threatened, if they leave, that something bad will happen to them.

So it's a cognitive or thinking strategy on the part of the person being abused that I have to develop some coping skills or ways of protecting myself and protecting myself from maybe even loved ones as well from some form of imminent violence or danger or lethality. Something bad will happen to me if I don't develop a way of handling this abuse, this constant abuse that's coming towards me. So battered wife syndrome is really a way of thinking. It's a psychological change that happens with a victim in terms of the way they cope and strategize to stay safe for themselves and other loved ones as well oftentimes.

MICHAEL BRANNON: Well, you'd want to see, one, if something -- some type of abuse has occurred. That abuse can be physical, it can be sexual, it can be emotional, or it can just be the threat of abuse or bad things is going to happen to you. So there has to be something bad that's happened or that's threatened to be happening over a period of time. So abuse has to be present in order for this to be underway. Without abuse, there's no battered wife syndrome.

But that's not enough. There also has to be what's called coercive control. Coercive control is really keeping the person's social interactions, you know, overseen on a regular basis, controlling money, controlling preferences, even TV preferences sometimes, social media, looking at social media that the person is accessing or looking at, who they're talking to on Facebook, who they're texting. So it's a combination of abuse and coercive control that results in a person feeling victimized, but that's still not enough.

That person then has to feel like they can't escape from that. They've either been told, If you leave me, you're going to die or a family member is going to be harmed; your children, your mother, whatever it might be. And as a result of that, they develop strategies to cope with that; acquiescing, pleasing, doing anything they're asked to do, demeaning themselves, allowing themselves to be controlled. All of the things that would fend off, if you will, some abuse or attack or threat to them or someone who surrounds them.

So those would be the components that you would need to have, and that dance continues to go on usually repeatedly throughout the course of that relationship.

MICHAEL BRANNON: Yes, and the way they appear is they can appear either from the abuser or the abused, or both.

What can happen from the abuser standpoint is, they may only be abusive or the abuse may become worse if they abuse substances. From the abused standpoint, it may be self-medication. It may be a way of coping with the anxiety, but there's going to be something bad that potentially could happen to them or somebody else. It's kind of a way of dealing with walking on the eggshells. So if I use substances, that can deaden the pain, if you will, for me or help me to forget about it. So it's oftentimes -- not always, but oftentimes -- part of either the abuser's behavior or the abused behavior.

MICHAEL BRANNON: That's a very frequent part of this syndrome. Not always, but it's very frequent. It's why interviewing them becomes difficult sometimes, because they're used to explaining away their behavior, the abuser's behavior; my black eye, my missing tooth, his screaming and yelling in the background while I'm talking to mom on the phone. So they're used to making excuses for it. It's part of the coping strategy, trying to explain away this behavior. He's had a bad day. She's, you know, really upset about something else that's going on. She's really never like this at any other time.

So defending that person is a part -- oftentimes, a part of the battered spouse syndrome. And getting the person who's been abused, to get them to stop defending them so they can talk about the actual abuse becomes a challenge.

MICHAEL BRANNON: That's how you decide which one -- whether it's your medical doctor or your psychologist, whoever, it's how they pick the right diagnosis.

So you're going through kind of a hard catalog in your head and you're saying, All right, there's symptoms of this, but that's also consistent with symptoms of that, so is it schizophrenia, is it bipolar disorder? Now I have to ask more questions. It's a decision tree, and that decision tree helps you to inform the person and either make a diagnosis ina legal setting or help to treat them clinically.

MICHAEL BRANNON: You have to go down the decision tree. We all kind of do decision trees in our mind every day about what we should do or shouldn't do in certain situations. It happens automatically. It's more structured when you're doing it professionally.

So if we have a concern about substances, then you would kind of take that track and you'd have to ask a lot of questions in that area. So you'd want to know what kind of substances, how often are they using those substances, what kind of effect have those substances had on them before. I just picked one of many possible rule-outs there, but every one of them you'd have to explore or ask additional questions because, of course, you don't want to come to the wrong diagnosis. Because ina legal setting, that leads you to a bad opinion. In a clinical setting, it leads to bad treatment.

MICHAEL BRANNON: Well, I'd first want to know what type of an assessment that it is, because there's different methods of approach that you'd use to analyze and be able to give an opinion on whatever question is being asked of you.

So the very first goal for me as a forensic psychologist is to isolate what the question is. So what are they asking me to do? Because I want to know, A, can I do that -- am I qualified to do that or should I refer that to somebody else? Or, B, is that something I'm going to have enough time to do, enough resources to do? And the next thing I would do is start asking questions about specifically what you already have or what can you get to help me answer this question. So right away I'd start to find out what's available.

As forensic psychologists, we're supposed to do comprehensive evaluations of whatever the legal issue or question is and it's supposed to rely on multiple sources of information. So depending, again, upon the question, I'm trying to then define early on, what are those multiple pieces of information I'm going to need to help to try to give an opinion -- an educated opinion about that matter.

MICHAEL BRANNON: So specific to this, you'd want to look at a lot of different sources of information, because you're trying to, A, make a diagnosis if there's a trauma-related disorder, but you're also trying to figure out if there's the other elements necessary to make the diagnosis as well; like, abuse that's been chronic over a period of time and that the person feels they can't leave that situation, and if other people have been threatened.

So you'd want to know things like, not only what the facts are of a particular incident, usually some crime that's been committed, but you'd want to know the history of those behaviors. Has anyone else seen those? Are there people you can talk to; you know, friends, neighbors, bosses? Anybody who's seen or heard of this abuse before? Have there been medical visits where the person has actually been damaged and shown up, made some other excuse, they slipped or fell or whatever it might be?

You'd want to do psychological testing as a forensic psychologist, because we have very good tests to help us to determine whether someone is suffering from a trauma-based disorder or not. You'd want to know if the person who had been accused of the crime for this type of evaluation made any statements to the police. If they did, you'd want to hear that statement; or has there been a 911 call or calls? If that's happened, you'd want to hear that too.

So any evidence you could collect -- and these are some of those questions I was talking to you about before. You'd want to ask the person who's trying to hire you in the beginning, Well, tell me what you have, because you'd want to see whether or not you're going to be able to make this analysis or not. So it's not good enough just to talk to the person, because that's just one form of information. It's almost like being a behavioral detective, if you will, as a forensic psychologist because we're trying to get as much evidence wrapping around our interview with the person as possible to be able to guide our questions, but inform us and see whether there's, what we call, convergent validity. It's a fancy way of saying, does everything agree with each other? Does everything connect in a way that it all sort of makes sense or are these strange conflicting pieces of evidence that we need to explain away, or it just doesn't fit the criteria. So it's a rather comprehensive and complex evaluation that has to be conducted to come up with this.

And the final piece I'd say about it is that, because oftentimes the abused person is defending still the person that they've oftentimes committed the crime against, it takes a bit of time to get to where you need to go. With all victims of trauma, whether you're talking about Situations where you're doing therapy or you're doing an analysis in this type of setting, a criminal setting, it usually takes some time to break through that and get them to trust you to talk about the trauma, but to stop defending the person and talk about the abuse and how they felt about the abuse.

Your goal, if you will, is to be able to see what's happening in that situation through the abused person's eyes. If you look at it through your eyes, often it doesn't seem to make sense, but if you look at it through their eyes, if it meets the criteria for battered spouse, then you can better understand their world and what they were dealing with.

MICHAEL BRANNON: Sure.

The biggest part is, it's not just the use of alcohol, it's impairment that happens as a result. So it's the excessive use of alcohol, that could mean something different, just like the excessive use of marijuana might mean, but it's the use of alcohol to the degree that it impairs or affects a person's life. And with that may come a lot of other things, like deceitfulness or aggression or unreliability, sleep or somatic problems, difficulties, so -- but the important thing to remember there is that it's the use of a substance that impairs or affects a person's life.

MICHAEL BRANNON: I can, yes, sir.

So it is a grandiose sense of self-worth. It's the consideration of yourself over anybody else. It's kind of operating in your own world, so it's an inflated sense of who you are. It's a misperception of how important you are to other people, your meaning to other people. It's a sense of specialness, that you stand out from other people in terms of special skill or skills; and that other people, if they don't recognize that, they should recognize that. So the heading -- the biggest heading there is an inflated sense of self-esteem and grandiosity.

MICHAEL BRANNON: Sure.

So there's a cycle of violence that was first developed by a woman in the '70s called Lenore Walker, Dr. Lenore Walker. She's the psychologist who's usually credited with developing the whole theory of battered spouse syndrome. And in the classic model, which we know oftentimes happens, not every time, but the classic model, there's a period of tension buildup where things are happening, little arguments are happening, there's bickering back and forth, there may be some threats or some loud voices back and forth, but it's all things that are leading up to a possible violent episode.

Then there's the episode that happens itself, the violent episode. It could be verbal, sexual, physical, but there's the violent incident that occurs. And then after that violent episode occurs, there's a honeymoon phase where the person who's done the abuse, they're apologizing, taking that person who was abused out to dinner, buying them things, saying nice things to them, complimenting them to sort of make up for the abuse. And it's kind of a -- it's called the cycle of violence, and the reason why is, it tends to repeat itself ina lot of these situations of battered spouse syndrome where you see this repeating itself over and over and over again. So people are kind of stuck in these revolving doors in their relationship.

MICHAEL BRANNON: Yes, sir. I mean, intimate partner violence can happen outside the legal settings, but it's really kind of the large over-grouping, if you will, to be able to talk about all these other things that can happen as a result, like trauma-based disorders and battered spouse syndrome.

And you're right, the later research has kind of pulled us away from thinking this only happens to women in heterosexual relationships. We know now there's all sorts of derivations and that men can be -- suffer also from battered spouse syndrome, battered person syndrome, homosexual couples. So we know it goes around to everybody, but, still, women are more often diagnosed with battered spouse syndrome than anybody else.

MICHAEL BRANNON: I do.

So it would increase the probability of physical violence. So if those things, in fact, were perceived as threatening or abusive in any way or insulting to the person who they were directed towards, it would increase the probability of physical violence.