(EDIT: Scroll down to the bottom of the posting for video of the August 11 press conference with Rockefeller \/ Gerhartsreiter’s attorney.)<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve continued to follow the \u201cClark Rockefeller\u201d \/\u00a0Christian Gerhartsreiter story over the past few days as it just keeps getting more convoluted, and as the subject\u2019s apparent\/alleged pathway between Germany and the USA starts getting clearer. (With some surprises along the way. Today\u2019s bizarre\u00a0revelation: \u201cRockefeller\u201d may have to give back his $800,000 divorce settlement, because it appears that he and the woman in question may not have been legally married<\/a>.\u00a0 Get this \u2014 )<\/p>\n The 48-year-old suspect married\u00a0London-based based management consultant Sandra Boss\u00a0in 1995 during a small ceremony in Nantucket, Mass.\u00a0But there is no official record of the union in Massachusetts, and it’s unclear whether the couple provided a marriage license during divorce proceedings.<\/p>\n “They weren’t legally married,” Rockefeller’s lawyer Stephen Hrones\u00a0said. “How can you divorce when you’re not legally married?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Boy, somebody missed something there<\/em>. How did this piece of data not emerge\u00a0during the divorce proceedings?? How do you get<\/em> a divorce without producing proof that there was\u00a0a marriage in the first place?)<\/p>\n Meanwhile I continue being fascinated as more data slowly adds itself layer on layer to the situation, and other people start to\u00a0ruminate on where the truth of the case lies<\/a>\u00a0(mostly the question seems to be boiling down to: Is he crazy, or is he a con man, or both?) And on the first count \u2014\u00a0for\u00a0a former psych nurse, at least \u2014\u00a0the temptation to play the Diagnosis At A Distance game is tough to resist.<\/p>\n The most interesting factor for me at the moment is Rockefeller\u2019s \/ Gerhartsreiter\u2019s purported memory loss. His attorney claims he doesn\u2019t remember anything prior to 1993, <\/a>except for fragments (\u201ca Scottish nanny\u201d , a \u201cchildhood visit to Mt. Rushmore in a station wagon\u201d) \u2014 though if he is Gerhartsreiter, this would have taken place during a period when he had never yet left Germany). So is this real memory loss, or something else?<\/p>\n There\u2019s a phenomenon known as \u201cconfabulation\u201d in which the mind fabricates memories to fill in spaces it feels or knows \u201cneed filling\u201d. Are these memories confabulation? Impossible to say at this distance, and without expert psychiatric evaluation and possibly also an MRI (some concrete physical causes for confabulation <\/a>have been discovered).<\/p>\n The attorney elsewhere describes his client\u2019s memory as \u201cshattered\u201d. It\u2019s an interesting word. I\u2019ve seen various internal crises produce this kind of spotty-memory result in patients, temporarily or over long periods\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and sometimes the crises in question\u00a0aren\u2019t at all obvious, sometimes not even detectable.\u00a0But then we\u00a0have perhaps too much\u00a0mythology in modern popular culture that suggests you need some kind of blatant, major trauma to cause an amnesic response\u00a0(or similar broad-based mental unhinging).<\/p>\n The thing to remember is that the\u00a0mind\u2019s\u00a0major priority is keep itself running as well as it can, and otherwise\u00a0to\u00a0preserve its own status quo, usually\u00a0along the lines of the\u00a0basic human existential position, \u201cI am blameless!\u201d . And\u00a0I\u2019ve seen parts of people\u2019s brains run all kinds of just-forget-about-this numbers on other parts of their brains to keep them away from the dangerous, sometimes unbearable realization that they\u2019ve failed, or done something wrong.\u00a0Sometimes the wrongdoing \/ failures\u00a0are surprisingly minor: sometimes very major indeed. But memory does sometimes fail, in small spots or big swathes,\u00a0as a result of a prolonged imbalance or slow buildup of chronic issues rather than anything sudden \u2014\u00a0so that\u00a0no other human being but the one most intimately involved may ever be\u00a0aware of the event that starts the process of leaving the mind \u201coverdrawn at the memory bank\u201d.<\/p>\n (As of August 12, however, Rockefeller \/ Gerhartsreiter’s recall seems to be improving. His attorney reports that he now remembers some details from his 1990’s California life,<\/a> including the couple from whom he rented the San Marino guest house, though he says he “hardly knew them”.<\/a>)<\/p>\n What Rockefeller \/ Gerhartsreiter claims to be\u00a0experiencing could\u00a0indeed be real. The problem is that when criminal law starts getting involved, a certain amount of cynicism starts to intrude itself into the diagnostic process. In this case in particular, where there seem to be multiple aliases involved, a certain amount of intelligence and cunning, and a fair amount of manipulation (vide today\u2019s story about a woman who claims the man married her strictly for the purpose of getting a US \u201cgreen card\u201d,<\/a> then dumped her*), it\u2019s hard to avoid the idea that this \u201cshattered\u201d memory is very convenient. (Scroll down in this article <\/a>for more details about what he claims he can remember.) Especially when it seems likely that at least some aspects of the criminal proceedings surrounding him are going to involve the determination of his (mental) fitness to stand trial. \u2026Though this may\u00a0of course be just me\u00a0getting the wrong end of the diagnostic stick \u2014\u00a0as is all too likely when working at thousands\u2019 of miles distance and with fifth\u2013 or twelfth-hand data. So, verbum sap., caveat emptor,<\/em> and other similar cautionary adages.<\/p>\n But what keeps bringing\u00a0up the cynic in me particularly strongly is the fact that\u00a0some aspects of the man\u2019s history as now presented\u00a0make him sound like\u00a0a fairly in-control scammer <\/a>who also has (or has been developing\u00a0over time) a medium-strength dose of something like\u00a0narcissistic personality disorder<\/a>, with maybe a dash of one of the other\u00a0so-called \u201ccluster B\u201d \/ \u201cdramatic-erratic\u201d disorders, like borderline<\/a> and histrionic <\/a>personality disorders. A lot of the news accounts I\u2019ve seen over recent days \u2014 especially some of those <\/a>coming out of the man\u2019s\u00a0(apparent) hometown\u00a0in Germany \u2014 particularly suggest that he\u00a0has routinely displayed some of the major traits or symptoms of NPD. People who housed him or knew him <\/a>describe\u00a0the self-importance and haughty attitude<\/a>, the spinning of elaborate and grandiose origin stories about\u00a0royalty<\/a> or otherwise important and monied people <\/a>in the family background, and the\u00a0unpredictable on-and-off\u00a0c<\/font>harm, <\/a>coupled with\u00a0an underlying sense among the people around \u201cRockefeller\u201d\u00a0that they were\u00a0being manipulated \u2014 a sense that grew\u00a0so strong over time that many of these people seem to have been glad to have\u00a0the relationship\u00a0dissolve.<\/p>\n (ETA: And now we have the August 12th revelations, which complicate matters.Iis this reported “improved recall” genuinely the slow recovery of lost or trauma-buried memory which is slowly being stimulated by questions about something the person hasn’t thought about, or wanted to think about, for years? Or are we simply seeing a man trying to keep a decades-long, consciously built “house of cards” of false identities from coming down all at once, by surrendering it a little at a time?…)<\/p>\n \u2026(shrug) At the end of the day, there\u2019s still no telling where the case may go. (Like any other CSI fan, I\u2019m wondering when someone will suggest DNA testing, and how long it will take to meander its way through the labyrinth of legal barriers that will doubtless be involved.)<\/p>\n We\u2019ll just have to wait and see what happens\u2026<\/p>\n (BTW, fellow CSI fans: how many bets that something like this turns up in the next season of one or another of the series? Their writing staffs will be\u00a0breaking out\u00a0\u201809 script ideas in the story rooms just about now\u2026)<\/p>\n *ETA: some more detail has turned up about this —<\/p>\n