Lindsay Clancy fans are fooling themselves — with false empathy

“I could have been Lindsay Clancy.”

That’s been the refrain of countless women who see their own postpartum suffering in Clancy, the Massachusetts mother now on trial for the murder of her three small children.

They characterize it as empathy, but they miss a crucial distinction: Recognizing yourself in someone’s story isn’t the same as knowing her mind.

“I was depressed too; I felt dismissed by doctors too,” they say, in public rallies and on social media. “I know what she went through.” 

But two women can suffer in similar ways without having the same illness — or the same relationship to reality.

Clancy’s supporters are overlooking those distinctions.

That’s distorting how they understand the Clancy case.

Their reactions risk reinforcing the stigma surrounding postpartum depression — and push her three children to the margins of the story.

Too many of us are discussing postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis as though they’re the same thing.

They aren’t: Postpartum depression, which affects roughly one in eight new mothers, can bring profound sadness, anxiety, hopelessness and difficulty functioning.

Postpartum psychosis, which affects only one or two in a thousand, can involve delusions, hallucinations, severe confusion and a break with reality.

Clancy’s defense attorneys argue she was psychotic when she killed her three children and therefore isn’t criminally responsible; prosecutors argue she planned the killings and understood what she was doing.

A jury will decide.

The women demonstrating outside the Plymouth, Mass., courthouse, recognizing the exhaustion, depression and isolation common in early motherhood, see something familiar in Clancy’s story.

“I know what that feels like” becomes “I know what she felt” — and soon, “That could have been me.”

But the vast majority of women who experience postpartum depression don’t become psychotic, let alone kill their children.

Those differences are central to understanding this case — and Clancy’s supporters are blurring them.

That’s perilous.

“I could have been Lindsay” puts postpartum depression in the same conversation as a triple homicide.

Yet depression isn’t psychosis, and mental health struggles post-childbirth don’t make a woman dangerous.

Rather than reducing the stigma surrounding postpartum depression, Clancy’s fans risk worsening it.

And while their identification with her makes psychological sense, it can also interfere with judgment.

Defending Clancy can become a way of defending one’s own experience.

If I see myself in Lindsay, questioning Lindsay can begin to feel like questioning me.

Asking whether she was actually psychotic can sound like asking whether postpartum suffering itself is real.

Even considering the possibility that she was responsible for her children’s deaths can feel like blaming women for being mentally ill.

The question, for them, then changes from “What was happening in Lindsay Clancy’s mind?” to “Do you believe women when they say they’re suffering?”

As well, over-identification carries its own psychological risk.

The more we see ourselves in another person, the easier it becomes to project our experience onto theirs — and shared feelings can create an illusion of shared psychology. 

But recognizing your own pain in someone else doesn’t mean you understand her state of mind.

There’s another troubling consequence of Clancy supporters’ over-identification: The children start to disappear.

We and the jury are hearing about Lindsay’s suffering, her medications, her treatment, her doctors and whether anyone listened to her — legitimate questions in a trial involving criminal responsibility.

But amid all that testimony, Cora, Dawson and Callan become supporting characters in a story organized around their mother’s suffering.

That illustrates an important corollary about empathy itself: We naturally focus on the person whose experience we can imagine.

A mother can remember being exhausted, depressed or overwhelmed after childbirth.

She can see pieces of herself in Lindsay.

It’s much harder for her to identify with three children who are no longer here to tell us what happened to them.

Healthy empathy shouldn’t require that trade.

We can believe Clancy suffered profoundly — without declaring that she was or was not legally responsible.

We can believe postpartum illness deserves greater attention — without turning one defendant into a symbol for every woman who has struggled after childbirth.

And we can have compassion for mental illness — without allowing that compassion to erase difficult questions about agency and responsibility.

A woman who recognizes herself in Clancy’s story could choose to draw a different lesson:

I was depressed, and I wasn’t Lindsay.

I was overwhelmed, and I wasn’t Lindsay.

I felt failed by doctors, and still I wasn’t Lindsay.

Feelings prove nothing about Clancy’s criminal responsibility.

“I understand some of what she went through” is empathy.

“I could have been her” is a much broader claim.

The truly empathetic response is simply this: I believe you suffered.

But I am not you.

Jonathan Alpert, a psychotherapist practicing in New York City and Washington, DC, is the author of “Therapy Nation: How America Got Hooked on Therapy and Why It’s Left Us More Anxious and Divided.”