Frank Farley, clueless expert, on the Casey Anthony verdict

Yesterday I happened to be watching CNN as the verdict in the Casey Anthony trial was announced. Like much of America, I was stunned that she was acquitted. From the reports I’ve seen about Anthony’s pathological lying and lack of concern about her missing daughter, I am confident that she exhibits sociopathic traits. A criminal profiler came out and said on national television that she is a psychopath. See:

Profiler says letters show Casey Anthony to be a psychopath

All of us at Lovefraud know what sociopaths/psychopaths are capable of. So I was more stunned by one of the so-called CNN pundits, Dr. Frank Farley, who came on the show later. He said that the prosecution’s theory of Casey Anthony’s motive for murder was ludicrous. No mother, he claimed, would kill her child simply so she could go out and party.

Farley actually posted his views in a blog piece on CNN, in an article called Infanticide in order to party: A nonsense motive. He wrote:

No credible motivational psychology that I know of would support that a single mother who seemed to love her child and who had lots of back-up parenting, in the grandparents and perhaps even from a brother, would go through the careful planning and complex, unpredictable, scary process of killing and disposing of her child in order to get a bit more free time.

This could not be true, unless she was seriously mentally ill, and no available evidence showed that. To go against that deep human instinct to take care of a child, and instead kill that child, demands a very significant reward in the opposite direction, and partying doesn’t rise to that level.

What sane human being could wake up in the morning and say, “Gee, I could have a fun time if I killed my daughter.” There was also no evidence that Caylee was a difficult child whose behavior could lead her mother into a homicidal rage. This whole scheme goes against our deepest instincts rooted in thousands of years of evolution.

Obviously, the guy knows nothing about sociopaths. These disordered individuals have no love motivation. They are capable of killing for the flimsiest of reasons. Take the case of Diane Downs, cited in Dr. Robert Hare’s book, Without Conscience. She shot her three children in 1983 so she could carry on an affair.

ABC News recently aired interviews with Diane Downs, along with a clinical diagnosis: psychopath. Watch the videos here:

1983 Video: Mom who shot kids speaks on ABCNews.go.com.

Professor Farley

Now here’s what is really scary:  Frank Farley, Ph.D., is a psychologist and professor at Temple University, and former president of the American Psychological Association. He teaches educational psychology to graduate students. Here’s his biography:

Frank Farley, Ph.D., Temple University College of Education

Farley has come up with this goofy theory of “Type T Personalities.” The “T,” he says, stands for “thrill-seeking,” and certain people are driven to a life of constant stimulation and risk-taking. In fact, he recently wrote an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, claiming that this is why politicians cheat on their wives. I mentioned it in a recent blog post:

More on powerful men behaving badly

Actually, cheating politicians are probably displaying their sociopathic tendencies—grandiosity, overactive sex drive, recklessness, sense of entitlement. But Farley doesn’t get it. He also doesn’t get that it is quite possible for a woman to kill her child for barely any motivation.

And this is what he is teaching to his educational psychology students. No wonder so many people do not know that the sociopathic personality disorder exists.