Speaking Truth to Power - Anita Hill [118]
Two days before, Senator Specter had offered John Doggett’s assessment of my psychological state to explain that I simply imagined Thomas’ interest in me. When their reference to Doggett’s pseudo-psychology failed, the Republicans attempted to use real psychiatry to condemn my claim. True to form, rather than rely on real evidence of disorder, the Republicans built a case on off-the-record comments and sheer conjecture. In addition to Satinover, Senator Danforth consulted a psychiatrist, Dr. Park Dietz, and learned of a condition called De Clarembaults’s syndrome, commonly called erotomania. The syndrome, characterized by obsessive romantic interest in a person, is named after a French psychiatrist, Dr. Gaeton de Clarembaults, who identified the disorder in a patient in 1921. A person suffering from the disorder imagines a romantic relationship with a targeted individual though no romantic interaction has taken place. A sufferer will obsess over the target, sending cards or letters that express romantic interest, and may even attempt to confront the target directly. One extreme example of the syndrome involved John Hinckley, Jr., who attempted to assassinate President Reagan to gain the attention of the target of his romantic interest, actress Jodie Foster. Incidentally, Dr. Dietz testified about the syndrome at the Hinckley hearing.
In offering this syndrome as an explanation for my testimony against Judge Thomas, Senator Danforth neglected three crucial factors. First, the situation to which I testified at the hearing did not fit the scenario of someone suffering from De Clarembaults’s syndrome. I never had a romantic interest in or involvement with Thomas, nor did I believe that Thomas had a romantic interest in me. To the contrary, at all times, I knew that his actions were motivated by control and intimidation. He was attempting to flex his political muscle as well, believing that, as a presidential appointee, he was entitled to certain liberties with people less powerful. Though I testified to what I thought were his motives at the time of the hearing, the senators were guided by the belief that a claim of sexual harassment is genuine interest somehow perverted. Certainly, if I had harbored an obsessive romantic interest in Clarence Thomas, someone in the workplace would have known about it and would have testified to that during the hearing. But only two people claimed that I felt a romantic attachment to Clarence Thomas, Phyllis Myers Berry and Virginia Thomas. In her testimony, Ms. Berry admitted that she had no facts on which to base her theory. Virginia Thomas and I have never met. And one can imagine that she is guided by her own romantic interest in her husband when she assumes that other women find him attractive as well.
In addition to ignoring the fact that the behavior I engaged in did not begin to approximate the symptoms, Danforth ignored the relative obscurity of the disease and that sufferers of the disorder are far more likely to be male than female. The likelihood that I would suffer this dysfunction is extremely rare. When compared to the likelihood that I, as one American woman in three, would experience sexual harassment, Danforth’s reliance on this explanation for my testimony seems not only result-oriented but sinister. An impartial fact finder would have regarded the disorder only as a last resort, given the lack of factual support, and would have at least entertained the notion that my testimony was true before pursuing the idea that I suffered so rare a psychological disorder. Senator Danforth was being nothing less than illogical in believing the least likely explanation rather than a more