A psychologist hired by Johnny Depp’s legal team told the court Amber Heard has two personality disorders during the ongoing defamation trial between the former couple.
Dr. Shannon Curry took to the stand in the case on Tuesday (26 April) after meeting with Heard on 'two separate dates' to conduct her evaluation - specifically 10 December, 2021 and 17 December, 2021.
The psychologist told the court she had spent 12 hours with Heard as well as reviewing case documents, medical records, mental health treatments and audio and video records to make her assessment.
Dr. Curry told the court the result of the evaluation 'supported two diagnoses – borderline personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder'.
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The doctor defined a personality as the traits and characteristics that make up the way we feel, think and act, while a personality disorder is a disfunction of those traits.
To support her diagnoses, the doctor said Heard 'externalises blame' and can be 'self-reighteous', 'judgemental' and has anger. She also said that those with borderline personality disorder exhibit a 'desperate fear of abandonment', the reaction to which is to try and keep a significant other close with behaviour which can become extreme.
Per The Independent, Dr. Curry explained: "When somebody is afraid of being abandoned, by their partner or by anybody else in their environment and they have this disorder, they’ll make desperate attacks to prevent that from happening. And those desperate attempts could be physical aggression, it could be threatening, it could be harming themselves, but these are behaviours that are very extreme and very concerning to the people around them.
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“Over time, the anger, the explosive anger, that they show when somebody is needing space, or when somebody is really not doing anything wrong, because a lot of times they read into things that they perceive as being a slight to them or being somebody intending to harm them that actually isn’t happening. They’ll exaggerate it, and they’ll explode. They’ll react in this heightened manner that is just exhausting for their partners," Dr. Curry continued.
Dr. Curry claimed that 'one of the most common tactics' used by someone diagnosed with borderline personality disorder to prevent a partner from leaving can be 'actually physically assaulting and then getting harmed themselves'; something Dr. Curry referred to as 'administrative violence'.
"Essentially this is saying that they’ll make threats using the legal system,” Dr Curry said. “So they might say that they are going to file a restraining order or claim abuse, or they might do these things to essentially try to keep their partner from leaving in the moment.”
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The doctor told the court borderline and histrionic personality disorder can appear as 'two sides of the same coin', and explained the latter involves a need to be the centre of attention, 'because if you don’t have that attention on you, it feels similar to borderline personality disorder: You feel pretty empty – like you don’t have that sense of being or value,' she explained.
When cross-examined by Heard's legal team, Dr. Curry said she was not board-certified and that she has never testified about violence between partners previously. She has, however, worked in the field for about 15 years, with about half of her practice focusing on couple's therapy.
Featured Image Credit: Law and CrimeTopics: Celebrity, Johnny Depp, Mental Health, US News, Amber Heard
