The Judgement Panel : The Final Project

The Judgement Panel : The Final Project: The Yellow Wallpaper     By Ericka, Evan, And Tyler.

Why Him?

This afternoon I was called to the scene of a crime. A man had been stabbed in what was self defense. A man named Peter called 911 to report that a man named Jerry had started a fight with him in the middle of the park. Jerry had pulled out a knife and then dropped it as soon as he pulled it out. Peter then picked up the knife and that’s when Jerry charged at him and was stabbed.

Peter had fled the crime scene at first because he was so afraid but then came back to talk to police on what had happened. He was so flustered that he could barely speak, so the police allowed me to talk to him and try and calm him down. I asked him what happened and he said

“Earlier that morning when I woke up I stubbed my toe while walking to the bathroom. Then spilt my coffee on my pressed dress shirt. I could tell this was not gonna be my day. So I decided to take a walk in the park and read a book. That’s when my whole life changed.” That’s pretty much all he had to say. He was scared to answer any questions really because he didn’t want to say the wrong thing. He wasn’t going to speak until he had an attorney.

So a couple of days later the police then came to me with some very troubling news. Jerry the man who died had some criminal charges against him already and also spent a couple of months in a mental institution. After Peter decided to speak he had said “Jerry said that he had been to jail before and that he never wanted to go back. He would do anything not to go back to jail.” So that being said I figured I should really look into the reason why Jerry died and what he might have been thinking, I mean who drops a knife and then charges and runs right into the knife and dies. I started to look up Jerry to see if he had and criminal charges going against him that were recent. And low and behold he had a couple of drug charges and a robbery charge and was due to go to court the day after his death. Jerry could have been going to jail for 5 years if he would have been found guilty. Then my mind started running maybe Peter did stab Jerry in self defense but maybe Jerry wanted Peter to end his life. This would explain why he dropped the knife and why he ran into the knife. After his quote about never wanting to go back to jail I feel like he thought that this was the only way that he could never go back to jail. And that was to kill himself. Jerry must not have had the nerve to do it himself so he used Peter as a scapegoat and now Peters life has been turned upside down.

Torn in Two

When the subject Hamlet checked into our facility I could tell that there was some definite inner struggles going on within this persons self conscious. Hamlet who had recently lost his father was struggling with his fathers death and on top of that with how his father had died. Then to make things worse his mother remarried his Uncle Claudius. This infuriated Hamlet and in return caused him to resent his mother too. Now I believe that Hamlet could have overcome these feelings of resentment and hatred but he started to see his father in the form of a ghost. And the ghost of his father was telling him how Claudius had murdered murdered him. This caused him to forget trying to mend things with his uncle and mother and turn to finding ways to take out his uncle. He was torn into two pieces one being the person who wanted to kill and the other ego was talking him out of killing. He was becoming very harsh and would have random acts of violence.
 

Photo Credit: philipbitnar

So when I look at Hamlet I see someone that could have avoided all of this violence that he was throwing on to other people instead of the one person whom he wanted to kill. If it wasn't for his indecisiveness and this ego that he had that was trying to stop him, he could have saved his sanity. I’m not saying that the act of murder in any way, shape, or form is right but in this case I think it would have been the thing to do. Only because the real person who murdered his father was not being brought to justice so Hamlet could have taken it into his own hands and then his killing of Claudius could have been justified. I believe the justification for Hamlet killing Claudius would have been if he killed my father than he deserves to die too. And since the penalty for murder is death there would be no need for a trial. The killing of Claudius might have saved Hamlet from going crazy but that did not happen. He was torn and once that happened he had no chance in turning back.
 
Hamlet is going through some very intense questioning to diagnose what might be wrong with him but until then he will be held in solitary confinement. We don’t want him to take his violence out on the other patients, so when he gets that under control we can let him start to interact with them to maybe get back into a normal way of living life.

(Note: This is my version of Hamlet so the story ends different in the original story)

She’s a FAUAD

Connie who has been supposedly missing for the past 3 months has been spotted in Canada. Connie was taken from her home by a man named Arnold and was believed to abducted but a friend from Connie's school who moved to Canada a year earlier says she has seen Connie within the last week. “She was walking into a coffee shop when I approached her and asked how she was doing? She said her name wasn’t Connie and that it was “Sharron” so I decided to look her up on the Internet and it said she was missing. I have seen her a couple of times after that first interaction with her.” says Connie’s friend. I found this to be very interesting so I decided to interview her friend to see if I could get a better understanding on what was going on. I flew to Canada and sat down with Connie’s friend who I will be calling Kala to protect her identity.
Q: Kala what was Connie’s home life like?
A: She had a great mother and sister but they didn’t always get along with each other. Her mother was always putting Connie second behind her sister so that lead Connie always searching for attention. She was constantly spending time with older men to fill that void.

Q: Do you think that she was the type of person to run away?
A: Maybe, she sometimes would say that she wondered what life would be like if she could start over, but i never really thought she would actually go through with it so I tuned her out whenever she would say something like that.

Q: If Connie did in fact run away do you this she could have devised a plan and story as good as this one? I mean she has had everyone convinced that she was abducted by this man named Arnold but no one has ever heard of this person.
A: It is very possible she had a wild imagination. Sometimes when she was late to class she would always make up these elaborate stories that were very convincing. The teacher always believed her so it’s not really surprising if I start to look at it that way.

Q: My last question is from seeing her do you think she looked happier? I know you haven’t really had a conversation with her but just by looking at her body language how was she?
A: She for sure looked a little happier. She seems to have more confidence in her appearance. From what I see from afar and as crazy as this might sound but I think her running away she became a new person, someone who could have never been back in her home town.

After talking to Kala I stayed in Canada to see if I could find Connie and talk to her but I have yet to see her. I plan on staying here until I can find more information. I think it is very possible Connie was not abducted and she made up this story to get away from her old life. I’m not sure why she would have done this because I don’t have her take on her doings but when I find her the first question I ask her will be “Why?”

The Rose That Never Was

Photo Credit: matt_brock

Photo Credit: js_almada

Before the death of Emily Grierson I was able to sit down and talk to her. I had been talking to Emily for about 3 years so I had come to know her very well. Now when I first met Emily she was 71 and in a really terrible state of mind at the time, I was very surprised that she let me talk to her for as long as I did. She was very paranoid with everything around her but I believe she let me into her life because I reminded her so much of her dad who she loved dearly. As we all later learned Emily never buried her dad. He was laid up in the upstairs bedroom decaying. But why would she not give him the proper burial? From what she indicated to me was she couldn’t let her dad go. Once the townspeople started to come after her about not having to pay taxes she had no idea what to do. For years her dad had done everything for her, she didn’t have a job that paid enough to pay the taxes, she had no idea how to pay taxes, so I believe that the pressure finally got to her.

After her father's passing she met a man named Homer Barron. To her Homer was the start of something new. After the people of the town were frowning upon the relationship she was having with Homer. The wedding that she planned on having started to become less likely everyday. She began to stay inside. Not talking to people can make anyone go crazy especially someone as vulnerable as Emily was at the time. When the Minister of the town decided that something was seriously going wrong with Emily he paid her a visit to her house. From what I have heard from folks that lived in the town there was a bad odor coming from the upstairs. He supposedly snuck upstairs to find Emily’s father in a decaying state. Now people had seen Homer go into the house the day before the minister came to pay Emily a visit but no one ever saw him leave. Emily had bought some arsenic (which is a very strong poison) to supposedly kill rats. The Minister had said something about Emily using the arsenic to kill Homer, but why would she do that? He was the love of her life. No one believed him at the time, so he swore not to tell anyone of what he saw.

After she died and sometime was passed I was allowed to go see the sealed upstairs room for myself. It was very scary, the way the room was set up was like a time capsule everything was old and looked like it hadn’t been touch in about 30 years. Homer was laid across the bed with a suit on like he was going to a wedding and a long strand of Emily’s hair next to him. I believe that Emily thought that she was bound to lose Homer at some point in time and the only way to make sure she didn’t was to kill him and pretend like he was still alive. The mind of Emily had been messed up since she was little and from the information we have on Emily’s autopsy she was said to have a multiple personality disorder. Which would explain a lot when it came to the decisions that she was making and why she did what she did. I wished that I could have started talking to Emily a lot sooner in her life so I could have helped her but since she was at such an old age and at the most intense stage of her disease I wasn’t much help to her.

About

Good day. My name is Alfred Freud. As a graduate of Harvard University in 2009 I am fairly new in today's psychology workforce. But do not get confused although I am young I know what I am talking about. I am kin to the late and great Sigmund Freud. We have come a long way since my great grandfather ended his studies and I might have a different opinion on the mind today but he is still one of my hero's and many of my colleagues would say the same.

As far back as I can remember I have been fascinated with the mind and how it affects who we are. I do not believe in the use of drugs or medicine to treat people for their “problems”. The mind is a very complex object for some people to wrap their head around. I'm gonna try to make it as easy to understand as possible.

I now work at the Southern California Mental Health Institute. We help determine why people are committing crimes and what might be the underlying problems in their life's.