At the time of her infamous crime, Andrea Yates was a devout Christian, devoted wife, and dedicated mother of five biblically named children--Mary, Luke, Paul, John and Noah-- ages 6 months to 7 years old. She had given up her career as a nurse, deciding, with her husband's support, to be a full-time mother and to home-school her children. All seemed to be going fine at first. But after the birth of her first child began her gradual descent into hell.
Andrea became increasingly sad and despondent. The birth of each of her subsequent four children exacerbated her symptoms, and she was eventually diagnosed with postpartum depression. She felt convinced she was a terrible mother, deserving of punishment. "I think the Devil's in me," she confided to her brother. Fearing that her children "weren't developing correctly," she started to have thoughts about killing them to save their mortal souls: "They were not righteous," she felt, and would surely burn in hell if she did not terminate their still young, innocent lives.
Andrea concluded that her murderous thoughts toward her children must be from Satan, that she had been possessed by the devil. She made several suicide attempts in a desperate, instinctive attempt to protect the children from herself. Psychiatric treatment--consisting primarily of various combinations of antidepressant and anti-psychotic drugs with some very brief cognitive therapy-- provided some tenuous stabilization. However, when her father died, her condition deteriorated, resulting in hospitalization and a new diagnosis of schizophrenia.
On June 20, 2001, Yates fulfilled her filicidal fantasy: Left alone at home with her children while her husband Rusty was at work, she systematically forced each of her offspring face down into a bathtub filled with water, one after the other, holding their heads beneath the water as they struggled vainly for life, until each had died of deliberate drowning. She then dialed 911.
In jail, Yates was once again psychiatrically evaluated, bipolar disorder being the latest diagnosis. Charged with multiple murder, she went to trial in 2002, pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. As in the vast majority (75%) of cases invoking the insanity defense, she was found guilty, and sentenced to life in prison. But Dr. Park Dietz--a famous forensic psychiatrist and expert witness for the prosecution who opined that Yates was not legally insane and therefore responsible for her evil deeds--told the jury what later turned out to be an untruth regarding her likely motivation. The conviction was promptly appealed and overturned in 2005. In her second trial, Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Now 40, she remains confined to a locked psychiatric facility.
What possessed Yates to kill her own children? Motivations vary from case to case. ( I presented another recent case of filicide by drowning in a previous post.) On one hand, she suggests she was moved by love: To spare her children "eternal damnation," she had to save their souls by ending their lives. This implies she believed she was doing good, not evil. On the other hand, she told police in her confession: "I realized that it was time to be punished...for not being a good mother," and that she did what she did because she wanted the criminal justice system to punish her. This sounds like she knew what she was doing was illegal, evil or wrong, clearly understanding and desiring the negative consequences.
Yates, a perfectionist with a long history of bulimia, evidently suffered from pathological guilt regarding herself and her performance as a mother, and masochistically sought castigation. But whether or not she fully comprehended the quality and nature of her deeds and believed her behavior to be wrong at the time the crime was committed--the fundamental litmus test of legal insanity--where did these seemingly unthinkable thoughts come from? From whence springs such evil?
When asked why she had killed her own children, she allegedly stated it was "because I didn't want them tormented by Satan like I was." "It's something I was told to do...to kill them," she said, speaking of the devil. "I felt like he was inside me giving me directions...about harming my children." Was Yates possessed? And if so, by what? If she believed it was the Devil egging her on, why then did she do his evil bidding?
It is not unusual for religious or spiritual individuals to deny or repress the daimonic: sexual, angry, aggressive, hostile or other impulsions or feelings they themselves deem evil. Psychologically speaking, such disowned cognitions and unacceptable affects are symbolized by the idea or image of the devil or Satan. Whatever our religious inclinations, we are all to some extent culturally conditioned to feel that these primitive impulses are "negative," shameful, and antithetical to goodness or spirituality. In extreme cases, over time, these denied impulses strengthen and can no longer be repressed. At that point the psychological defense mechanism called projection kicks in: now the person is shamefully aware of these evil, nasty, profane feelings, but attributes them to the influence of some nefarious external agency such as the CIA, extraterrestrials, demons or the devil. He or she feels driven and controlled by these infernal forces, sometimes being urged by a voice (command hallucination) or compelled, despite moral resistance, by evil entities to carry out uncharacteristic, bizarre or even diabolical behaviors. These are extraordinarily dangerous states of mind.
I suspect Yates felt overwhelmed and resentful about her family responsibilities, but unable to admit it--even to herself. Was that chronic denial a misguided and finally catastrophic effort to be a "good Christian," a good wife, teacher, and mother? This is precisely the problem of what C.G. Jung termed the shadow: those morally ambiguous aspects of ourselves we deem unacceptable or evil, and dissociate. A classic (and highly cautionary) tale of the dangers of denying our shadow is Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Could Yates' repressed shadow--her dissociated Mrs. Hyde-- have been acted out in this heinous crime? Was it the shadow that made her do it? The devil? Demonic possession? Or was it, as mainstream psychiatry dogmatically maintains, aberrant biochemistry that made her mad, post-partum depression, a "broken brain" and raging hormonal imbalance to blame for her evil deeds? How can we make sense of such senseless acts? How much responsibility must we bear for "negative" feelings, thoughts, impulsions, and dealing with them? Could ongoing intensive psychotherapy and closer monitoring have foreseen and possibly prevented this tragedy? Or was this evil inevitable? Complicated questions. You be the jury.
"Was it the shadow that made
"Was it the shadow that made her do it? The devil? Demonic possession? Or was it, as mainstream psychiatry dogmatically maintains, aberrant biochemistry that made her mad, post-partum depression, a "broken brain" and raging hormonal imbalance to blame for her evil deeds?"
Personally, I don't think the biochemistry explanation and the psychological explanations are mutually exclusive. After all, our thoughts are all the result of the physical, of a biological entity. So I don't think it's much of a stretch that disordered thoughts/repression of the shadow/whatever you want to call it can lead to biochemical craziness that helps perpetuate the psychological disorderedness, and I don't think that it is a stretch for things to work in the other direction either. I also think that there are people, for whatever reason--genetic or otherwise--are more likely/sensitive to getting trapped in these sorts of loops of biochemical and psychological errors.
Maybe I've come to this conclusion largely because it most closely fits my own experience, (on medication for depression that I've inherited from both sides of my family, but which is clearly aggravated by stress and an exceedingly dysfunctional relationship with my family) but I know I'm not being particularly original with this idea, so I feel comfortable expressing it despite my personal bias.
So how much responsibility should we bear for our thoughts and actions? A fair bit, I think, but not quite all. Though it is not entirely impossible to break out of psychological disasters, or at least demand significant help for doing so, on one's own, once you have become sufficiently trapped by that sort of thing--abstract demons feeding the physical ones--it becomes very, very difficult. And I'm not talking about things like schizophrenics hearing voices or otherwise completely losing touch with reality--at that point, clearly you can't be held responsible (although perhaps in some cases you could be held responsible for letting yourself get to that point, I don't know enough about such things to say)--I'm talking about the more subtle, but often still devastating, distortions of perception that occur short of that point.
Ultimately, if Yates was seriously as disturbed as she seemed to be, I'm glad she's locked up and I'm equally glad that she's in a hospital, not a prison. But to be honest, my logic behind that is much more fuzzy than I'd like it to be. Because yes, though Yates clearly needed some serious help,it is possible that she knew what she was doing at the time she did it, knew that it was wrong, and did so anyways. But Yates clearly seems to have issues, and locking her away forever in prison doesn't seem to have much of a chance of helping anyone, where as a hospital might. But then, how many other criminals would I not feel uncomfortable applying the same logic to? I don't know.
To get to the final question, I don't think Yates' actions were inevitable. I once got landed in a shrinks' office for a whole semester of high school because a damn scantron test deemed me "dangerously perfectionistic" or something like that--I find it hard to believe that with therapy and close monitoring by a skilled professional someone wouldn't have picked up on Yates' various destructive tendencies enough to either a)intervene and solve them before they escalated to this kind of tragedy or b)get her away from her children after she had already reached a dangerous point. I could be completely wrong--people manage to hide depression and even suicidal tendencies all the time, maybe Yates' was just as skilled at hiding her own craziness. But I'm just speculating, just like everyone else here will be. Honestly, I think it's a rather useless exercise... but yet I'm still typing...
I think that's a good place to stop. If my wild speculation comes off as mindless ranting, as it very well might, feel free to ignore me.
Reply to Keely's comments
Very insightful, perceptive commentary, Keely, and definitely not "mindless ranting" by any means. As to whether it's all a "useless exercise," I disagree: Trying to better understand why people engage in evil deeds such as this and how to prevent or mitigate such destructive behavior is what psychology is really all about.
Was it the shadow, or aberrant biochemistry?
The biochemistry explaination is too insufficient. I believe years of psychoanalytic research have shown that environment plays a central role in character formation, and that nature serves only as the foundation. I will try to give what insight I can in Andrea Yates's mind.
It is clear from the outset that Andrea was characterlogically depressive. This undoubtly extends back to her childhood. You see, when a child is confronted with the loss of an object(parent, brother, sister, close friend) or the neglection of needs, they may resort to a defense knowns as turning against the self. They vent all thier anger inwards, introjectinf all the bad parts of the lost object. At the same time they identify with it, thinking "if I just become like them, they will love me." They see the lost object as being omnibenevolent, while the self, the ego is seen as evil and unforgivable. The result is harsh and demanding superego that is almost impossible to satisfy. Every dark impulse and need is seen as evidence of the self's malevolence.Further, saying to the child "Daddy left because he and Mommy couldn't get along, it has nothing to do with you." will not be an explaination they will understand. They will see themselves as responsible for the abandonement anyways, for a child cannot believe at such a young age that his parents could mean him harm, or that he was not responsible to the percieved abandonment. Andrea ruthlessly berated herself for being a bad mother, despite her extreme dedication. This seems to be the source of her perfectionism.
But it becomes more complex. I believe that her faith was both the seed and the vehicle for her paranoia. Deeply religous environments, like the one she grew up in, are known for producing paranoid individuals, due to two factors. (A) they sometimes inflict great humiliations upon the child, instilling great rage in him and (B) they also overtly or subvertly teach that even thinking about sin is bad, that thoughts are omnipotent. The child realizes that if thoughts are omnipotent, especially the bad ones, then he must be responsible for all sorts of terrible things. This is where, as you have said, Dr. Diamond, where projection enters. And there was a convienent recepient for these projections: the devil and his demons. She convincer herself that the devil was responsible.
Essentially, the postpartum nature of her depression put her children at the center these conflicting emotions. On the one hand, she hated her children, deeply resentful of her motherly burdens, while on the other hand, she had a demanding superego which opposed this hatred, seeing it as an obstacle in the pursuit of love. So she resolved the conflict. She painted herself and her children as possesed by the devil, that by killing them she was "saving" thier souls, and making known to the world the terrible she was convenced she was. And much to her masochistic satifaction, was caught, seen as the bad mother she believes she is.
Could this have been avoided? I'm deterministic, so in my opinion, no. But if she had gotten the direct attention of a therapist, one experienced in treating psychotics and the severly mentally impaired, and given good medication, she might have been on her to being a good mother. And her children would still be alive.
You will have to forgive me for the huge leaps of speculation I took here, for I have no information on Andrea's childhood. I am forced, instead, to rely purely on information of her current emotions, thoughts and bhavior. I hope I have been of help to you.
Response to Ethan
Yes, a very nice psychoanalytic exposition of some of the likely underlying dynamics in this case. You refer rightly to a possible history of "narcissistic wounding" during childhood, which negatively affects self-esteem, leading to the creation of what Winnicott called a "false self," and also to narcissistic rage which was chronically repressed and introjected, resulting possibly in both her depression and punitive superego. Not sure I can agree with your determinism, and it's easy to be a Monday-morning quarterback, but I concur that a more intensive psychotherapeutic approach to treatment such as I describe in my book Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic, might have made a difference. And I certainly agree that the purely biological explanation of such cases is totally insufficient.
Thank you, it is refreshing
Thank you, it is refreshing to hear from an expert that the last two years(since I was fifteen) I have spent studying psychoanalysis has proven to be of good use. I have read some of your other articles, the one concering exorcism and the other on your trip to Freud's home. I am glad to know that there is someone in the high up circles of psychological research who has not forgotten the decades of work done by Freud and Jung.
I myself am a Freudian, having a mixture of different veiwpoints, including object relations, self psychology, and Freud's drive theory. I am continuously dissapointed looking through issues of "Psychology Today" as I find rarely anything on personality and its development, and what I do find are mere footnotes. It seems like mainstream psychology is reverting to how it was before the rise of psychoanalysis, turning to biological explainations. At best we now have behavoral and cognitive models, which I find almost as lacking.
I have recently started reading Karen Horney, which has been temporarly halted, as I have been drawn in by Peter Gay's "The Freud Reader" a collection of his writings, many of which I have never read. The ones I have read are "The Ego and the Id", (there should be "superego" in there somewhere) "Civilization and Its Discontents", "The Interpretation of Dreams" "Three Contributions to the Theory of Sexuality" four of his case histories including Little Hans, The Wolfman, The Ratman, as well as Anna O. and Dora, the feminist critics' favorite, and a few other of his papers. My peers and my Aunt and Uncle think I am crazy(they're right on that one, I am narcissitic) as do my peers, but I don't mind. I get a lot of my self-esteem from being abnormal and oppositional.
I work as a therapist,
I work as a therapist, counseling adolescent girls who have been removed from thier homes due to environmental neglect or abuse. Most of them are much better off having been taken from such environments, but I think the system consistently de-values the esteem gained from having a biological parent in one's life even if they aren't a very good one. Both the abusers and abused will go to great lengths to hide the abuse rather than risk having thier family seperated. As one client put it "I would rather take an occasional beating from my mother then be stuck in a system where I have no real home life."
Andrea was outwardly providing a safe and nurturing environment but her kids were at a much greater risk than many removed from delapatated homes. Parents need to be able to openly discuss thier feelings towards thier children so assesments can be made that identify children in the highest risk categories.
I fully agree that Andrea's
I fully agree that Andrea's mind is rife with psychopathology, however I think that she is fully legally responsible for her crimes. On the day of the murders, she waited until she was alone with the children, locked every door in the house and also called 911. She clearly knew that her actions were wrong. And, since that is the litmus test of legal insanity, I feel she's guilty. If Park Dietz hadn't screwed up in the first trial, the verdict would have been much more just. See you in class on Monday!
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