[caption id="attachment_6307" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Bad tree from Bad Seed"]
[/caption]Carol Forsloff - Years ago a famous movie called The Bad Seed depicted a girl seemingly without conscience whose bad behavior pervaded her relationships, including those with her family, the kind that Casey Anthony is compared to now; but is there such a thing as “a bad seed" in a legal case involving the killing of a child?
The storyline of the film, The Bad Seed, is this, according to the description provided by the creators of the film: “Christine Penmark seems to have it all: a lovely home, a loving husband and the most "perfect" daughter in the world. But since childhood, Christine has suffered from the most terrible recurring nightmare. And her "perfect" daughter's accomplishments include lying, theft and possibly much, much worse. Only Christine knows the truth about her daughter and only Christine's father knows the truth about her nightmare.” The film was made in 1956.
Today Casey Anthony is on trial, accused by the prosecution in a death penalty trial in Florida, of killing her two-year-old daughter, Caylee. Numerous talking heads from law, psychology and the media analyze the elements of the case as it has unfolded in the trial and point to details that mirror the Bad Seed movie script.
But Casey Anthony’s trial is not a movie script, although the screaming “fans” were shown fighting for position to get into the courtroom where the drama of the trial took place.
Cindy Anthony, mother of Casey, is accused of lying to protect her daughter. Both the defense and the prosecution also point to deceitful ways of Casey’s father, George, as part of the family problems. Experts from various fields have looked at patterns within the family and report on its dysfunction. Furthermore the defense in the case maintains that only Casey’s father, outside of Casey herself, knows the truth about what really happened to Caylee. The details replicate much of the movie’s outline, so what is the nature of “bad seeds” and are there people with inherent tendencies that produce the type of behavior that would lead to killing a child?
The notion that some children are inherently bad is one some mental health professionals support, while others strenuously disagree and maintain dysfunction occurs because of specific types of behaviors a child models in the environment and the constellation of the family.
Amy Webb, Ph.D., examines Dr. Richard Friedman’s contention that some children are badly behaved “because everyday character traits, like all human behavior have hard-wired and genetic components that cannot be molded entirely by the best environment.” Dr. Friedman is a professor of psychiatry who was interviewed by the New York Times in 2010 to discuss whether or not there is such a thing as a “bad seed.” He uses the example to show how all other children in a family can be well-behaved but one may stand out as “bad.”
Webb takes exception to Friedman’s argument and says, “I strongly disagree with this idea and I think much of the child development research does too. Yes, children have genetic predispositions towards a lot of characteristics, both physical and psychological. However, this is just a predisposition, not fate. Much of what determines how a predisposition is expressed depends on how parents, teachers, and others in the environment react to the child.”
One of the most prevalent explanations for the type of behavior that leads to a“bad seed” is one advanced by Dr. David Lykken. He maintains that psychopaths are distinctly different than other people beginning in childhood and don't respond with normal inhibition. He also says that most antisocial behaviors where the child seemingly has no conscience and exhibits antisocial behavior is actually caused by poor parenting, absentee fathers and inadequate mothers as a usual pattern.
Parents with poor child-rearing abilities will respond inadequately or inappropriately during the time the child is being socialized. Lykken suggests the child often irritates them, and the child then acts out. Although there have been research studies using twins to assess criminality, Lykken acknowledges that it is true twins raised separately may each have a criminal-type behavior, showing aggression and sensation seeking, but that these behaviors can be channeled into doing good or bad things. It is up to the parents to guide the child in making the right choices.
In addition to the psychological and psychiatric debates, neurologists point to brain activities that suggest psychopaths have brain activities that are abnormal. Consequently those afflicted with this neurological pattern end up doing things that excite the nervous system, thus becoming involved in thrill-seeking activities.
Bad seed theories examine the various mechanisms that are intertwined in creating violent behavior. A cogent explanation on how a Gary Gilmore or a Dennis Nilsen, both serial killers, can become seriously violent is through a process that seems to most promote antisocial behavior is advanced by Psychologist Lonnie Athen. She tells us that such a person,"is a victim of violence and feels powerless to avoid it. Then he is taught how and when to become violent and to profit from it. Then he acts on that. If a person from a violent environment does not become violent, it is because some part of the process is missing.”
The Anthony family has been outlined by experts following the trial as having serious dysfunction and patterns of deception, while the defense maintains the father, George Anthony, molested his daughter throughout her childhood, a type of violent behavior that is conducive to developing antisocial behavior. The lack of coherent testimony about various details related to the death of two-year-old Caylee reflects the differences within the family core.
Experts differ on the specifics of how antisocial behavior develops and the bad seed theories that proliferate in cases like that of Casey Anthony, but they all agree that there is such a thing as an antisocial person seemingly without conscience who can have an outwardly normal appearance and a family the face of propriety that can lead to violence and murder. The clinical enumeration of those “bad seed” behaviors can be found here, in a summary of the traits defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the text used for diagnosing and classification of mental disorders.
