Addiction

Stephanie Tabashneck: An “Interpreter” Between Two Fields

Stephanie Tabashneck, PsyD, JD, is a Senior Fellow in Law and Applied Neuroscience at the Petrie-Flom Center and Center for Law, Brain and Behavior (CLBB) at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. A forensic psychologist and an attorney, she focuses her research, practice, and teaching on neural development in children and adolescents, substance use issues, and…

Stephanie Tabashneck, PsyD, JD, is a Senior Fellow in Law and Applied Neuroscience at the Petrie-Flom Center and Center for Law, Brain and Behavior (CLBB) at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. A forensic psychologist and an attorney, she focuses her research, practice, and teaching on neural development in children and adolescents, substance use issues, and providing forensic evaluations and expert testimony. This Q&A, which has been condensed and edited for clarity, offers a glimpse into Dr. Tabashneck’s wide-ranging and dynamic career.

Your training and your career have been incredibly interdisciplinary: what led you down your multiple paths?

Prior to pursuing my PsyD, which is more of a clinical degree than a research-based degree, I thought that I was going to be a therapist. I had always been torn between law and psychology: I remember I wrote my college admissions essay about wanting to be an attorney for Amnesty International. Both my parents were very invested in social justice, which I respected, and I knew it was important to me that I had a job that contributed to making the world a kinder, more just place. But I also was very curious about the human mind and why people behave in the ways that they do.

While I was getting my psychology degree, I took a law and mental health class with Robert Kinscherff, PhD, JD, the executive director of CLBB, and it changed the course of my professional life in a really beautiful way. I found the interplay between law and psychology captivating: We discussed things like the legal statutes that determine insanity, for example, which felt, to me, disconnected from what we would view as psychosis or mania within psychology. The collisions between psychology and the law sometimes produced unexpected outcomes, which were fascinating to me.

Now, over fifteen years later, Dr. Kinscherff and I co-teach that same law and mental health class at William James College.

How have you continued to use your knowledge of both law and psychology in your career?

I balance a lot of different roles, which is a profoundly rewarding aspect of my career. In addition to teaching at William James College, I consult to the law and neuroscience class at Harvard Law School that Judge Nancy Gertner teaches. As a forensic psychologist, I do evaluations involving kids and late adolescents who are accused of serious crimes, most of them being first degree murder. I have a small therapy practice, generally for people who are court-involved and have a substance-use disorder. I do a lot of presentations and trainings across the country, everywhere from Florida to Alaska. I love talking to attorneys and judges as a psychologist and talking to psychologists as a lawyer, because I know how each thinks, and I get to be very intentional about my language. It’s almost like being an interpreter between these two fields.

One of your many roles is as Director of the soon-to-be-launched CLBB NeuroLaw Library. Can you describe your aims for this new resource?

The goal of the library is to level the playing field, so that people who have not traditionally been able to access neuroscience are able to use neuroscience in the pursuit of justice, specifically as it relates to children and adolescents who face long sentences. We’re focused on educating stakeholders about things like adolescent brain development, criminal trajectory, and the science of trauma, to promote greater understanding of the differences between children and adults. The library is for defense attorneys, prosecutors, people who are incarcerated and their families, policymakers, judges — really anyone who wants to use neuroscience to get to a better justice outcome.

Within the library, you can access neuroscience and social science articles, legal cases, amicus briefs, toolkits, fact sheets, and videos. There’s an AI-based tool that allows users to adjust the reading level of the page, so that things like academic papers can be summarized in more simple language, which may be useful for people who were incarcerated and have limited computer time or who may have a lower reading level. We’re putting together a repository of sample motions that people can use to help with their own motions.

[Editor’s Note: This post will link to the CLBB NeuroLaw Library once it launches].

What are the most challenging parts of working in the law and mental health space?

A couple of years ago, some aspects of my work started to weigh on me more.  Many of my clients are children who grew up with not a lot of food in the home, in poverty, and in abusive homes. Sometimes it can be challenging seeing the vastly different ways that kids are treated in our society. It’s interesting to me that if an abused dog bites someone, no one’s surprised. But if an abused kid hurts someone, there’s utter shock. Of course, we must take seriously what they did, but it’s also helpful to contextualize some of the reasons why they made the decisions they made, and without a forensic evaluation, some of that information would not be revealed. It can be heavy work but I find it meaningful and I feel lucky for the work that I do.

What has been particularly rewarding about your affiliation with Petrie-Flom?

I love being part of Petrie-Flom and the collaboration Petrie-Flom has with the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior. I think in a lot of institutions, people who are incarcerated are often forgotten or seen as irrelevant, but that’s not the case here. The ties between health and incarceration are deeply understood here: for example, many people who are incarcerated are mentally ill, or have significant physical challenges, or have a history of trauma — those are all health issues. I have been able to do events that I have been really excited about, for example, on the neuroscience of adolescents within the context of life without parole sentences. I can work with people with whom I never would have dreamed that I would be able to present or even interact. Petrie-Flom is a wonderful place to be, because it’s such an interdisciplinary environment, which is consistent with my other work and worldviews. When we’re in silos, we don’t know what other people are doing, and that will always prevent best outcomes.

What do you consider to be your greatest achievement?

This is a really hard question to answer — especially since much of my work involves cases, and those are confidential. But a highlight of my career has been working at the CLBB, doing all of the things that I get to do to promote a more fair and just criminal justice system, and some of that work is through Petrie-Flom. When I do trainings, and a judge comes up to me afterward and says, “I’m going to look at these cases differently because of what you taught me today,” that’s special to me — being able to use science to impact others.

Finally, and hopefully an easier question — what are you currently reading?

Let me get my Kindle out. Right now, I’m reading Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, which I am knee-deep in and loving for how timeless it is — but no spoilers! I am also reading The Power of Ritual (Casper ter Kuile), Internal Family Systems Therapy for Addictions (Cece Sykes, Martha Sweezy, Richard C. Schwartz), and On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World (Danya Ruttenberg). I also read a lot of books on Mindfulness — I read a book on Munindraji, and I’m reading one on Ajahn Chah. As of right now, I would say my favorite book is Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson. I like to read — a lot.