Undermining moral credibility through diagnosis: A discursive analysis of expert testimony in Depp v. Heard

Psychiatric diagnoses have long been used within the legal system to shape notions of moral accountability. The Depp vs. Heard defamation trial (Virginia, 2022) was broadcast live to a global audience of millions. It received mass attention from popular and social media. Public support was overwhelmingly in favour of Depp, leading to an intense campaign of online abuse aimed at Amber Heard. The successful destruction of Heard’s credibility as a victim of domestic violence was arguably facilitated by the testimony of ‘expert’ witness psychologist Dr Shannon Curry, who diagnosed Heard with both histrionic and borderline personality disorder during the trial, both highly gendered labels associated with specifically feminine stereotypes. Given the extensive reach and widespread notoriety of the trial, it arguably brought these labels to the attention of the general public in an unprecedented way. As such, it is important to consider how these diagnoses were presented during the trial as an effective means of undermining Heard’s moral credibility. A critical discursive analysis of the psychologist’s testimony suggested that the following strategies were key to damaging Heard’s credibility: 1. the reification of psychiatric diagnosis, methodologies and practices which render diagnoses as unquestionable objects and which establish professional authority and expertise; 2. an adherence to categorical (as opposed to dimensional) understandings of diagnosis which facilitate the conflation of individual and generic diagnostic traits and stereotypes 3. the foregrounding of salient diagnostic features within descriptions of diagnoses and diagnostic tools; 4. referential ambiguity in diagnostic descriptions via instance/ type blurring, an important discursive mechanism through which generic descriptions of diagnostic categories become difficult to distinguish from claims about the individual (Amber Heard), facilitating the transfer of stereotypical and evaluative diagnostic characteristics to the individual. The use of these strategies within court settings should be systematically monitored, given their power to re-victimise IPV survivors.