Hidden True Crime - Criminal Psychologist REACTS to Lindsay Clancy: Did She Know What She Was Doing?

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

Lauren Matthias and Dr. John Matthias take a deep dive into the Lindsay Clancy case and the question at the heart of her trial: was Lindsay suffering from postpartum psychosis when she killed her three children, or did she understand exactly what she was doing? Dr. Matthias weighs the psychiatric testimony, Lindsay’s behavior, her state of mind, and the evidence presented at trial to examine the difficult line between severe mental illness and criminal intent. After hearing the evidence, what does a criminal psychologist believe was really happening inside Lindsay Clancy’s mind? Sponsors: Article:Get $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more at https://www.article.com/discount/hidden #ad Rula:Rula patients typically pay $15 per session when using insurance. Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts who specialize in you at https://www.rula.com/hidden #rulapod About Hidden True Crime What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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gigabytes hotspot, capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com for details. Could Lindsay Clancy still experience herself as one continuous person capable of recognizing her thoughts as thoughts and integrating contradictory feelings while understanding what she was doing and choosing not to do it? Hello Hidden Jems. Hello. Hello. We are back at our table for the episode that everybody has been curious about. We have Dr. John Matthias here, also my spouse, which is why I'm sitting next to him and holding his hand because, you know. Because you don't hold hands with random strangers. Or a random psychologist.

So he's not only just my co-host, he is my spouse, and he is a clinical and forensic psychologist, also known as a criminal psychologist. And we have been covering the Lindsay Clancy case from the very beginning. It shocked the country, the nation, the world, including us, and we started talking about it. And of course, since that time, we've learned a lot more. And now we're covering the trial every day. And it's just really heavy. A lot of divide, a lot of questions, and a lot of people wanting to know your thoughts. So. I have thoughts.

And not only does he have thoughts, yes. Stick with me. there 11 pages of notes and they're not double spaced. So I'm really looking forward. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. Just what I can see.

13 or 14. And, you know, and I'm grateful for you too for doing this because this, you know, I sat through the first two weeks. I'm one of the few that heard the 911 call and just horrific. and we just recently this week saw Lindsay whaling in court. The prosecution has been going for 13 days. So what do you think? I think I have 13 pages for 13 days.

There you go. Okay. What do I think? I think this is a very complex case. I think most people realize that. I think interestingly, though, I think the way this case is starting to play out in terms of the prosecution and the defense is more in a traditional manner that a forensic evaluator would look at, which is, so in the forensic world, a lot of times we'll ask, is a case based, is it mad versus bad? So in other words, is this mad means madness, mental illness versus bad, or another phrase will sometimes use is evil versus ill, same concept.

Is it fundamentally about someone who's bad or evil versus mentally ill, right? That duality often serves as some basis for forensic analysis. And I think we're seeing that here. I think we're seeing that to some degree here with the prosecution taking the side of bad and the defense taking the side of madness that portraying her as mentally ill, whereas the prosecution, I think, is now moving towards the idea

that not only was it premeditated, but they're portraying here. They've used terms like manipulative, controlling. they're portraying her as someone who clearly planned this. Yes. And as someone who presumably, it's not entirely clear, but they seem to be implying that she was not suicidal. They do seem to be implying that while also trying to tell the judge that that's not what

they're implying, but it certainly is what they're implying. Yeah. Premeditated murder, first degree. To quote Redington, that they're saying that she slid down the side of the house. like Spider-Man as if she did not want to die. Right. And if you go that route, by the way, then you're definitely moving into the realm of perceiving her as evil or bad.

And also, by the way, they talked about, obviously, when she Googled, am I a psychopath? Yeah. With the implication that she might be a psychopath because she premeditated these murders. And so that definitely is pushing this into the realm of on the defense side, mental illness versus something approaching more like evil or more like premeditation. And so I think the prosecution was maybe initially a little bit confused about their position on that. But I think they're more inclined to go in the direction of her being bad. I completely agree. Yes, very much so.

And that, by the way, that distinction is going to be important for our analysis because a lot of what I want to say is going to be moving away from this idea of bifurcating this case or bifurcating this case into two camps of good versus evil or mental illness versus evil. That I think that the part of the problem here is that in a big, to acknowledge the complexity of Lindsay Clancy. And I think the defense is doing a good job or portraying her as someone who is more complex and not just some evildoer.

Right. Who wanted to kill her kids. And so I think the prosecution in a way has kind of painted themselves in a corner by taking that position. Well, that and the fact that their presentation, the evidence has not exactly been compelling. But...

Nor has the hair bow. Let's put that aside. That's just me. So I'm going to start, for those who I haven't been on in a while, so a lot of people, a lot of you may not know me or may not be accustomed to my analysis of cases, but for those who do listen to us who have listened to us for a while, you'll know that a lot of my analyses are guided by literary analogies. And I think in thinking about the best way to present this, that's what I want to do.

I think from a teaching standpoint, and since this is educational and no I'm not offering diagnoses, no, I'm not taking any clinical positions here, I am presenting a pedagogical analysis or educational analysis of a case for educational purposes, all the diagnoses I'm going to be talking about, by the other way, have been presented by other mental health professionals. They're not mine. But I'm going to start, I'm going to start someplace,

I think, that most people are going to be fine, slightly unusual. Although I will say that Reddington has stressed this. He stressed this in his opening statements to some degree. When he talked about Reddington mentioned it, he didn't stress it, maybe not as much as I would, but he talked about the idea of insomnia and sleep deprivation and how that's an important element in this case.

I think that part of this case is deeply undervalued. And I'll talk about that in a minute. But in order, if we're going to talk about that, if we're going to talk about insomnia, I think from a literary standpoint, people will know that one of my favorite plays that has to do with the forensic world is Shakespeare. Spirrists, Macbeth. And I want to start someplace that might be a bit unexpected, but I'm going to

start with a quote from Macbeth, a famous quote, by the way. Mcbeth says, this is from Act 2 seen to him, Macbeth. Macbeth tells his wife, Lady Macbeth, he says, quote, methought, I heard a voice cry, sleep no more. Macbeth does murder sleep. The innocent sleep, glamis who happens to be macbath by the way the innocent sleep glamis hath murdered sleep Macbeth shall sleep no more this is a famous line the way this is often translated is Macbeth saying I have murdered sleep

what Mcbeth actually Macbeth actually doesn't say that what's fascinating about this quote from Macbeth is it's a voice that tells him this. In other words, we can think, it's, let's think of this voice as an intrusive thought. Oh, wow.

Yeah. Okay. Macbeth doesn't say this to himself. A voice tells him this. And that creates a little bit of distance in terms of this idea that Mcbeth has murdered sleep, a voice tells him he murdered sleep. But in fact, that happens to be true. That Macbeth perceives.

sleep for the innocent. McBeth cannot sleep. After this voice tells him that he's murdered sleep, this whole play of Macbeth is in some ways an inversion of reality that the play that nobody sleeps. There's a famous line in Macbeth, fair is fall and fall is fair, that everything is turned on its head. Nothing makes sense. And What's important to, I think, Macbeth also says something else in the same act and scene. He says, oh, he's talking about sleep. And he says, sleep is the, quote, bomb of hurt minds. The bomb of hurt minds.

And so what McBeth, what's important about this idea is that there's a couple things. But Lindsay Clancy doesn't sleep either. One of the constant themes, if you go through the civil complaint and you look at this Lindsay Clancy case in depth, what you'll see is one of the reasons she reappers all the time to provide her for help is because she can't sleep. Yeah, it's true. And that's what's happening in the trial too. Every time she goes to provider, help me all I want to do is sleep.

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That's article.com slash hidden for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. There's a lot of commonalities. And I'll get to some of the research on insomnia, by the way, in a bit. But that for Macbeth, sleep is restorative. Sleep is symbolic of peace. sleep is symbolic of a mind at rest, a mind that is not conflicted, a mind that's not fragmented. So Macbeth is really, for me, to some degree, it's a story about how all of these contradictory parts of Macbeth, who engages in regicide because he murders the king, Duncan. Yeah.

So Macbeth has this tremendous guilt about murdering and he can't sleep. And that's how he comes to the conclusion that he's murdered sleep. And he says that the innocent sleep, he can't. Lindsay Clancy can't sleep. It's not because she murdered anyone. I mean, she's having intrusive thoughts

that may include these ideas of murder. Yeah, we don't know what the intrusive thoughts are, but she did report those. But the reason Lindsay Cancy can't, the reason she can't sleep, and this is the common element, I believe, is because she is deeply conflicted. And she's deeply conflicted because, as the prosecution pointed out, she's very much a perfectionist. And one of the things she's concerned about as a mother is being something like the perfect mother and providing endlessly and selflessly for her children. and protecting her children and doing everything she can for her kids. And so here you have Lindsay Clancy, who everyone describes as a great mother.

Everybody. Everybody describes as a great mother. Here you have her starting to have these intrusive thoughts. And these intrusive thoughts are dark thoughts. They're thoughts about harming her kids sometimes. Yeah. their thoughts about her not being a good enough mother. Their thoughts of her not being good enough.

And this is creating tremendous conflict for her. So her guilt, Macbeth's guilt is over-murdering the king. Her guilt is more subtle. Her guilt is about not being a good enough mother. But it's a guilt that runs deep. And it runs deep because she's such a perfectionist. And she ends up going into this spiral of sorts, I think. I'm going to talk about this cycle that goes from intruths and thoughts to potentially

command hallucinations. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But she starts, so she starts having these thoughts about, for example, if she has these thoughts about harming her children, I think one of the things she's, she's, starting to feel guilty about is she she might be saying something like, well, a very good mother would never have that thought. Yeah, I thought that she's thought that, right.

A good mother, right, shame. A good mother would never have the thought that I'm dangerous to my kids or that I'm defective in some way or maybe I'm unfit to be a mother. And so like McBath, although in a very different, more subtle way, You have this guilt.

You have this underlying guilt and shame. And I think you're getting on this cycle with Lindsay Clancy, like Macbeth, of insomnia. In part, some of it, of course, has to do with the fact that she's going through postpartum biological changes. I'm sure that's part of her insomnia. But I think a lot of it also is cognitive. A lot of it has to do with these intrusive thoughts that are just really bothering her. And they're so dissonant. They're so unlike anything she's known about her identity and herself that she doesn't know how to reconcile those thoughts.

Dark thoughts. Dark thoughts. The dark side of Lindsay Glancy. The dark thoughts about harming her kids or harming herself. And she's really struggling with that, obviously. for Macbeth, one of the problems for Macbeth is not only the guilt of killing the king, but also like Lindsay Clancy, there's this rigidity that Macbeth can't, he like Lindsay, he can't reconcile these different conflicting parts of himself.

He can't reconcile his aggression, for example. That, for example, with Macbeth, he has these ambitions to be king. and instead of recognizing his envy and his inability like his is like a normal person recognizing the importance of patience if he wants to be king maybe he'll get there sometime right if you go through normal political channels he doesn't want to wait he just wants to act on that impulse which he does so he can't he can't reconcile his aggressive impulses with his ambition with any sense of vulnerability or love or fear. In other words, like Lindsay Clancy, I think one of the problems with

Lindsay Clancy is she really struggles with this capacity to understand that being a good enough mother is more than being a perfect mother, that it requires this capacity to integrate contradictory feelings, integrate feelings of being exhausted, integrate feelings of being afraid, integrate feelings of occasionally wanted to escape, or maybe even harm her kids, to see that as part of the complex equation that occurs after you give birth to a child. Yeah, right. It is complicated. So the similarities are that like Macbeth, Lindsay Clancy has really unraveled her capacity for peace and calm. And she struggles to come to terms with the fact that she's a good enough mother.

And she has this inability to really accept and deal with all the conflicts and complexities of being a good enough mother, of being good enough. And so I think, if I think about Macbeth and why he murders sleep and why he can't sleep, it's because he's murdered his ability to be at peace with the complexities of his own mind. And that once he gets on this murderer's spree, I'm talking about McHath, once he gets on this murderous spirit,

he can't stop. He doesn't know how to stop. And so the other part of this equation, by the way, this idea of murdering sleep and Lindsay Clamination, being unable to sleep all the time and having all these guilty feelings of being a mother. The other side of this equation for Macbeth is that when you murder sleep and you can't sleep and you want to sleep, you want to feel peace, you want to feel calm, and you can't deal with the complexities of a mind in conflict, a ruptured mind, a fractured mind,

that's true of Macbeth. It's true of Lindsay Clamsey, that you're essentially living in a nightmare. The thing about Macbeth is that it's like one of the things Shakespeare wanted to portray in Macbeth is this idea that it's a living, breathing nightmare. Everything in Macbeth is a nightmare. The play is filled with blood everywhere. Horses start eating each other. It's a really bizarre. There's so many things in Macbeth that just don't add up.

There's witches controlling the action. There's witches that prophesies what Macbeth will do. In other words, there's questions in Macbeth about agency. Is Macbeth making these decisions? Or is it some supernatural force? Yeah. There's that question in Lindsay Clancy, too, by the way. Because when you get to command hallucinations,

assuming that you accept those, so the prosecution is going to argue that those are false or they're not real, but if you accept the idea that there's command hallucinations, you're getting to something similar, that a command hallucination, although we wouldn't say a command hallucination is caused by witches, we will say, I will say, from a psychological standpoint, that command hallucinations would symbolize something like a part of your mind that you don't recognize as you. In other words, a part of your mind that's not me,

a part of your mind that you're splitting off and you're divorcing from who you see yourself as being. Denying. You're denying that part of yourself. Right. So command illusion. nations would be a part of yourself that you give authority to at some point. But at first, you see them as being foreign or alien to who you are. Okay. That would be true of Macbeth. The witches are symbolic in a way in Macbeth of command hallucinations.

That's another similarity. But this idea, I think if you want to understand, it's not only murdering sleep and what all of that does to you, what it does to Lindsay Clancy. The exhaustion, the fear, the agitation. We all know what it's like not to sleep. Imagine if you're not sleeping at all, or very, very little, maybe two or three hours a night, and you're trying to raise three kids. And having intrusive thoughts.

You're having intrusive thoughts that are- scaring you. That are dark, that are scaring you. They're certainly challenging your very identity. These are... Dark, dark thoughts. These are dark, dark thoughts that are, to her,

I think, they're dark, dark thoughts that really are very existential in the sense that her identity is being threatened. Her identity as a good enough mother, or maybe even a perfect mother, is being threatened. Yeah. And so, so you,

you see how that lack of sleep plays such a role. I think like Macbeth, it's kind of you've got this undertone of the sleepless, the insomnia and Macbeth creates a living nightmare. And I think with Lindsay Clancy, I feel that. I feel the sense that when you look at the record and all the help she saw it and all the medications she's taking, it feels like she's in a nightmare. She feels like she can't go to work.

She can't function. She's not good enough for the kids. She can't control their schedules. Everything she wants to do for these kids. As a matter of fact, I think part of this equation is when she gets to the, with these intrusive thoughts, when she gets to the point where her identity is a good enough mother is being challenged,

that in some ways her overplanning and her obsessiveness is a defense-meting. against the chaos she's feeling inside. Yeah. It's not that the prosecution, by the way, is portraying this as how meticulous she is and how controlled she is and how she mapped this whole thing out. Right. I see it is completely different.

Okay. I see this as her world, her internal world is falling apart. And her response to that is to become even more meticulous, to become even more controlled. Her response is to try, is to jump into this over-controlling, obsessive, kind of these over-controlling obsessive qualities of controlling everything, food, schedules in the children's lives. And it's, it's- To contain everything.

It's to contain the chaos. It's to contain the insomnia. It's to contain the intrusive thoughts. It's a way for her. it's a defensive move. It's defensive in the sense that she feels like she needs to resort to that to continue to function normally. Yeah. So there's a couple of thoughts there that I want to start with Macbath. And again, it may not seem completely obvious.

But the idea of murdering sleep is the same as insomnia. And I feel that with Lindsay Clancy. And then I feel this whole idea of like Macbeth, of living in this nightmare. And everybody that's around Macbeth is in this nightmare. Everybody that's in Macbeth's orbit is under threat. And that may or may not be true of Lindsay Clancy. It's not as true with Lindsay Clancy. But for her at least, if I think about her experience subjectively,

it feels very much like she's in a nightmare that she can't get out of. And the more she tries to restore normality, and the more she grasps to get back. sleep and anybody who's had insomnia would know the more you try to sleep the less you're going to sleep right and that is sort of that is sort of the hamster wheel that she's on and she's desperate and she's desperate and she just she really can't get off of that so that's my lead but i want to back this up with some research that that also i think is is really important in terms of understanding lindsay and and also i think by the way

Redington knows this. He talked about her insomnia and it's important. But I don't think people, and mental health professionals in particular on this case, she was diagnosed with insomnia by a couple of the providers when she was struggling for help. I think one provider in particular diagnosed her. I'd have to look it up.

But. Yeah, mentioning the lack of sleep and the insomnia. And the insomnia was a constant. But I think it really, if you look at this case, this idea of murdering sleep, it undergirds everything in this case. And I'm going to explain why this is so important. I think that there are seasons in life when you suddenly realize, okay, I probably should not be trying to carry all of this by myself. Maybe it's grief, anxiety, stress, burnout, or just life piling up faster than you can process it. And finding the right therapist should not become another stressful thing on your list. And that is why I appreciate what Rula is about. They help you find

a licensed therapist and mental health providers who actually accept insurance. Rula partners with more than 100 insurance plans and patients typically pay an average co-pay of about $15 per session. You can search based on your goals, preferences, and background, and appointments can be available as soon as tomorrow. Head to Rula.com slash hidden to get started. That's Rula rula.com slash hidden for quality therapy that's covered by insurance. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable high quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. Visit rula.com slash hidden. So let's talk about a little bit about the research on insomnia.

In general, the research on insomnia shows a few things that insomnia and sleep deprivation They tend to increase our vulnerability for hallucinations and psychotic experiences generally. Wow. And if you're having intrusive thoughts, there's some research suggesting that insomnia also intensifies existing voices or intrusive thoughts. So there's a study from 2016. The title is insomnia and hallucinations in the general populations finding from the 2000 and 2007 British psychic. morbidity surveys. It's in psychiatry research. It's by Sheaves et al. The findings were, essentially, that people reporting sleep problems had approximately two to four times greater

odds of reporting hallucinations, depending on the severity and chronicity of their insomnia. There was also a longitudinal portion. That means they followed it up the, that they followed the participants over time. A longitudinal portion of the study showed, insomnia predicted the later emergence of hallucinatory experiences over a period of 18 months, even after adjusting for depression, anxiety, and paranoia, meaning that insomnia was the most likely cause of hallucinations. Also, part of this study is that when I say there's a two to four times greater chance of hallucinations with insomnia, the worst the insomnia, the greater the greater the

the odds. So we know that Lindsay Clancy had very severe insomnia. That's all she talked about. Which would be consistent with someone who might hear voices eventually or might have hallucinations or might when you combine it in particular with postpartum depression or anxiety might lead to command hallucinations. I say might because there's not there's clearly not a causal link. I want to make that clear. I'm just citing research. This research is not pointing to causal connections. It's more correlational. But it's important because it does show a connection between insomnia and hallucinations. Also, there's been research showing connections

between longitudinal research, showing connections between insomnia that's statistically significant, it's not a huge connection, but between insomnia and later suicidal ideation and behavior. The study that one of the studies, there's a number of studies that look at this, but one of the studies is called sleep disturbances as risk factors for societal thoughts and behaviors, a meta-analysis of longitudinal studies is by Harris et al, and it's from scientific reports. So we have that too. Again, I'm stressing here the importance of sleep

and how insomnia in this case is undervalued. These are research. Right. The research is consistent with this. And one more study, which is equally important. And again, there's several, there's numerous studies looking at these issues that are consistent. But this one showed that participants that were deprived of sleep, that nearly 50% more of the participants in the study had unwanted memory intrusions.

In other words, intrusive thoughts than the more rested the participants that didn't have sleep problems. One of the findings of the study, by the way, was also that sleep deprivation interfered with prefrontal control over memory and emotional systems. I think with Lindsay Clancy, there's no question, or there's little question that I think that connection potentially between sleep deprivation or insomnia and prefrontal cortex control, which is the part of the brain that's responsible for decision-making and executive functioning. If that's impaired, and you throw in the potential of bipolar disorder, which she was diagnosed with after later by Dr. Spinelli.

If you throw all of those things into the mix, postpartum issues, postpartum depression, you can see how the floodgates open here, how the floodgates open towards more unwanted and intrusive thoughts, more suicidal ideation, more possibility or a greater risk of hallucinations. The study here, by the way, that I just mentioned is called losing control, sleep deprivation impairs the suppression of unwanted thoughts.

It's from clinical psychological science in 2021. It's Harrington et al. And I'm just, there's many studies. Right, you're just, you're just, I'm sharing some of the more recent ones that I think are completely relevant here. But the overall finding is essentially that insomnia matters. And if you're looking at a case like, like Lindsay Clancy's, it matters. deeply in the sense that the risk of increased hallucinations,

the risk of self-harming ideation, the risk of intrusive thoughts goes up. And not only does it go up, but it becomes harder to control, all of those elements. And so I think it's really interesting that this part of the case isn't given, has not been getting more attention.

Well, we'll hear what the defense has to say. Yeah, the defense may, the defense. And the prosecution isn't going to want to bring. this up. No. But you can see how I think potentially, and again, this is why I start with Macbeth, because when you murder sleep, you're going to create a whole host of problems. Yeah, unending. You're going to create a lot of problems. And when you're, especially after you've given birth and you have a history of postpartum depression with previous children, and now you have particularly severe postpartum depression, which may become postpartum psychosis and insomnia.

and shame, when you start combining all of these elements, you're really looking at potential problems ahead. You're really, right? That's not to say, by the way, I'm not arguing that this combination of elements leads to murder. Most of the time, it doesn't lead to murder, but it can. The case in question is the killings of three children.

Her children. She killed them. Right. If we're if we're if we're if I'm trying to explain some of the connections. I think sleep and insomnia are really good place to jump into this case because they're so important. So I think most interesting thing that they could create the hallucinations. A lack of sleep creates the hallucinations. Well, I think all of those come into play though. And by the way, let's talk about the intrusive thoughts part. Yeah. I have questions. Okay.

Well, I have a question about the difference between hallucinations, intrusive thoughts, psychosis. We're hearing all these different terms during the trial. And it just makes me realize I don't really understand the difference between command hallucinations, hallucinations, intrusive thoughts, psychosis. So when you mentioned that, I was like, yeah, please, like, I have questions. Okay. I don't know if I can specify it right now, but, but I want to understand. Yeah.

So let's, let's start with, yeah, let's start with psychosis. So in the broadest term, psychosis is a break from reality. If you're psychotic, you're typically not grounded in, for like a better term reality. You're not grounded in something, the elements of the world that are surrounding you, that you're not perceiving things accurately, you're not seeing things,

there can be, you can have audio hallucinations, you can have visual hallucinations, there's different types of hallucinations, but a command hallucination is specifically, typically an auditory verbal hallucination in which a voice tells you to perform an action. So you can have command hallucinations which are pretty benign.

It may tell you to do something like pick up a chair. Or you can have command hallucinations which are like Lindsay Clancy much more violent and much more malicious. They command you to do something destructive. They command you to harm some people. And by the way, on that issue, there's most people that have command hallucinations don't necessarily follow those. command hallucinations. There there was a study, a recent

study from 2026 that was a systematic review of 56 studies looking at command hallucinations. The title of this study is clinical correlates of compliance, appeasement, and resistance in command hallucinations, a systematic review. It's Meet Us

at Al in clinical psychology and psychotherapy 2026. Compliance with command hallucinations, typically an action is more likely to occur, according to this study. When the people who have command hallucinations, when they believe the voice was powerful, omniscient, or benevolent. They believe that obedience, disobedience would have serious consequences. They felt obligated to obey the voice. they identified the voice as being familiar.

They experienced the voices having a higher social rank than they did. Like an authority. Like an authority figure. Yep. Also, if there were issues around impulsivity, anger, substance use, social isolation, or childhood trauma, the odds of following the command hallucination were higher. I think in the case of Lindsay Clans, I think the thing that's the most relevant

is that she believed the voice was powerful. I don't know if she believed it was omniscient, but she definitely gave some authority to that voice. And I believe it was a male voice. That was interesting too. Yeah. So I think she felt some obligation to obey. An intrusive thought is different.

An intrusive thought is essentially an unwanted thought. And what's interesting about intrusive thoughts, so it's not atypical for women who have given birth to experience intrusive thoughts. I don't remember, I don't, did you have any intrusive thoughts? I mean, I need to understand the definition of intrusive thoughts more. I mean, unwanted thoughts, I might have those all the time, right? anxiety is an intrusive thought. I'm so stressed. And I think, okay, let me, let me do it.

Intrusive thought isn't, why don't you explain it first? Okay, it's an unwanted, it's typically an unwanted threatening thought. And that intrusive thoughts, particularly after childbirth, postpartum intrusive thoughts are often perceived as, threats. They're often part of what I would describe as the threat detection system. So I think what happens that the origin of intrusive thoughts after childbirth is essentially that you have a little creature, a little baby that's extremely vulnerable and the impulses to protect it. And so because of that impulse to protect it, you're,

because you're so invested in protecting that child and from an evolutionary standpoint, like we're very sensitive to threats, kind of fight or flight, and because of the vulnerability of the baby and the stakes being so high, that we naturally will have thoughts about how the baby might be harmed. So my, so postpartum anxiety for me, my biggest fear was that I was going to die, but it wasn't that, oh, no, I'm going to die. It was if I die, what's going to happen to my baby? I was so panicked about my baby not having care because I was going to die.

That's, I had absolutely fears of death. This is the first time I'm hearing this. Okay. But yeah, yes, it would be a version of that, except a lot of times in... I told him, by the way, he's just forgetting. Yeah, that's been like a decade. Go on. I'm sure you did. But the these postpartum intrusive thoughts that often involve harm,

they're really a reflection of the parents' intense preoccupation with protecting a really exceptionally vulnerable infant. That's where they originate. It's not the reason we have, the reason why women, postpartum, women who have these intrusive thoughts, they occur because of the emotional salience and the emotional importance of the child.

They're not based on desire. The desire is to protect, but that's not what's creating the problem, What's creating the problem is that not all the time, but the women having these thoughts are so invested and so concerned about their children, that the emotional importance of those thoughts become incredibly high. Yeah.

And when you, so those thoughts occur typically to some degree in a lot of women. In fact, there was a 20-24 study, the title of the study, Prevalence and Course of Unwanted, Intrusive Thoughts of Infant Related Harm from 2024 in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, it's Collar-Doo et al, found that roughly 96% of all the women in this study reported at least one unwanted thought of accidental infant harm.

96%. That's a really, high number. Yeah. Wow. 54% reported at least one thought of intentional harm

towards a child. After six months, a lot of those thoughts decreased or disappeared. But the point is that they're common. And however, I think it's important to note that

these intrusive thoughts when they're filtered through perceived threats or depression or anxiety. In other words, when you layer in mental health issues that include anxiety or depression onto already intrusive thoughts, it becomes worse. And that's when you start moving from these thoughts of accidental or intentional harm on the infant to consistent thoughts of harm. And it's not that it's not most women who have these thoughts aren't going to act on them.

But they create a lot of dissonance. They create a lot of conflict. They create a lot of discomfort. Darkness. Yeah. So when these thoughts, in other words, when these thoughts are passed through a depressed and or anxious cognitive system, they become worse. And I think that's part of the problem.

that's what we see with Lindsay Clancy, is that she's having these in truth of thoughts. She's depressed. She's anxious. She's experiencing these postpartum issues. She's not sleeping. We already talked about that, obviously. And they're really, they're really what we would call ego-dustonic in the sense that they're not, as I said, they're not consistent with her identity.

They're not consistent with how she perceives them. and that creates this vicious cycle of escalation. Yeah, okay. So I think it, but it's, what's important here, I think, to recognize is that intrusive thoughts aren't harming infants accidentally or intentionally by postpartum after giving birth are very common.

Well, throw in the hormones too. That's got to play apart. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. The biological hormonal changes are absolutely, but I think maybe part of driving that is this idea of vulnerability with the infant and protection, this desire to overprotect the child,

this desire. I mean, if you think about human beings going back tens of thousands of years, it makes sense because if you think infants are vulnerable now, think about how they were 10,000 years ago. Right, right, without infant mortality. Right. Infant mortality was off the chart. So I think some of this is definitely hardwired into human beings. I agree.

And so part of that wiring goes askew when the thoughts of protecting become distorted and become something else, become harm. But in either case, these thoughts are, are typically part of what I would call the threat detection system, which by the way, interesting, just as a quick aside here, I don't want to deviate too far here, but one of the reasons that people are drawn to listening to true crime or interested in true crime is precisely because of the same threat detection system.

That if you, for example, if there's an unusually large number of women that have an interest in, say, serial killers, it's because, it's partly because, there's many reasons, but it's partly because of the threat, it's the same system that results in intrusive thoughts because women want to learn about serial killers in order to reduce the risk of dating or marrying or ending up with a serial killer.

Or ending up in their trunk. Right, exactly. And so it's a natural, if you think of human beings and vulnerable women in particular, assessing the environment for threat, it makes perfect sense that you're going to want to learn about serial killers because if you're single and you're dating in particular, or maybe even if you're not, people have married serial killers. I could hardly find anything about him on the web. I was like, dude.

Yeah, but that's because I'm a little bit. psychologist and don't want my information out there. Not because I'm a serial killer, I promise. Fingers crossed, we'll see. I'm taking the risk. I think something would have happened by now. So you have this normal process of the desire to protect a child through this,

you have this threat monitoring or threat detection system that ends up kind of distorting things a little bit and generating the frightening possibility that maybe you can harm this highly valued and highly vulnerable baby. Yeah. But the goal is the same. The goal is to protect that child

and because the vulnerability is so high, that threat detection system kind of gets distorted. Interesting. But when you think about, the idea of postpartum biological changes and hormonal changes and sleep deprivation and depression and anxiety all coming together it makes those intrusive thoughts more salient and it makes those intrusive thoughts more noticeable and it makes them more continuous they don't stop yeah so that's interesting i don't know if

I don't know. Did I answer your questions about command hallucinations? Yeah, I have no other questions. I just really wanted to understand the difference in what they were. I didn't really get it. I also thought it was interesting that most people don't act on command hallucinations. So, which means like if I ever have them,

I can like let you know. And you won't be like, oh no, she's going to kill me in my sleep. So no just kidding. I haven't had those before, but I'll tell you if I ever do. But you're not going to kill me in my sleep.

But if I do, and I tell you, you can be like, okay, don't act on it. Like most people. No, that's interesting. I did not know that, that most people don't even act on them. Yeah, it, I mean. And how they're different than intrusive thoughts.

I just was really wanting to understand that and psychosis. Here's a question. Psychosis, can psychosis come without warning? Like, can it, can it, all of a sudden, can you go from intrusive thoughts? can you go from how lengthy Clancy was functioning to in 30 minutes killing all three of her kids because you all of a sudden are in psychosis. That's what I'm really asking.

And if that's not your, if you want to get back to McFathouse. I don't think, I don't think psychosis is like a switch. Okay. That you turn on and off. I think in her case, the psychosis was probably more of a slow burn. In the sense, I think psychosis is tricky

because you can appear organized, you can appear normal, you can appear fine, but you can be somewhat psychotic. If you define it as divorce from reality. That's true. That if she thinks for whatever reasons that, first of all, I know people like that.

I'm like, I think you're normal. And then I find out your self. somewhat psychotic. No, go ahead. But no, I know what you're saying. So you can appear, you can appear normal. You can appear normal. You can appear organized and you can still have psychosis. She could have easily had the, you know, one thing to keep in mind with Lindsay Clancy that's interesting is she strikes me as someone who's pretty stoic. That one of the ways they described that. Patrick, too. They described her as not as being not, she wasn't a complainer, right? She's not

the type of person. When she goes to see these doctors, I think it's important to keep in mind. When she goes to see these doctors, she's not going to broadcast all of her problem. She's, I think she honestly, she's containing them. Exactly. I think she, honestly,

I think she she goes in for help, I think mainly to deal with her sleep. She just wants to sleep. I mean, she recognizes the intrusive thoughts are an issue. But I think she's someone. if she can just sleep.

She also seems to have a paranoia about being addicted to the pain, or not the pain, excuse me, addicted to the pills that, the pills that are helping her. I think of that as maybe perfectionism too. Like she's already jumping ahead, having anxiety about these pills that, you know, are helping her,

the Ativan and the Valium. Yeah. I think one interesting thing about Lindsay Clancy is, yes, she's stoic, the way she perhaps is representing herself. I agree. I think she seems to me, and I have an interviewed her, obviously,

but she seems to me as someone who, because of her, because of her investment in being a good mother, I think that's a facade she's going to also present. She could be falling, she could be absolutely fracturing and falling apart internally, but she's not going to necessarily show that to the world. She's going to go through the emotions. Including to medical professionals.

Yeah, true. So. Because that's how good. guarded she is. Correct. Is it possible that she was hearing voices or having psychosis during any of those visits? Yes. But she's not going to say that. But she's not going to say it because she also's in the medical system. Right. She doesn't necessarily know how that information is going to be shared. She doesn't know if it's going to affect her livelihood. Or if she's going to say, if she even just admits, I want to harm my children, you know.

She probably, I don't think that's an easy thing for a lot of new mothers to be able to admit. Yeah, exactly. And I think it's quite clear that I think that's another element in this case that I think is somewhat distorted, which is this idea that somehow somebody like Lindsay Clancy is just going to show up in these provider's offices and spill everything and talk about everything. Yeah, I had a dream. I'm not sleeping. I want to hurt my baby. I want to harm myself.

I want to harm my baby. And then find out. I'm psychotic. I'm hallucinating. I'm having command hallucinations. I mean. And then have your baby taken away from you and have a CPS show up at your house. Right.

Losing your job. Right. She's remember she worked for a long time on labor and delivery. She wanted to go back to work. Right. They're not going to put her on labor and delivery if they know she's having thoughts about homicidal thoughts about her kids. Right.

So that's an important element, I think, that's not being talked about as much. And also, but you raise a really good question, which is, these are questions for the jury at the end of the day, but did her psychosis? For example, there's a question. Did her psychosis emerge so acutely after her final appointment with Tufts? So 24 hours before the event, the murders, she appears to be fairly normal. Yeah. There's nothing extremely unusual going on.

Yeah. And so is it possible that she has this psychotic break within 24 hours after that visit where, and again, that's assuming that she's, I'm sure, by the way, if she is psychotic, she's certainly not going to convey that to Tufts. Right. But is it, that's a question.

Is it possible to go from being reasonably normal or appearing reasonably normal to being acutely psychotic and having command hallucinations right after that visit? That's a question for the jury. Right. And the defense when they come up. Or is it the case that she was having psychotic symptoms previously

and she concealed them, or they were misunderstood by her providers. Or maybe they just, maybe in a way she tried to convey them, but they just didn't ask the right questions. Maybe they were just missed. Maybe the providers didn't want to know. Yeah. Maybe these appointments were also even shorter

than they even wrote down in the records. Or how about this possibility? She's having intrusive thoughts, and her providers don't pick up on that. I don't know if she, I think she conveyed that to some of her providers. She did. Maybe her provider, maybe her providers didn't quarry. They didn't ask enough questions to follow that idea, to follow that.

Maybe the intrusive thoughts were this voice. Yeah. Maybe the intrusive thoughts were already this, this command, this voice that would show up later that she described as, maybe that was already there, but they didn't go. deep enough. Well, one thing they always asked, too, is do you have a plan? I mean, who admits that they're going to have a homicidal ideation plan? Like, you're going to, I don't know. Not if you want to keep working on the labor and delivery ward.

I've learned through this trial that it doesn't matter how long you're having ideations. If you don't have a plan, you're good to go home. Like, if you're plan free, you're, you know, no one's going to be. to listen to you. That's what I feel like I've learned. Right. And in the minute you talk about a plan, you know, again, I don't know, maybe, you know, she, she did want help, she was hospitalized, she didn't get a lot of help in the hospital. But maybe she doesn't want to go to the hospital. If you say you have a plan and you say that self-harmine risk is imminent, they're going to hospitalize you more than likely. Yeah. But I mean, this is all so complex,

especially for someone in the medical profession. And again, the jury, you know, the jury is really going to have their hands full and trying to figure this out. They are. Like I said, you know, sitting there for two weeks, this jury is really stoic. And one thing I notice is they look at Lindsay Clancy a lot. And yes, jurors always look at defendants, obviously. But when there's an emotional witness on the stand testifying, they're looking at her.

And they're trying to figure out who the real Lindsay Clancy is. You can tell they're like studying her. So they're learning about her from like the nanny or for someone or Patrick or someone in her life. They're staring at her. When they see exhibits on the screen pictures, they look at the exhibits and then they turn and they look at her like they're trying to get her reaction to the exhibit. They're looking at her in a usual amount. And I think they're trying to figure out who is the real Lindsay Clancy. Who is she?

I think we're all wondering that. Yeah. And I don't know if you can get there from observing someone's behavior in court. I know. That's the whole point of presenting evidence is to develop that picture. Or on a Zoom, you know, a 15-minute appointment either. as Kevin Reddington says, the television. Your doctor's point was on the television?

You really throw that one in. Okay. So I've covered intrusive thoughts. I've covered psychosis. I've covered command hallucinations. But let me, let's talk about, I want to talk a little bit about, before we finish here,

I want to talk about, and then we're going to move on to another literary analogy, which I think can help illuminate this case a lot. But how do you go? So what is the cycle of escalation to go from an intrusive thought of harming your infant or infants, in this case, or your children, to murder? And there is a progression that I think is important here to understand.

And that progression is you start with the intrusive thoughts. So someone like Lindsay Clancy says, we already mentioned this earlier, but somebody like Lindsay Clancy says, I'm a horrible mother because I'm thinking about harming my child. Okay. Right. Or they're having a thought, they're having a terrifying thought of harming their child. And so they see that as ego dystonic, meaning not something they want to think or have because it challenges their identity.

So you have this horrible thought that enters your mind. And that thought creates conflict. So quite naturally, you're going to be conflicted about that thought. You're not going to want that thought. So that leads to the next step in that progression would be you go from an intrusive thought to what I would call an alienated thought, which is a thought that doesn't feel like it's yours. If you have a thought about harming your children initially, for example, if you say, for example, a good mother would never have that thought.

Now you're at a stage I would call an alienated thought, which is the alienated thought does not feel like you. So the whole point of this progression is you go from a thought that's uncomfortable to getting to a thought or a command hallucination that is not you. So the progression goes from an intrusive thought to an alienated thought, which is a thought that doesn't feel like you,

the next step would be hallucinated thought, a hallucinated or what's called hallucinated agency. And that is the step. So it doesn't feel like you to, it goes to someone else must be saying that. If I keep hearing that, for if, for example, if the thought is, if the thought is,

I want to throw my baby off a cliff, now you might be at the point where you have to think, in order to maintain some semblance of normality, you have to think someone else must be saying that. Another voice. Another voice. It's not you. Right.

This is coming from somewhere else. It's not coming from me. It's coming from someone else. I can never think this. That moves into what I would call persecutory, persecutory authority, which is, whatever this voice is,

that's not me, this voice now knows what's going to happen. Oh. And you can see how going from persecutory authority now gets you into command hallucinations. Huh. Which is he knows, he or she knows what's going to happen to that voice is now telling me what to do. And then you act on it. Damn.

That's the cycle of escalation from an intrusive thought. So it goes from, this is a terrible thought. It's creating a lot of conflict to this is a terrible thought. it doesn't feel like me to someone else must be saying it to this voice if this voice is at me and they're exerting so much authority they must know what's going to happen to now the voice is telling me what to do well it sounds like religious delusion too yeah it sounds like a criminal that that acts in the name of religion interesting it was another voice right it's this well it's not me it's them it's God.

Yeah, I mean, it's a similar, I think it's a similar progression. I think in the case of Lindsay Clancy, though, you start with the tremendous investment in being a good mother. I agree. And she had that investment. That much is clear. She thought that she was going to be the best mother. It goes from starting with being a good or a great mother and being a perfectionist that

wants to execute or wants to deliver on that promise to having thoughts that are dangerous, which she can't reconcile. And once you get to the point of having these thoughts that are dangerous, then she starts to have shame and she starts to see herself as defective. And when you start taking that far enough, now you're moving into, well, if I'm having those thoughts, it must not be me. Okay. That's the transition.

That's the transitions that's occurring here. And then the command hallucinations follow. The command hallucination is the logical conclusion of... It not being her voice. Correct. The command hallucination is where you land when you follow this path deep enough into the darkness of, I cannot have these thoughts.

So therefore... It has to be someone else. Okay, wow. And you can see, by the way, when you, if you believe her, the prosecution is going to argue that the command hallucinations are fiction, but if you believe that, you can see how now we're starting to get into this,

we're getting into insanity. Because if she thinks it's not her and she's responding to a command hallucination, it doesn't, she doesn't think it's her. Like, she's not doing something she would normally do. This is not her identity. This is not her agency. And this goes back to Macbeth. Are the witches in control of Macbeth? Or is Macbeth in control of Macbeth? It's the same idea. The difference is that, and there, believe me, there's been a lot of discussion about

the witches and Macbeth, but are the witches in Macbeth just a fiction? Are they a projection of his fantasies about control? Are they a projection? Is it the same dynamic? I could argue it is. Yeah. Yeah. So, so that's, those are sort of the, those are the steps that you would, I think those are the steps of going from an intrusive thought to, to a command hallucination. And it starts by the way, it's, it's, it's, it's, the day the prosecution's been up, guys. His notes are being put on a chair over here and we're just, you know, we started with 13. I won't tell you how many are left, but, you know, as many pages of notes as there has been thus far in the prosecution's arguments. All right. So let's jump into my next list. We're going to go

from McBeth to another literary analogy. I'm going to move from Macbeth to what I think would be what I believe is sort of the perfect literary analogy here for this case, which is going to be Robert Lewis-Stevenson Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hodge. There you go. Okay, yep. We've talked about this. I actually call this case. I call this case. So in the actual title of Stevenson's book, it's not the strange case. It's just strange case. It's just strange. case. So I call it strange case. I don't know why there's no da. Strange case of nurse Clancy versus Mrs. Hyde. Okay. Jekyllyn Hyde. Jekyllyn Hyde. I'm going to read a quote actually from Stevenson himself. Jekyll and Hyde, by the way, which is called Jekyllenlund Hyde.

Jekyll and Hyde was written. It was published in 1886. And so it was published during a period when gothic literature was really kind of finding a lot of popularity and and was kind of changing the literary landscape quite a bit. Poe, Aguirre Allen Poe is part of that, by the way. But Stevenson, here's one of the most famous quotes from that book is, quote, man is not truly one, but truly two, unquote. Man is not truly one, but truly two. And so the idea which back then, Jekyll and Hyra, back then that was a radical idea

that human beings combined both bad and good, that human beings are a combination of good and evil. And everyone has a dark side. And that it's highly possible that the dark side can take over the good side. And by the way, that idea, obviously since then with, let's say modern psychology or modern psychiatry has evolved quite a bit that we wouldn't think of only two facets of personality.

So nowadays, we would... I just have to point out. Yeah, there's now a bunch of coyotes. Howling. I'm sure the mic's not picking them up, but there... Let's pause for a second. Can you guys hear that? We have coyotes in our yard every night.

We'll see. We don't know. It might not pick it up, but they are howling still. A massive pack. So anyway, Jekyll and Hyde. Why do I feel like... has a dark side and the coyotes start howling. Yeah, why do I feel like the coyotes knew the exact timing to jump in on the show?

Right, in Sherlock Holmes, you have the hounds, the hounds of Baskerville. You know, we have the coyotes of our house. Hidden true crime. The coyotes. But it's perfect timing because Stevenson's quote now would be considered simplistic because we now know that the best example I could give is, there's a neuroscientist by the name of David Eagleman. He wrote a book called Incognito. And his basic premise, I'll just simplify this, of course,

but his basic premise is that the mind is a committee. He called the mind a team of rivals, that the mind is a combination of a lot of voices and people and experiences that act like a committee that all sort of compete for our attention. And so Stevenson saw the mind. is kind of split between good and evil, but we know now that the mind is actually what's more complex, that there's a lot of voices that compete for our attention. There's a lot of facets

of personality. There's a lot of parts of ourselves. It is, by the way, a Freudian idea. Freud talked about the ego, the super ego, the ego, and the id, and those three competed against each other. But again, Freud obviously is oversimplifying. We now know that if you think of Eagleman's analogy that the mind is much more complex. If it's a team of rivals, the interesting part is that Eagleman's idea still points to this idea of conflict, that the team of rival doesn't get along. They all compete for attention and they all kind of conflict with each other. And so that basic Freudian idea is correct, I think.

But Stevenson locates it in two players, good and evil. And which, by the way, so this Jekyll and Hyde would very much be a representation. of how the prosecution is trying to present this case. I agree. Lindsay Clancy is not this good mother. In fact, she's Mrs. Hyde. She's the evil Mrs. Hyde that takes over the personality of Dr. Jekyll, commits these heinous crimes.

Yeah. It's very black and white. Very black and white. Whereas Reddington, thankfully, Reddington understands much better. that this is not good visible. This is, as he said, as he said in his opening statements,

the prosecution is going to say that this isn't about mental health. And he said, it absolutely is. It absolutely is a referendum on postpartum psychosis and women's mental health. And I agree with him. Because if you see it as a referendum on mental health, then you're introducing more complexity. Okay.

Into this equation. I have questions on that, but keep going and I'll save it. If so, let's talk about why the Jack Collin-Hyde analogy, I think, works. I wrote down a few things here. I'm just going to kind of, I'm going to work through these. I don't, didn't memorize them. So I just kind of have some notes here about. his notes are beautiful guys you should see this stuff

maps and go on so in jekyll versus hide one of the first these are analogies i think that work for lindsay is that we see that control gradually transfers from jekyll to hide so jekyll's the doctor jekyll's the guy who's in control jekyll's right nurse clancy same thing she's the professional, the medical professional that's in control of her life. But once she starts moving towards from intrusive thoughts to potentially psychosis

and command hallucinations, she starts losing some control. She starts fragmenting. And that's creating the problem. And it's not only that. So her agency shifts, her agency shifts. her agency shifts from the capacity. Her agency shifts, her agency shifts, her mind shifts from the capacity to kind of reflect on her life

and to contain all these experiences of being a mother to losing that capacity, to losing, she, she, to giving up that, she gives up that agency to the psychosis. She gives up that agency to the commands in the same way that Jack, eventually loses control of that his identity as a rational, logical doctor to hide, who's this murderous evil side of him that takes over.

And interestingly enough, in Jekyll and Hyde, Jekyll tries to control Hyde through these potions. So initially he's concocting, Jekyll's concocting these potions. Okay. initially he wants to use these potions to bring Hyde to life because he he actually likes Hyde because Hyde represents if he's living in kind of this really restrictive it's a rebellion power a rebellious power kind of if he's living in this really alter ego right if he's living in this kind of rule based Victorian society

and Hyde represents the opposite of that letting loose letting loose right being who is He didn't go. So he's using this potion initially to bring Hyde out because it makes him feel powerful. And it allows him to transgress all the limits of the society where he feels constricted. However, what happens, what ends up happening is the potion stops working and Hyde takes over anyway. The problem is that when you give somebody like Hyde too much power, hide will take over. And so with Lindsay Clancy, I think you have a similar transfer of agency from, as I just talked about, from these intrusive thoughts to if we get to the command hallucinations at that point, because she's seen it as something alien to who she is, she's giving away her agency to that voice. Yeah. Huh. Kind of remind me of breaking bat a little bit too.

True. Although I think Walter White's much more deliberate in his transformation. True. And that's, by the way, so that will lead me into my second point, which is that Jekyll eventually becomes a stranger in his own psychological house. And I think that's true of Lindsay Clancy, too. That she begins to experience her own mind as being invaded or controlled by a foreign agent. And that's that transition from having those intrusive thoughts to getting to the point where she's like, that's not me.

I don't recognize who that is. So she's splitting. She's splitting. Splitting. That was what I was looking for. Splitting. Splitting, by the way, is a very – it's a psychological defense mechanism that essentially results in people seeing the world is all good or all bad. And so part of splitting is children do this.

It's a very primitive defense mechanism that the way this would work with Lindsay Clancy is if she sees herself as good, then she will retain those elements. She'll try to retain those elements for herself and she'll transfer all the bad elements onto this voice or onto this voice that's engaging her with these commands. That allows her to maintain some semblance of normality. the problem with that for her is that if this voice continues and strengthens, as I just said, then she loses control of it. She loses her.

The good mother essentially is negated. Yeah. Splitting, yeah. It's a primitive thing that children grow out of, but not all children do. And then some adults do it, though, right? Things are all good or all bad. And it's very, it's rigidity. and a lack of being able to see complexity.

It's really annoying. It's really annoying in people, honestly. It's a very common defense mechanism. As a matter of fact, something's all good or all bad. Yeah. And it's a really great way to dehumanize someone and then. There's no middle ground.

So it's a way to try to oversimplify the world. It's a way to try to oversimplify a complex issue. or complexity of the personality so that we're not overwhelmed by negative emotions like shame, for example. And it also is a way for it to protect against anxiety that in the case of Lindsay Clancy, instead of seeing it as her, if she sees it as some alien voice,

then it's not her. It's not her fault. So I think that to me, the Jekyll Hyde analogy has a lot in common with the Lindsay Clancy case. But there's an additional step, I think, that's important. And that is that if splitting is oversimplification, the problem that Lindsay Clancy and that Jekyll have in particular is that they really fail to integrate complexity.

they fail to integrate the contradictions that most human beings have to engage, have to encounter. And by the way, I think the reason she doesn't, the reason she lacks that capacity or the reason that, so this is really a failure of integration. And arguably, so is Macbeth. McBeth can't embrace the complexity

of all these contradictory thoughts and feelings he has. He becomes single-mindedly of, obsessed. Yeah, you're right. With murder and being king and maintain power at all cost. Yeah. Obsessed. It's true.

It's true with Jekyll too. That if we see, so the reason why that happens with Lindsay Clancy, I think is because of the postpartum anxiety and depression, the changes she's going through, the demands from her family, raising three kids, the biological changes.

the exhaustion, the insomnia, all the things we talked about. I think all of those really compromise her ability to integrate those elements of her personality that she normally would be able to embrace and integrate. And so the things we typically think about that might be contradictory in the human experience, like love and anger, devotion and resentment, competency and helplessness, vulnerability versus power, All of those elements of the human experience now for Lindsay Clancy become reduced to something very simplistic that her bandwidth is very limited in this circumstance. And so while she normally might be able to embrace those things if she's not suffering from postpartum issues or postpartum depression or anxiety, now she can't.

And that's true, I think, too. that's one of the main lessons of Jekyll and Hyde is that Hyde becomes symbolic of those unwanted parts of Jekyll's personality. I say parts because I don't, Stevenson saw Jekyll. I mean, Hyde is just pure evil. But I see Hyde as a metaphor for all those elements of the human experience that Jekyll cannot embrace. Love, anger, hurt, hate, vulnerability, helplessness, shame, guiltless, shame, guilt. blah, blah, blah, right? It goes on and on.

So I think that's the real, that's the real value of Jekyll and Hyde and the literary analogy works for me because Stevenson really gives us the language to understand this idea of splitting and shame and chemical transformations, right? The chemical transformations with Clancy or Lindsay Clancy are obvious how many medications can you give her?

I know. How many potions? She wanted a magic potion too. She just wanted the magic potion to sleep and be the perfect mother again. And none of the- Bond with Callan. And none of the potions work. So like Jekyll and Hyde, Jekyll was conjuring up all these potions to try to manage hide.

They failed. That's true. They all failed. That's true. So I think the metaphor works, for me, the metaphor works on a lot of levels, but I think that it mostly works at the, this level of Hyde being symbolic, of those elements, those unwanted elements of Jackal's personality that he can't integrate. Same thing with Lindsay Clancy. The Mrs. Hyde is that part of her

that not only enters the equation to the intrusive thoughts, but that part of her that she struggles to embrace, imperfection, fear, shame, right, all the things we've talked about. And so, one of the questions, I think, one of the big questions that juries have to get is going to have to answer here is the prosecution wants to reduce this they want to reduce this trial

to one question. If I'm using the Jekyll Hyde analogy, they really want this to come down to one question, which is, does Hyde take over? Yeah. Does Hyde take over? Does the evil Lindsay Clancy take over? And so the evil

Lindsay Clancy is the premeditation, right? all that stuff. Does the evil murderous Lindsay Clancy plan this? She wasn't suicidal, right? Does she take over the good mother, Lindsay Clancy, what I call Nurse Clancy, does Mrs. Hyde take over Nurse Clancy and win the day and therefore show the world that this was premeditated murder

and that she should serve life in prison? A lot of people think that. And there's arguments to be made for that. Yeah. But the central question for the prosecution is, does Mrs. Hyde take over Nurse Clancy? But I think the more important question is, could Lindsay Clancy still experience herself as one continuous person capable of recognizing her thoughts as thoughts and integrating contradictory feelings while understanding what she was doing, while understanding what she was doing and choosing not to do it. In other words, could she embrace the complexity of being Lindsay Clancy, being a good and a bad mother, both, and refrain from murder?

That's the question. It's not does Hyde take over. The question is, in spite of everything we know, that command hallucinations, the intrusive thoughts, the postpartum psychosis, did she have enough awareness? on the day of the murders, did she have the capacity to embrace all of that complexity so that she could refrain from murdering those kids?

No, I mean. Well, I know. Right. I mean, that's the question the jury, but that is a tough question. That's a tough question. But that's the question, I think, the jury really, unfortunately,

that's the question I think that the jury is left with. Yeah, they're going to struggle with. I think it's interesting because I think the public, the public on this really seems to engage in the type of splitting themselves. Absolutely. The public is more inclined to see this as the traditional Jekyll and Hyde. Well, I mean, that's where I have some questions, yeah, because. The public sees this, is she a saint and a perfect mother, or is she a monster?

Well, let's take it further. The law is black and white, right? You can have a criminal with mental health issues, but the law is the law. You know, the law is the law. You can't kill. So there is sort of a black and white area here. So rather than looking at the Lindsay Clancy person and the complexity of her, they're just looking at the black and white nature of the law.

And if other criminals, this is what I'm hearing on our chat. So I'm just sharing if other criminals have mental health issues, you know, a school shooter or another type of person, why are they held responsible when Lindsay Clancy isn't? Well, let's, let me get more specific about the law. So the law in this particular state is, well, because, number one, she's, her defense is arguing criminal, making an insanity case. Correct.

So that's legally. So from a legal standpoint, the question is, did she appreciate the criminality or wrongfulness of her conduct? And two, could she conform her conduct? Correct. To the requirements of the law. And that's the question I just asked. Right.

That's the legal. That's the legal standard. And in terms of in terms of Jekyll and Hyde, the thing I just mentioned, did she have the capacity in spite of all the postpartum psychosis if she had it, the intrusive thoughts, the command hallucination, in spite of all of that, let's say she had all of that, was she still capable under those circumstances

of restraining her behavior and not murdering those kids? To me, that's the big question. This is not, this is not, did Hyde take over and she became pure evil? Yeah. Because that's what the prosecution wants you to believe. Right.

So I think the, I think the prosecuting would like to reduce this to because there were murders and because it appeared to be premeditated in the sense that it involves some planning she sent patrick out for errands which seemed to give her the space to commit these murders that the argument is that the evil that hide take mrs hide takes over and i think there's definitely some impulse among the public to some degree. I mean, I don't know the numbers, but to split in the same way, to say that she committed that, right, I don't know, that in some ways, that dynamic between Jekyll and Hyde is playing out publicly.

Agreed. There is another part of this case that if we're talking about Jekyll and Hyde, there's another part of this case, I think, that is dark. that I haven't talked about and I think I should talk about it which I think this is the part that probably disturbs me the most and that is

I think part of the reason so that let's just almost being equal let's assume she has these intrusive thoughts and she's going on this path and we know that she has some self-harming thoughts one question is

if things are that bad for her and she just wants to escape her life, that's what the prosecution says, she just wants to get out of this pain. I don't know if she wants to escape her life, by the way, I disagree with that. But I think she does want to end the pain. She wants to end the pain.

She wants the pain to go away. Then why doesn't she just harm herself? Right. Why does she take the children with her? Right. That's a big question. And I think this is where this case gets. dark and this is where this case gets complicated and I think that my answer to that is

essentially that I think the children become the external manifestations of her own internal conflicts as a mother and by the way that is very similar to Macbeth in the sense that his own internal issues over power and ambition are externally put onto King Duncan who he murders. So instead of trying to resolve those conflicts through reflection and through awareness, self-awareness, right, he murders.

Right. He takes action instead. So he engaged, instead of reflection, he acts. Lindsay Clancy, these intrusive thoughts are really creating conflicts for her over being a mother. Correct. And instead of trying to address those inner conflicts, one simple way of solving that problem, like Macbeth,

is to act out that inner turmoil on her children. If she murders her children, then she eliminates all of those internal conflicts. They go away. Huh. So in other words, in other words, all of those disowned and complex and shameful parts of herself that she's struggling with about being a good enough mother, those become externalized. And they become personified and transferred or projected onto her children. Transferred. Like proxy kind of?

Or is that a whole other thing? Well, no, it's, think of it more like acting out. It's the lack of self-awareness and the lack of reflection. Okay. Now, that doesn't necessarily, that doesn't necessarily negate the defense's argument, by the way, because you could argue that part of that has to do with the fact she lacks self-awareness because she's transferred that self-awareness to this voice,

to these voices and to this command. If she's doing that, then criminal responsibility comes into play. if she's if she has this inner turmoil about her kids and about her motherhood and being a good and she has that awareness and she knows that she doesn't have to murder the kids to feel better about herself essentially then that's a problem yeah then you have to say she is responsible she's criminally responsible she could have right she could have curtailed her behavior to meet the requirements of the law and that this becomes extremely narcissistic Right.

So there's a fine line there. There is. There's a fine line. And I think that's a really important part of this case that nobody's talking about. Is this a narcissist acting out or is it something else? Or is it transferring agency to a voice or voices or a command hallucination that she can't control. And I don't have the answer. I'm inclined to, I'm inclined to go with, so Dr. Spinelli, who I'm sure is going to be a part of the defense's case when that case is made.

Absolutely. Dr. Spinelli, well-known psychiatrist, specializes in this. She argues that the command hallucinations are real. She believes this, this progression, I think, that I'm talking about. And so it'll be interesting to see what she says. But if you go with this, my other explanation here, which is that she's acting out her own pathology and insecurities about being a mother and murdering her kids to stop that pain and to stop that dissonance, because there is cognitive dissonance here. Yes. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance, which she can't resolve. One way to resolve cognitive dissonance is to eliminate the cause or what you believe is the cause. What you believe is the

cause of your dissonance. And in this case, that would be her kids. Yeah. So by murdering essentially, one argument could be that the murder, which also involves self-harm is annihilating both the dreaded state she's experiencing, the dreaded state of being not a good enough mother and herself. So in other words, whatever pain she's experiencing, whatever dread, whatever conflicts, If she's eliminating her kids and herself, clearly the problem solved.

I mean, not in a healthy way. Not in a healthy way. But her pain is gone. Yeah. But her right, her pain, she eliminates her pain. So I put that out there because it's important. I agree. It's important.

And it's something that, again, the jury, the jury's not going to get into this at this level. don't think, but. But it's something they're going to have to ultimately decide about her. Right. And it is a fine line. If they're looking at all her reactions to everything, then clearly they're focused on her character. Absolutely.

And they are. And they want to know. I mean. They want to understand her. Her sobbing uncontrollably about her children when they showed the autopsy photos, I think speaks something about her character. Yeah. I think you,

presumably you could look at that and say one argument you could make is this idea that this voice and this these commands were not her. That in some ways that that wasn't her. The reason she's sobbing uncontrollably is

because she knows that she's different now. Her identity change. Once she committed herself to murdering her kids, under that command hallucination, presumably, that was a different version of her. That was not something she would recognize. That was not her identity as she knows it now.

And so she's crying and sobbing uncontrollably because she recognizes that she was under the influence and the sway of this other persona or command, and now she's not. And so now she can cry. Yeah. Right. So I want to, let's, let me finish with a couple of final thoughts here.

And these thoughts, by the way, are going to be pro defense. Okay. In the sense that if you ask me what side I'm on, I think, I think people can make inferences from my presentation tonight. but some of my argument would have to be based upon whether the command hallucination is real and whether it's accurate and since dr spinelli and dr zel zizel is it zes Dr. Zizel. Dr. Zizel. It's Zy, the first... Zizel.

Since Dr. Spinelli and Dr. Zizel believe that she was suffering from psychosis, I think it's a completely valid hypothesis. But ultimately, I don't know. But I will say this. The argument, I think the most compelling argument here, I think the most compelling argument here, I think the most compelling argument for the defense are a couple of statements by Lindsay Clancy herself and by Patrick. So Patrick's statement, and I'm going to quote this,

I quoted this on our show years ago, but I'll quote it again here. Patrick's statement, Patrick who knows her better than anyone. Patrick, who still supports her and forgives her. Patrick's statement, quote, I wasn't married to a monster. I was married to someone who got sick, unquote. I think that speaks volumes. Yeah. this isn't mrs hyde in the way that stevenson would want to portray hide as evil that patrick recognizes this is a complex human being and not a monster this is not simply a case of good versus evil of good mother versus an evil mother this is much more than that and i i hope i've made that point tonight on this show but even more importantly there are there are there's a

the Lindsay Tree of Life Artisan Journal entries. And I give Reddington huge amount of credit for, so not surprisingly, the prosecution left these statements out. But reading her journal. Reading her journal. But Redington put them in. And I would urge anyone evaluating this case. I say this all the time.

When I evaluate cases, when I am engaged as an evaluator or an examiner on forensic cases, sometimes the littlest tidbits of information make all the difference. They say so much. They say so much. There's a couple of statements that Lindsay Clancy made in that journal that I think tell us everything we need to know. Everything.

Okay. Here's one of those statements. Simple. Simple. I'm drowning every day. Quote, I'm drowning every day, unquote. In her journal, by the way, she talks a lot about sleep deprivation and struggles with sleep. She talks a lot about anxiety. But I'm drowning every day is a tremendous metaphor in terms of understanding. This is a woman who feels like she's falling apart. This is a woman who can't stay afloat. drowning means that you're gasping for air. You're trying to just stay alive.

She's sinking. She feels like she's sinking. But more importantly, this next statement, if you want to understand this case, I would argue, think about this statement. Over and over and over. Think about the statement.

This next statement is everything you need to know about this case. It comes from Lindsay Clancy. It comes from her journal. here it is quote a big thing is I feel disconnected from myself time reality disconnected from myself time reality in other words so she's not saying for myself and time and reality she's lumping myself time and reality together a big thing is I feel disconnected for myself time time reality that's it. That is someone slipping into madness.

That is someone slipping into psychosis. She's lost her sense of time. She's lost her sense of reality. And she's disconnecting from herself. That's exactly what I've been saying here. She tells us, she tells us right here, this was way before the murders. She tells us that she's falling apart.

she's lost all sense of time. She's lost her sense of reality. That is someone who's fragmenting, who's disconnected from, who's disconnecting from herself, and she's on the cusp of psychosis and command hallucinations and all the things we've talked about. That's why I think she's believable.

That's a remarkable sentence from her journal that tells us everything we need to know about this case, and everything we need to know about Lindsay Clancy. It's remarkable. Yeah. And so I think of all the elements, all the information and all the evidence presented, I think that statement from her journal,

pre-murder, pre-murters, is really the glimpse into her mind that explains what happened. And everything I've talked about with insomnia and Macbeth and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Huff. It's all there. Yeah. Yeah.

Of course, the prosecution today tried to show that she was Googling psychosis symptoms, but maybe it's because she was trying to understand if that's what she was dealing with. I'm going to read a journal entry here by Lindsay Clancy that really stresses the importance of being a good mother and how her passion for being a good mother and all the contradictions he feels. faced with their intrusive thoughts about not being a good mother, how all of that comes into play in this analysis. Here's the quote. I'm sad and depressed because I'm not able to parent my third child like my first. I want to treat everyone on my babies like my first, but I know that's not a feasible possibility.

I'm sad that I stop breastfeeding. I feel not as connected with kale now. I think I sort of resent my other children because they prevent me from treating kale like my first baby. and I know that's not fair to them. I know that. I was feeling so depressed last evening when Cora and Dawson came home from school. I know it runs off on them, so we had a pretty rough evening. I want to feel love and connection with all my kids.

I'm also probably having a bit of an internal conflict because my whole life, I wanted to have a lot of kids. I still don't want Cal to be our last, but I have a lot of figuring out to do before I have another. I'm on the fence about starting a new medication for anxiety. depression. I just want to feel happy. I want to be able to relax and take care of my kids. And when they go to bed at night, I want to deeply relax and hang out with Pat and then fall into a deep sleep for eight hours, get up, and pour hard into myself for an hour and a half.

Cal was so very planned in desire. I want to be able to give him all the love he deserves. I guess that's what it's like to be the third child, though. He's not the first third child to ever exist. I think I know he'll be okay, but it's really hard for me. I hate that he has to be put, that he has to put himself to sleep. I'm sad I'm not breastfeeding anymore, but I think deep down these were the right choices. So I think this really summarizes all the issues we've covered in terms of insomnia, being a good enough mother for all her kids, her fears, her worries, her imperfections. I think it's all in this entry. Real Canadian Superstore has everything you need this back-to-school season.

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