Stieg Larsson - The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest

“I notice that you’re expressing yourself very carefully. You say, for example, that one can conclude…”

“Yes, that’s right. I am expressing myself carefully. Psychiatry is not an exact science, and I must be careful with my conclusions. At the same time it is not true that we psychiatrists sit around making assumptions that have no basis in fact.”

“What you are being very precise about is protecting yourself. The literal fact is that you have not exchanged one single word with my client since the night of her thirteenth birthday because she has refused to talk to you.”

“Not only to me. She appears unable to have a conversation with any psychiatrist.”

“This means that, as you write here, your conclusions are based on experience and on observations of my client.”

“That’s right.”

“What can you learn by studying a girl who sits on a chair with her arms crossed and refuses to talk to you?”

Teleborian sighed as though he thought it was irksome to have to explain the obvious. He smiled.

“From a patient who sits and says nothing, you can learn only that this is a patient who is good at sitting and saying nothing. Even this is disturbed behaviour, but that’s not what I’m basing my conclusions upon.”

“Later this afternoon I will call upon another psychiatrist. His name is Svante Brandén and he’s senior physician at the Institute of Forensic Medicine and a specialist in forensic psychiatry. Do you know him?”

Teleborian felt confident again. He had expected Giannini to call upon another psychiatrist to question his own conclusions. It was a situation for which he was ready, and in which he would be able to dismiss every objection without difficulty. Indeed, it would be easier to handle an academic colleague in a friendly debate than someone like Advokat Giannini who had no inhibitions and was bent on distorting his words. He smiled.

“He is a highly respected and skilled forensic psychiatrist. But you must understand, Fru Giannini, that producing a report of this type is an academic and scientific process. You yourself may disagree with my conclusions, and another psychiatrist may interpret an action or an event in a different way. You may have dissimilar points of view, or perhaps it would be a question purely of how well one doctor or another knows the patient. He might arrive at a very different conclusion about Lisbeth Salander. That is not at all unusual in psychiatry.”

“That’s not why I’m calling him. He has not met or examined Lisbeth Salander, and he will not be making any evaluations about her mental condition.”

“Oh, is that so?”

“I have asked him to read your report and all the documentation you have produced on Lisbeth Salander and to look at her medical records from St Stefan’s. I have asked him to make an assessment, not about the state of my client’s health, but about whether, from a purely scientific point of view, there is adequate foundation for your conclusions in the material you recorded.”

Teleborian shrugged.

“With all due respect, I think I have a better understanding of Lisbeth Salander than any other psychiatrist in the country. I have followed her development since she was twelve, and regrettably my conclusions were always confirmed by her actions.”

“Very well,” Giannini said. “Then we’ll take a look at your conclusions. In your statement you write that her treatment was interrupted when she was placed with a foster family at the age of fifteen.”

“That’s correct. It was a serious mistake. If we had been allowed to complete the treatment we might not be here in this courtroom today.”

“You mean that if you had had the opportunity to keep her in restraints for another year she might have become more tractable?”

“That is unworthy.”

“I do beg your pardon. You cite extensively the report that your doctoral candidate Jesper Löderman put together when she was about to turn eighteen. You write that, quote, Lisbeth Salander’s self-destructive and antisocial behaviour is confirmed by drug abuse and the promiscuity which she has exhibited since she was discharged from St Stefan’s , unquote. What did you mean by this statement?”

Teleborian sat in silence for several seconds.

“Well… now I’ll have to go back a bit. After Lisbeth Salander was discharged from St Stefan’s she developed, as I had predicted, problems with alcohol and drug abuse. She was repeatedly arrested by the police. A social welfare report also determined that she had had profligate sexual relations with older men and that she was very probably involved in prostitution.”

“Let’s analyse this. You say that she abused alcohol. How often was she intoxicated?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Was she drunk every day from when she was released until she turned eighteen? Was she drunk once a week?”

“Naturally I can’t answer that.”

“But you have just stated that she had problems with alcohol abuse.”

“She was a minor and arrested repeatedly by the police for drunkenness.”

“That’s the second time you have said that she was arrested repeatedly. How often did this occur? Was it once a week or once every other week?”

“No, it’s not a matter of so many individual occasions…”

“Lisbeth Salander was arrested on two occasions for drunkenness, once when she was sixteen, once when she was seventeen. On one of those occasions she was so blind drunk that she was taken to hospital. These are the repeatedly you refer to. Was she intoxicated on more than these occasions?”

“I don’t know, but one might fear that her behaviour was –”

“Excuse me, did I hear you correctly? You do not know whether she was intoxicated on more than two occasions during her teenage years, but you fear that this was the case. And yet you write reports maintaining that Lisbeth Salander was engaged in repeated alcohol and drug abuse?”

“That is the social service’s information, not mine. It has to do with Lisbeth Salander’s whole lifestyle. Not surprisingly her prognosis was dismal after her treatment was interrupted, and her life became a round of alcohol abuse, police intervention, and uncontrolled promiscuity.”

“You say ‘uncontrolled promiscuity’.”

“Yes. That’s a term which indicates that she had no control over her own life. She had sexual relations with older men.”

“That’s not against the law.”

“No, but it’s abnormal behaviour for a sixteen-year-old girl. The question might be asked as to whether she participated in such encounters of her own free will or whether she was in a situation of uncontrollable compulsion.”

“But you said that she was very probably a prostitute.”

“That may have been a natural consequence of the fact that she lacked education, was incapable of completing school or continuing to higher education, and therefore could not get a job. It’s possible that she viewed older men as father figures and that financial remuneration for sexual favours was simply a convenient spin-off. In which case I perceive it as neurotic behaviour.”

“So you think that a sixteen-year-old girl who has sex is neurotic?”

“You’re twisting my words.”

“But you do not know whether she ever took money for sexual favours.”

“She was never arrested for prostitution.”

“And she could hardly be arrested for it since prostitution is not a crime in our country.”

“Well, yes, that’s right. In her case this has to do with compulsive neurotic behaviour.”

“And you did not hesitate to conclude that Lisbeth Salander is mentally ill based on these unverifiable assumptions? When I was sixteen years old, I drank myself silly on half a bottle of vodka which I stole from my father. Do you think that makes me mentally ill?”