<p>This woman is not insane but a sociopath or psychopath (not sure of the difference). Her killings were too well planned (obtaining a gun, several practices at a shooting range, concealing the gun, waiting until the meeting was at a lull, systematically shooting the victims in the head, disposing of the weapon, and calmly calling her husband to pick her up at a prearranged location). And of course she is convinced the rest of us morons will think she is insane because she rambles to the arresting police no one is dead. </p>
<p>Momof2, how is your friends son doing today? I pray for his and the other wounded quick and complete recovery.</p>
<p>Faculty offers come from within the departments. Prospects are interviewed, they give presentations of their work at formal seminars, they meet informally with members of the hiring/promotions committee, their written work is reviewed, their professional references are contacted. Offers are reviewed and approved by upper levels of administration, i.e. the Dean’s office.</p>
<p>I can’t image the process would be improved by having HR personnel doing a separate evaluation for “instability”. What kind of evaluation would that be? What would they discover that hadn’t already been pointed out, ideally anyway, by the academic colleagues who have provided references?</p>
<p>Checking for arrests, convictions, etc. is another story. But emotional stability is pretty subjective, I think.</p>
<p>I know a prof whose behavior was such that his Departmental chair went around asking profs who had known him for a long time for signs of aberrance. Eventually, the prof was diagnosed as bipolar and after a period of adjusting his medication, resumed a normal behavior. He then needled colleagues by claiming that of all of them, he was the only one who had been certified sane. </p>
<p>I wonder how HR personnel would check for “stability?” How would it be defined? Who would define it?</p>
<p>“she’s a psychopath.” How would one know BEFORE this proof was obtained. It’s like saying someone is a likely thief before he has committed any theft.</p>
<p>Maybe they did. But that’s not the question. The question is how would employers know? Do they go ask of every prospective employee’s family: “Is your spouse, child (or whatever) a psychopath?” In this particular case, there was previous evidence, such as the shooting of the brother. But in most cases, I assume there is none until something acts as a catalyst.
One cannot just ban “oddballs” from employment on mere suspicion.</p>
<p>How would employers be able to find that out anyway? Isn’t medical health information confidential? This of course, is assuming, that employers are basing their willingness to hire off of the diagnosis of someone as “psychopath,” and not merely on what previous employers and co-workers observed from that individual in working with them.</p>
<p>*
One cannot just ban “oddballs” from employment on mere suspicion.*</p>
<p>So true…half the faculties at most colleges would be excluded if being an oddball was a deal-breaker. LOL</p>
<p>The problem is/was that her FBI file showed NOTHING. To anyone, she would seem stable…married for many years, mother of 4 children, Harvard grad…</p>
<p>Keep in mind…educators are fingerprinted and investigated, yet her records showed nothing.</p>
<p>When it comes to psychopaths, the brighter one is, the less likely that even people who consider you their closest friends would know. In fact, an intelligent psychopath could cause other people to think that the other people were the ones who had the mental health issues, not the psychopath.</p>
<p>Think of that old Hitchcock movie – “Gaslight” about the husband who was trying to convince his wife that she was crazy…</p>
<p>Anyway, being a psychopath doesn’t mean that a person would choose to murder other people.</p>
<p>Back to her file: Since she wasn’t charged in her brother’s death, there is good reason that she wouldn’t have a file. I want to know how it was that there doesn’t even seem to have been an investigation into her brother’s death and into Amy Bishop’s behavior of pointing a firearm at at least one stranger afterward. </p>
<p>If anyone at UAH had heard about her brother’s death, it would have sounded like a very unfortunate accident, certainly not reason to not employ her. In fact, it may have seemed that she was dedicating her life to science – and researching things to save lives – to atone for accidentally killing her brother.</p>
<p>Yes. I think that a medical history of someone like this would be of little help. She would be unlikely to get help from a professional because she thinks she’s just fine. It’s the rest of the world that needs help, in her mind.</p>
<p>Being a psychopath doesn’t make someone a murderer, and I don’t even know if it would be legal to profile for pyschological disorders, the ACLU would be all over that, probably.</p>
<p>But, some actual police work during the three shot murder of her brother would have helped weed her out as a homicidal psychopath, imho. You have to go back a ways to get to the fork in the road where this outcome could have been prevented. fwiw.</p>
<p>“The problem is/was that her FBI file showed NOTHING. To anyone, she would seem stable…married for many years, mother of 4 children, Harvard grad…”</p>
<p>The biggest screw up is with the original Braintree/State police and the DA who ignores the various discrepancies in the story of the case and concluded that this was accidental discharge of a gun. She ran across the street and held up the car dealership demanding a get away car, that is not a sign of accidental shooting. All records of her case is now missing or expunged except for the initial police report. This sounds like there is something more going on than meets the eye.</p>
<p>07 dad -Maybe sometimes. The issue with sociopaths or pyschopaths is that they KNOW there is something wrong with the way they “tick” and they cover it up. Also, because of a lack of what you and I would call a conscience, they dont tell the truth and they do pass lie detectors more easily than “normal” (in the statistical meaning of the word) people.</p>
<p>“Do tests like MMPI, MMPI-2 help identify a psychopathic deviant?”</p>
<p>I did my dissertation on the MMPI, and don’t think it would identify psychopaths. People can score high on the psychopathic deviant scale even though they aren’t psychopaths.</p>
<p>I am not aware of any psychological assessment measure that accurately would identify psychopaths.</p>
<p>Back to her file: Since she wasn’t charged in her brother’s death, there is good reason that she wouldn’t have a file. **I want to know how it was that there doesn’t even seem to have been an investigation into her brother’s death **and into Amy Bishop’s behavior of pointing a firearm at at least one stranger afterward.</p>
<p>I completely agree. It sounds like cronyism and perhaps some palm-greasing went on to prevent the arrest (and record) and any investigation. </p>
<p>Amy’s mother had some kind of police board role or similar, so she would have been friends with the chief of police and possibly the DA. Certainly, they may have sympathized with a mom who had already lost one child and would lose another.</p>
<p>However, since the current police chief doesn’t believe the “accident story,” I don’t think he’s going to let things slide.</p>