Jodi Arias Murder Case | Borderline, Narcissistic, or Nothing?

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel oh this is dr. grande today's question asks if I can review the case of Jodi arias she was convicted in 2015 of murdering a young man named Travis Alexander who was somebody that she was in a relationship with so I'm gonna be taking a look at the timeline here but also the mental health and personality characteristics that may have been going on in this case just to be clear I'm not diagnosing anybody rather just speculating based on the evidence that's available so Jodi arias was born in 1980 and Travis Alexander was born in 1977 there's a lot of information available on this case more than I can possibly cover in this video I'm gonna try to cover the facts in the timeline that are important specifically to the mental health and personality aspects as well as a few other points just so the story kind of makes sense so we see in September of 2006 Travis met Jodi arias at a conference in Las Vegas and they connected at that time they were talking on the phone every day and later on we see in court records that they exchanged eighty-two thousand emails during the course of the relationship in February 2007 they officially started dating in June of oh seven they broke up but they continued to have a sexual relationship we see at that time that Travis allegedly said that there was nothing about arias that indicated to him that she was marriage material in December 2007 Travis began dating another woman and allegedly arias became jealous at this and slashed his tires twice and sent a harassing email to his girlfriend this is what it reports of course we don't know this for certain now in January 2008 we see that arias sent sexually explicit texts to Travis so something still of course seemed to be going on there in terms of a sexual relationship but then we see in April two an8 that arias moved from Arizona to California and that same month we see the Travis sent a text to areas saying that she was one of the prettiest girls on the planet and requested that she sent him a naughty picture so again kind of more evidence that indicates there was of course that sexual relationships still in place and it's really not clear how they defined the relationship according to the evidence we have to this point now in May of 2008 the grandparents house of Jodi arias where she lived was burglarized and one of the missing items from that burglary was a 25 caliber automatic Colt pistol this becomes important later on in June 2008 so this is the month when Travis Alexander was murdered we see that he told friends that he suspected that Jodi had hacked into his facebook account and he said to her that he didn't want to see her ever again stay off his life forever again this is what he told friends that he said On June 2nd 2008 we see that arias rents a car and red in California on June 4th 2008 arias visits Travis's home in Mesa Arizona they had sex and they took explicit photos of one other this is when it's believed that the murder occurred on June 4th 2008 so we see on June 5th she visits kind of a romantic interest in Utah they don't have sex but she visits with him and he noticed that she had bandages on on June 9th 2008 Travis's friends were concerned that they haven't heard from him they went to his home and found him dead in his shower he was in a state of advanced decomposition and there was a lot of blood in the master bathroom so we see here that ultimately it's believed that Alexander was shot in the head with a 25 caliber pistol and that he'd been stabbed 27 times somebody also cut his throat from ear to ear now later on in testimony it gets a little confusing it appears he might have been stabbed first and then shot we don't really have get a clear answer on what happened in terms of the order of the attacks the police found a 25 caliber shell casing on the floor they also found hair and a latent print of blood and some DNA so they had some information available in terms of evidence at his house and they also found a digital camera that was in the washing machine and evidently was run through a wash cycle so they questioned trousers friends and many of them indicated that arias was the really number one suspect they said that arias was obsessed with him she wouldn't let him go when he would try to sever ties she would threaten to kill herself this becomes important later on talking about the mental health aspects Travis would tell her that he didn't want anything to do with her and she would come to his house uninvited so kind of a lot of these people indicated that it must have been Jodi arias that was responsible for this murder now in June 17th images were recovered from the memory card that had been in the washing machine and they saw in those images Travis was naked in the shower just before his death apparently posing for the photographs but they also found a dark and grainy photograph that looked like a person on the floor of the bathroom bleeding we also see that there were many nude pictures of arias on that camera and she was in provocative sexual poses the hair and the bloody print that I talked about earlier they belong to arias and the DNA that was found was a mixture of Travis and Jodi's DNA so there was evidence here that placed Jodi arias at the scene of Travis's death and of course they suspected it was a murder we see that the grand jury indicted her on first-degree murder charges and at this time she said she had nothing to do with the murder she would never hurt Travis he was her friend in September during interview she indicated that she was present at the time when Travis was murdered but she wasn't the one who committed the murder that two intruders actually came into the house and murdered Travis there was a lot of detail in this story that she made up about the intruders but essentially what she said is they broke they killed Travis and she miraculously escaped later on she changed her story and said that she did kill Travis Alexander but it was in self-defense that she was forced to kill him now moving to January of 2013 the trial starts and again a lot happened in this trial a lot of back-and-forth and mistakes were made what we see here is that the prosecution essentially pointed out that arias made up all these stories before she kind of settled on the self-defense story they also asserted that arias did murder Travis Alexander because he had defensive wounds on his hands so again this gets into kind of what happened first the shooting or the stabbing but we don't get a real clear answer on this now the defense team acknowledged that areas had killed Travis but said that the question is what motivated her to do it they indicated that Travis pressured arias into having sex with him and there was domestic violence in that relationship so March of 2013 is where we kind of get into the mental health portion of the trial and this was actually pretty interesting we see that there were three mental health professionals who were psychologists involved and one mental health professional they referred to as a psychotherapist involved three of these were for the defense to psychologists and psychotherapists and one psychologists for the prosecution so the first psychologists for the defense said that arias likely had acute stress at the time of a killing which sent her body into a fight with flight mode to defend herself and stopped her from retaining memory so she was diagnosed with PTSD by this psychologist then we see a psychotherapist who comes on the sand and this individual specialized in domestic violence and she said arias was a victim of domestic abuse we see another psychologist this one for the prosecution that comes in and says that there was no evidence that Travis abused Jodi arias this psychologist also indicated there was no evidence for PTSD or amnesia and arias and claimed that the memory loss that arias was describing which was memory loss for long time we're missing this was inconsistent with traumatic amnesia that the gaps in memory should have been shorter if it was really amnesia so this psychologist indicated was that areas suffered from borderline personality and had an unstable sense of identity and was terrified of being abandoned by others so we see that there's post-traumatic stress disorder on the defense side and then abuse and then borderline personality sorter on the prosecution side and then we see a psychologist for the defense come on a stand and say the borderline personality disorder diagnosis was not appropriate and actually what was going on with areas so she has anxiety stemming from trauma so some sort of anxiety disorder so really we get this sense from all this testimony that whoever hires a mental health clinician gets the story that they want right that's one of the senses we get it doesn't seem like we should have all this different testimony when they are interviewing the same person there's a kind of an old joke about mental health clinicians that can be applied to counselors psychologists psychiatrists a lot of different people it says if you put three mental health clinicians in a room with one client you're going to get four different diagnostic impressions and that's really kinda what we saw here nobody seemed to agree all what was going on in terms of mental health with Jodi arias so in May of 2013 she was found guilty of first-degree murder and on April 13 2015 she was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and as far as I know she's still in prison to this day so this was really an interesting case I think one of the reasons this was interesting is we saw this juxtaposition with post-traumatic stress disorder and were line personnel again different stories from different clinicians and this is what I refer to as a dangerous intersection right whenever we see mental health and the law come together this is an intersection that's it's just best to avoid it it's just a bad place to be the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual the DSM that contains these mental disorders was written for treatment it wasn't written to explain why people commit crimes so this is just again a dangerous and kind of messy intersection of mental health and the law so with this in mind let's take a look at what could have been going on here with Jodi arias in this case so I've seen a lot of arguments for borderline personality disorder in this case of course the prosecution psychologist but a number of other people I think look at this case and think okay borderline personality disorder explains a lot of behavior but this is kind of interesting because when you look at the symptom criteria for borderline personality I think you could actually make a stronger case that it doesn't really explain what's going on so I'll go through each symptom and kind of point out why I think the borderline personality disorder diagnosis doesn't make sense based on what we can see again I didn't get to interview Jodi arias I've never met her and other clinicians who haven't met her in the same position now the mental health clinicians that testify they did meet her so they had a much better vantage point here but either way let's take a look at these diagnostic criteria the first one for borderline personality frantic efforts to avoid abandonment so allegedly she showed up uninvited to Travis's house she threatened to commit suicide if he didn't see her she was stalking him she recorded sexual conversations they had I guess in an effort to use them against him later on so he wouldn't leave so you could make a good case for meeting this first symptom criterion frantic efforts to avoid abandonment moving to the next symptom criterion we see unstable relationships now what's interesting here is I don't really think this symptom criterion is met we see it with Travis to be sure but is there a recurrent pattern evident so this is into kind of a gray area because if somebody has one relationship for a long time you could argue that's the only real context available so you have to judge it based on that so this one I'm kind of divided but I would say I don't really see it except again in the one relationship moving to the next symptom we see identity disturbance of course this one who specifically pointed out at trial but I don't see any clear evidence for a unstable self-image identity disturbance I don't I don't see this one being met the next one is impulsivity and at least two areas that are potentially self damaging now this is important because a lot of people have said well this one's a clear you know symptom here right we have impulsivity because of the whole activity of the murder right that seemed impulsive and other behaviors that she exhibited but it's in two areas that are potentially self damaging so impulsive yes self damaging no so I don't think this criterion is actually met suicidal behavior is the next symptom I don't really see this this isn't clear there's threats of suicide but no suicidal behavior that would meet the symptom criterion again in my opinion based on the evidence I have available affective instability well yes maybe but it goes along with the frantic efforts to avoid abandonment so it's in that context so this is one of my criticisms about affective instability as a symptom criterion it has this overlap so independent of the frantic efforts I don't really see affective instability in this case next we have chronic feelings of emptiness I don't see this one either moving one we have inappropriate or intense anger or difficulty controlling anger well clearly with Travis again because of the murder she committed but now with other people so it gets in kind of the same argument we see with the unstable relationship pattern if just the relationship with Travis counts then yes if you need kind of a longer history then no the last symptom we see is paranoid ideation or dissociation I don't really see any evidence for this so this leaves us in kind of a weird place right we see some of the symptoms could be endorsed theoretically but there's no diagnosis now many believe that Jodi arias is really a classic presentation of war line personal sweater and she may be but not based on the information we have available again the Mount health clinicians that actually saw her had a much better to point and of those four only one came back with a borderline diagnosis and of course one refuted that diagnosis now borderline personality is in the same cluster cluster B as another person a sorter narcissistic personality I've also seen a fairly good case made that this is what was going on in the case of Jodi arias again if we look at the symptoms we get kind of a murky picture right a grandiose sense of self-importance I'm not sure fantasies about success wealth and power I don't really see that believing oneself to be special or unique maybe requiring excessive admiration maybe a sense of entitlement I think we certainly saw that during the trial exploiting other people interpersonally that's a possibility lack of empathy that seems pretty clear jealousy that also seems clear and of course arrogance seems clear so I think you could make a better case but not a perfect case for a narcissistic person is order but again some of these symptoms appear to be present during her murder trial and murder trials exert incredible amount of stress on an individual so I'm not sure it's a very good assessment context so narcissism probably narcissistic personality disorder it's hard to know I wanted to point out a few other interesting points in this case I think they're really interesting in terms of the case itself but also the mental health and personality piece if we look at Jodi arias during the trial she in interviews references all the six culpa Tory evidence right so evidence that would have indicated that she didn't do it including photographs that couldn't be found and people that saw bruises on her but those people couldn't be located so this kind of seems like it could be something going on for personality again maybe narcissism maybe psychopathy but there's just a lot of evidence that she said existed that clearly didn't exist at least they didn't have access to it we also see that she indicated she lied about the murder because she was scared and ashamed and she said she regrets she did after the murder so she didn't regret the murder itself but what she did afterward and she also said that it was difficult to think that she could be pushed to do something like that and I found that to be an interesting statement so if she was claiming self-defense why would it really be surprising that she defended herself that doesn't make a lot of sense it sounds like she's really talking more about committing the murder than about sticking to her story of self-defense when she made that particular statement I saw in one of the interviews she also believed that the majority of people in the public were against her and I think that was pretty accurate but she said that one of her psychologists told her that society has a need to persecute people now who knows if that psychologist really told her that but either way this is what she believed she believed that all these people that were against her in a sense or at least some of them were persecuting her so this really kind of speaks more to the narcissism piece that we see here so interesting points on the premeditation right so she was convicted of first-degree murder which is premeditated but a lot of people made the argument that maybe it was murder too or manslaughter but not premeditated murder this is interesting because if she did premeditate the murder why did she take pictures right during the night that she was with Travis on June 4th 2008 why take pictures of murder was the plan that doesn't make any sense and we see these stories about the gas can so allegedly she bought a gas can so she could avoid having to stop at gas stations but she had a reason for doing that I don't know this didn't seem particularly premeditated but then again why bring a gun to the house so I kind of think with this case she was open to the possibility of murder but maybe had not definitively made up her mind when she showed up that night that would probably still qualify of course as premeditated but I don't think it was like a hundred percent premeditated the evidence doesn't really support she went there with the intent to kill for certain like that she knew she was going to commit a murder now later on she allegedly would tell a cellmate that her target was actually somebody it was dating Travis but cellmates are notoriously witnesses so I wouldn't really worry too much about that I don't really weigh that as serious evidence so overall this could have been premeditated but again I'm not sure if she was totally committed to the idea now some other interesting things I think we can learn from this case right so if somebody's stalking somebody else that individual should not maintain a sexual relationship with that person right so if somebody's stalking you you really have to take precautions and being in a sexual relationship with that person just leave somebody very vulnerable and it can ramp up some of the negative behaviors that are associated with stalking in no way is this to blame the victim Travis Alexander was probably not aware of how personality worked in all this but just something I would say now to somebody who maybe isn't a stalking situation having a sexual relationship when being stalked is not a good idea I don't see any evidence it's a good idea I see a lot of evidence that is a horrible idea we see in this case I mentioned this before that the experts seem to see what they wanted to see right they seem to see what was favorable to their team the defense of the prosecution which is a little disturbing but it's fairly common in trials but I think what was really curious about this is a world line personality disorder in this case was the bad diagnosis for lack of a better word where is PTSD engendered sympathy so what I mean by this is when we saw this defense psychologist go up and say that arias had borderline personality we see another psychologists say that borderline diagnosis isn't appropriate even though of course it could have been a correct diagnosis so what you can conclude from this is that having no mental disorder was better than having an official mental disorder list in the DSM so in terms of diminished capacity or maybe trying to sway a jury or get a lighter sentence or whatever nothing was better than borderline personality this really speaks to the incredible power of the stigma associated with this disorder I think that war line person is order was kind of weaponized in this trial and the label the diagnostic label was placed on Jodie with the idea that borderline somehow equaled really bad behavior or evil behavior and again I don't like this intersection of mental health and law I don't like when mental disorders are diagnosed and then we're also supposed to infer from that that somebody's not good or has bad intentions or whatever so the vast majority of individuals of borderline personality sorter will never get involved in anything even remotely close to what Jodi arias did in this case so sometimes people just do bad things there's not always a disorder that goes along with that so I think that's kind of an important lesson or piece of information that we can take from this Jodi arias murder case I know whenever I talk about borderline or narcissistic personality sorters or kind of famous cases like this there gonna be a lot of opinions people that agree or disagree with me or have other opinions please put those opinions in the comments if you have them they always build an interesting discussion as always I hope you found this description of the Jodi arias murder case to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 631,642

Keywords: Jodi Arias, Travis Alexander, first-degree murder, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM, borderline personality disorder: frantic efforts to avoid abandonment, unstable relationship pattern, identity disturbance, impulsivity, suicidal behavior, affective instability, inappropriate or intense anger, paranoid ideation, dissociation, narcissistic personality disorder, fantasies, special or unique, sense of entitlement, exploiting, lack of empathy, jealousy, arrogance

Id: 0wKVy8z5rQs

Length: 23min 36sec (1416 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2019