Jodi Arias Syndrome

Jodi Arias Syndrome

Before she was arrested on a capital murder charge that carries the death penalty, Jodi Arias was envied by females and lusted after by males. Pictures of her from her pre-arrest days show her to be confident, care-free, easy-going, fun-seeking and in possession of the exact evolutionary ratio of sought after facial and body proportion. We see her oval face, big eyes, long and blond voluminous cascading mane, and a youthful body boasting the very bust-waist-hips proportion that launched tools such as Photoshop.

Fast forward to 2013 when we see her grilled by Juan Martinez the prosecutor who hopes to get the jury of 18 men and women to agree she should die because she is a killer. She killed therefore we should kill her. On paper this might make sense, but we are seeing her through the “Jodi cam” and she is an actual living, breathing woman--- although conceivably lethal. Still, her ultra feminine mannerisms coupled with her soft-spoken demeanor make this a most difficult task because it juxtaposes her presumed lethality. But then again, something is so –almost inexplicably—off about this woman that our “humanity radars” show her to be completely off course.

Why do her eyes not blink? Why has she lied so much? How could this seemingly frail woman commit such a gruesome and unthinkable act? Can such a bloodbath be found on the self-defense continuum? There is a circus-like surrealistic atmosphere about this trial as well as an overlay of the  biblical David and Goliath  story— defense attorney Nurmi as the giant and prosecutor  Martinez as David. This comparison begs another biblical component—good vs evil; whereas Jodi is the devil incarnate and Travis is presumably in heaven above sleeping with the angels.

I have coined the term Jodi Arias Syndrome to describe the rare female psychopath who seems incapable ---on the surface—of being able to plan and carry out a heinous crime. Jodi Arias Syndrome applies to those who are somewhere on a spectrum whose poles range from Narcissism to Psychopathy and cover everything in between. A person with Jodi Arias Syndrome needn’t have suffered any debilitating early childhood trauma to get this moniker. In fact, just the opposite is true. Psychopaths are born that way, they don’t turn out that way through bad parenting or trauma. Psychopaths are neurologically different—faulty wiring in their genetic code, if you will. These folks have no emotions, nor do they experience anxiety. Psychopaths are able to calculate and connive without any remorse or guilt whatsoever. In fact, they often imitate those around them because they do not know how to act “normally” in response to situations where an emotional repertoire is needed and expected. Non-psychopaths can hardly fathom that there are those who walk among us with zero emotions, therefore we find it easy to believe them when they shed crocodile tears. We find it easier to believe their sky-scraping tales of bad luck and victimization because the real truth seems even more far-fetched.  

 Dr. Desiree Jabin, Psy.D.