I disagree. Noting that there are men who are control freaks is nothing more than noting that there are men who are control freaks. Just as noting there are women who are control freaks is nothing more than noting there are women who are control freaks.
I represent one FReeper on this thread who is not as gullible as you say.
I believe that anyone of reasonable intelligence, whether he or she is a licensed mental health professional or not, is incapable of NOT noticing danger signs evidenced by an individual they live with every day and sleep with every night.
Normal people who have constant personal contact just pick up on behavioral quirks eventually. Add to that the fact that Russel admitted that he A:)knew his wife was psychotic, B:)knew his wife had stopped taking her meds, and C:)knew her insanity was either set off or hormonally exacerbated by her having children... and you have Russel, an intelligent, educated individual who expects the public to believe that he did not know that his wife's insanity could be dangerous. And wants not only to blame everyone but himself and his wife, but wants to sue everyone to boot.
Who's pulling the wool over WHOS eyes, here?
The psychobabble designation of a complex human being as a control freak is a symptom of of the Big Problem.
As R.L. Stevenson wrote:"..Man is a creature who lives not by bread alone, but primarily by catchwords...."
I suppose all this facile pigeon-holing serves a useful purpose by taming our societal fears. After all, if only Mr. Yates had done this, that, and the other thing; if only he hadn't been such a contolling bastard--so comforting to have a catchword to hug now that our baby pillow has finally lost all its feathers---if only the correct chemical balance had been achieved in poor Mrs. Yates' prescriptions; if only the benign Child Protective services had burst in at the right moment and rescued those children---well, we could all live happily ever after.
And, any day now, with enough funding and research and education and birth control we're going to discover the way to banish all our fears and dream nothing but happy dreams.....
Thank you for one of the more reasoned comments I have seen on this thread. I have had very casual social contacts with individuals who scared the hell out of me, and I knew that they were someone I chose not to have further contact with. So how could this husband and father not know that there was something terribly wrong with his wife and potentially harmful to his children.