Bellevue residents Brenda and Carl Hopper are worried about their son Evan’s behavior because the 12-year-old is increasingly showing many of the same disturbing characteristics as U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
“It’s like I can’t get a straight answer out of him about anything,” his mom says. “He’s filling the air with words while not really saying anything. And he’s got this smug little smirk on his face, like we’re the stupidest people on earth and he can’t believe he’s having to talk to us.”
Carl picks up the story from his wife: “So we were watching the news the other day and saw some of the testimony that Gonzales was giving before the Senate, and it struck me—our son is acting like the attorney general.” His voice briefly cracks, and his wife pats his shoulder to comfort him. “At first the comparison was hard to face,” he continues, “but there’s a point when you have to look at the facts, howeve unpleasant, and take action.”
Evan has begun seeing a local therapist, one of several who say they have seen a disturbing increase in the number and severity of “Gonzales syndrome” cases.
“It’s really a constellation of symptoms,” explains licensed clinical social worker Jane Lawrence-King. “Gonzales syndrome combines a willingness to deceive with the delusion that one’s deception is concealed rather than transparent. There is also an element of condescension with this diagnosis that is absent in other deceptive disorders.”
Lawrence-King and other therapists hope to have Gonzales syndrome considered for inclusion in the next edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the listing of mental disorders used worldwide.
But not everybody is convinced that Gonzales syndrome is a true diagnosis.“Smirking, lying, thinking everybody else is stupid—that just means that the kid is acting like an obnoxious adolescent,” says one local psychologist. “Maybe we should flip it around and diagnose Gonzales with ‘asshole teenager syndrome.’ ”
