by Carol Tavris, Ph.D.

            In California, a woman was accused of murdering her infant son. She killed him, the defense claimed, while suffering from postpartum depression. In San Antonio, Texas, a man confessed to raping a woman three times, but the jury agreed that he was the victim - of a high testosterone level. Michael Deaver excused his perjury by saying he was "forgetful" due to his drinking problem. We are in the midst of an excuse epidemic in America.

            To William Wilbanks, professor of criminal justice at Florida International University in North Miami, these excuses arc all variations on the same theme: "I can't help myself." Wilbanks calls this phrase the "new obscenity" because, he says, "it is offensive to the core concept of humanity": that human beings have free will and are capable of self-discipline and responsibility.

            Across the country, clinicians are treating the "sexually compulsive" man who can't control his sexual desires, the "love-addicted" woman who can't break out of bad relationships, and millions of people addicted to drugs or alcohol - or who are allegedly addicted to those who are. "There is a growing tendency in the scientific community to view human beings as objects who are acted upon by internal and external forces over which they have no control," says Wilbanks. "We mistakenly infer that people cannot exercise self-control be-cause they do not exercise self-control. We overlook the millions of men with high testosterone levels who do not rape, the depressed women who do not murder their children, and the great majority of addicts who decide to quit and do.

            "The new obscenity of 'you can't help yourself' only convinces the person that her problem is hopeless and she might as well give up,” says Wilbanks. "It thereby produces the very kind of problem behavior it attempts to explain. The problem with the medical model of behavior is that it completely ignores the idea of moral choice and resistance to temptation."

            At the University of Kansas, C.R. Snyder, Ph.D., and Raymond L. Higgins, Ph.D., are also interested in the growing number of categories the public accepts as legitimate excuses for irresponsible, self-defeating, or criminal behavior. While Wilbanks is concerned about the effect of excuses on the legal system and society at large, Snyder is concerned about the effects of excuses on individual health and well-being.

            Snyder has been studying the psychology of excuses for years. “Excuses – such as, ‘It’s not my fault,’ ‘The dog ate it,’ 'I didn't mean to break her jaw' - soften the link between you and an unfortunate or negative action," says Snyder. "Of course, without excuses, we would be exposed and vulnerable; they protect our self-esteem. But sometimes, people also use excuses to rationalize the destructive things they do."

            Excuses become self-defeating, says Snyder, when their costs outweigh their benefits. "A woman who blames unacceptable behavior on her depression or an 'addiction,' " he says, "finds that her future transgressions are automatically attributed to her problem – thus, her excuse becomes what's known as a self-handicapping strategy. It excuses her behavior in the short run, but in the long run it undermines her self-esteem and sense of personal control."

            As a psychotherapist as well as a researcher, Snyder is particularly concerned about people who move from making the excuse to being the excuse. "With some people, the excuse becomes incorporated into their identities,” says Snyder. "I couldn't help myself; I am an addict/rapist/abuser; I am depressed/shy/angry.”

            Snyder observes that it is particular­ly difficult to treat those with incorpo­rated excuses. Once people define themselves as helpless slaves to a problem, they hand over control of the problem to others. Or they find an explanation for the problem that is out of their hands: “I can’t help the way I am; my mother made me this way” - an ever-popular choice for blame. (As a client of one of Snyder’s colleagues told him: “It’s like this; if it’s not my fault, it’s her fault, and if it’s not her fault, it’s still not my fault.”) For people whose excuses have become a problem, says Snyder, successful therapy depends on the breaking down their self-deceptive, self-protective excuses and making them face the link between themselves and their actions.

            Both Wilbanks and Snyder recognize that a humane legal system will consider some conditions - such as defending oneself or one's family, or having an organic brain disorder - to be legitimate excuses for a defendant's behavior. But they oppose the growing tendency in psychology and law to excuse behavior we don't like: to confuse moral judgments with scientific ones, and to confuse learned habits with organic deficiencies.

            Furthermore, Wilbanks believes that for society's sake, as well as for the thousands of people who are being taught to think of themselves as help­less victims of life or biology, it is time to restore confidence in self-control and self-determination. “People can learn to respond to temptations by ask­ing themselves, ‘Is this behavior con­sistent with my self-image?'" says Wilbanks, rather than, ‘Can I get away with it?’”

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            Dr. Carol Tavris's work as a writer, teacher, and lecturer has been devoted to educating the public about psychological science. One of her books, with Elliot Aronson, is Mistakes Were Made (But Not by ME): Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts (Harcourt, 2007), which applies cognitive dissonance theory to a wide variety of topics, including politics, conflicts of interest, memory (everyday and "recovered"), the criminal justice system, police interrogation, the daycare sex-abuse epidemic, family quarrels, international conflicts, and business.

            She has spoken to students, psychologists, mediators, lawyers, judges, physicians, business executives, and general audiences on, among other topics, self-justification; science and pseudoscience in psychology; gender and sexuality; critical thinking; and anger. In the legal arena, she has given many addresses and workshops to attorneys and judges on the difference between testimony based on good psychological science and that based on pseudoscience and subjective clinical opinion.

            She received a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from University of Michigan in 1971. Earlier Dr. Tavris earned an A.B. degree at Brandeis University, Summa cum laude, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

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See the section “Are We Free To Make Choices?” in the chapter “Moral Wisdom and Freedom” at www.philosophy-religion.org/living/2.pdf.

See “Ethics and Morality” at  www.philosophy-religion.org/handouts/pdfs/ch7-ethics.pdf.