Lassiter 07 - Flesh and Bones by Levine, Paul (ebook reader web .txt) 📕

"As I recall, you tried that," Charlie said, "and found it unfulfilling. There has to be a balance. You have to find fulfilling work, what Mortimer Adler called play, or what Joseph Campbell called finding your bliss. At the same time, you cannot wager your entire worth, your self-esteem, on something so fleeting as the whims of a judge or jury, not when everything we call civilization can be extinguished in—"

"One swell foop," Kip said.

30

Body Language

After lunch, Dr. Lawrence Schein told the jurors that each of us has a secret compartment in which traumatic memories are locked away. "My job is to unlock that compartment, open the gateway to the mind, and release the memories. Only by remembering can we heal."

I kept the questions open and easy and let him talk. I wanted him relaxed and confident. It would make the contrast even greater when I broke him. If I broke him.

"All memories are stored somewhere in the brain," he said. "Some are accessible, ready to be called up at any time. Others are frozen, as if in a glacier. I use my training to warm up that glacier, to melt the ice, to let the memories run free as a river in the pristine woods."

He was up to his ass in picturesque wordplay, but I let him continue the spiel. Like a fish on a line, he would run a while before I set the hook. He told the jury about hypnosis, imagistic recall, psychodrama, free association, age regression, and gestalt therapy. He talked about patients in denial and the sensory flashbacks of abuse survivors. The words "remember" and "heal" came up repeatedly, as did the initials PTSD.

"Posttraumatic stress disorder—you may be familiar with the term," Schein said, with just a touch of condescension, turning toward the jury. "We called it Vietnam syndrome when our soldiers suffered it. Whatever term we use, it means the patient has sublimated the horrors of the past."

He talked about Chrissy Bernhardt's history. The eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, destructive relationships with men, the blocks of missing memories from childhood, the feeling of being out of control. He described the differences between traumatic experiences that are remembered in intricate detail and those we cannot remember at all.

"A Type I trauma is a short incident that leads to a brilliant, indelible memory," he explained. "A Type II trauma is caused by multiple, repetitious acts and may not be remembered. The mind anticipates the abuse—physical, sexual, or emotional—and represses the memory as a way of continuing to function. Of course, this defense mechanism does as much harm as good. The victim is not spared the agony of the abuse. She only feels it in different, self-destructive ways. Chrissy suffered Type II trauma and hence could not remember it until I unlocked the gate and the healing process began."

"She had no memories of the alleged abuse until you told her she was abused, is that correct?"

"No, not at all. I didn't tell her anything." Indignant and better prepared now that he knew where I was going. He gave the jury a little smile that said he was in control of this wily shyster.

"You suggested that her father abused her?" I said.

"No, I helped her remember what had happened so that she could heal. This is a little girl who had been raped, time and time again." He hit the word "rape" hard. An ugly word, and one of the woman jurors seemed to cringe. "To combat the pain and the shame, she had put herself into a trancelike state each time she was abused. Afterward, she told no one. Not her mother, not her teachers, not even herself. She didn't remember because she wouldn't let herself remember."

He was assured and convincing. He was either a brilliant practitioner of the latest advances in psychotherapy or a complete bullshit artist. I thought I knew which, but could I prove it? Then I played the tapes.

"How old are you, Christina?"

"Eleven."

"Are you a happy girl?"

"Oh, yes. I have everything a girl could want. "

The jurors sat transfixed, listening to that childlike voice.

"What do you have?"

"Toys and friends and a wonderful mommy."

''What about your father?"

"He gives me everything."

"Does Mommy love him?"

"I don't know."

"Christina, I'm Dr. Schein. I'm a friend of your mommy's."

"I know. You take care of her. She likes you. She told me so."

"Your mother is a wonderful woman. Tell me about your father."

"He hits her. He hits her a lot and calls her names. Mommy got sick, so she stays in her room. Daddy moved down the hall, next to my room."

"Does your father ever hit you?"

"No. Never. Not even when I'm bad."

"When are you bad, Christina?"

"When I don't do what Daddy says."

"Does he ever touch you in ways that frighten you?"

"No."

"Does he ever come into your bedroom and do things to you?"

"No. I don't remember anything like that at all."

I pushed the Stop button. "Now, Dr. Schein, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Chrissy just deny having been abused by her father?"

"Yes."

"After many hours of preliminary questioning?"

"Yes."

"Under hypnosis?"

"Yes."

"Injected with sodium amytal to enhance memory?"

Sure, I knew Millie Santiago thought it didn't work, but I'm a lawyer. I can go the other way if it helps the case, and Schein could hardly disagree after he had used it.

"Yes, I'd given her sodium amytal."

"But despite all of that—the questioning, the hypnosis, the truth serum—you wouldn't take no for an answer."

"I wouldn't accept at face value answers that clearly came from the surface of Christina's consciousness."

"The surface of her consciousness?" I mused, arching my eyebrows. "And where is that located, the cerebellum, the cerebrum, the isthmus of Panama?"

When I've exhausted logic and inductive reasoning, I resort to mockery and ridicule.

" 'Surface' is just an expression," he said through narrowed lips, "but if you must know, the regulator of explicit memory is the hippocampus. Studies show that survivors of childhood abuse often have a smaller hippocampus than