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When a postal worker goes postal, it's going postal. When a PhD from Harvard -- the first detail mentioned, note -- goes postal, they are suffering in an acade

When a postal worker goes postal, it's going postal. When a PhD from Harvard -- the first detail mentioned, note -- goes postal, they are suffering in an academic pressure cooker. Dumbly applying the nearest pop-psych explanation to hand to explain the inexplicable only makes it more difficult to show respect for the victims and sympathy for the grieving.

chancho 17y ago
"Dumbly applying the nearest pop-psych explanation..." If describing this tragedy as "someone going postal" isn't dumbly applying pop-psych, then I don't know what is.
- mnemonicsloth 17y ago
  "At an Academic Pressure Cooker, a Setback Turns Deadly," tells a simple little story. She was under great emotional stress, lost her bid for tenure, and snapped under the strain. "Going postal" is comparatively mum. It's a hybrid of "Going crazy" and "disgruntled postal worker," and suggests only that we think the perpetrator is not sane -- that we can't understand why they would do that. Where is the pop psychology?
timr 17y ago
"Going postal" is hardly a tactful way of describing that situation. I don't think it's pop psychology to acknowledge that a small percentage of people in extremely stressful situations lose control, and end up doing awful things. It's impossible to have sincere sympathy and respect without a healthy dose of empathy. And to have empathy, you have to be able to acknowledge truths about situations that may not be politically correct. We don't know if this woman lost control because of mental illness, or stress in her personal life, or simply because her superiors were assholes. But if it's the latter, I'd rather hear a discussion about the ugly realities of academic life, than another cliché conversation demanding "respect and sympathy" from total strangers.
- narag 17y ago
  ...or simply because her superiors were assholes Really? I've had some of this kind, and even when I was in a very stressful personal situation, I've never even thought of resorting to any kind of violence, even less shooting anyone. These cases seem to be caused by mental illness. I agree with the person you're answering to that trying to "explain" a shooting this way is plainly wrong.
  - timr 17y ago
    Regardless of what you've personally experienced, I would imagine that everyone has a limit, beyond which they lose control of their emotions. It happens. The question of whether this is called "mental illness" is open for debate. As far as I'm concerned, it's an academic question, unless the distinction can somehow lead to prevention of the act.
physcab 17y ago
I don't think the author was applying an explanation either dumbly or trying to reduce its significance. I think it is part of our human nature to try and contain a tragedy by labeling or attributing some cause to it. I'm not a therapist, but I sincerely believe this human trait persists in many people as a coping mechanism. That's why it makes sense (even as an academic myself) in some weird, comforting way.
- flatline 17y ago
  Exactly - for columbine, it was the video games and music, which is much more of a non-sequitur than working in the high pressure environments of academia and biotech startups. This did read like more of a human interest story though.
- joe_the_user 17y ago
  I think it is part of our human nature to try and contain a tragedy by labeling or attributing some cause to it. Are you implying that tragedies have no cause. It seems like human to try understand tragedies as they are significant part of our human world. Moreover, tragedies usually do have causes. Claiming that there is no cause to an event may serve some psychological purpose...
  - nostrademons 17y ago
    Tragedies usually have so many causes that it's impossible to point out a single cause in a 3-paragraph comment and have it mean anything. Usually, if you do a root cause analysis of anything, you come up with so many contributing factors that the resulting document is hundreds of pages long. Think of industrial postmortems or court proceedings. Everything is more complicated than it seems at first. Saying "This was because she was denied tenure" does a disservice to everyone involved. It was probably partly because she was denied tenure. It was probably partly also because she had easy access to guns, and she was super focused on her research, and she didn't get along with the school administration, and she had once accidentally killed her brother, and plenty of other factors that we could never know about.
joe_the_user 17y ago
Hey, you could combine the abusive terminology and talk about "postal-track professors". But the need to "help the victims grieve" by labeling every killing "inexplicable" and so casting maximal moral unction on the killer is also just a variety of pop-psychology. However, this doesn't seem to be an "inexplicable" event. There's probably no single, easy explanation but there seem to be a variety of causal factors we can trace. "People with a history of violent behavior don't do well in situations of all-or-nothing achievement".
- mnemonicsloth 17y ago
  "help the victims grieve"... maximal moral unction... When an event like this touches your life, very few stimuli from outside your own personal bubble of pain and confusion have any chance of registering with you [1]. But having the national paper of record print headlines half-excusing your friend or family member's killer [2] because she's the right kind of people would definitely do it. [1] Some people express surprise that there are other people "out there," still going about their lives as if nothing had happened. [2] allegedly.
  - joe_the_user 17y ago
    What does "half-excusing" mean? Or... In what way was does describing the factors influencing a person's behavior excuse it?
    - narag 17y ago
      In a pressure cooker the vapour has not many options: going through the security valve or making the cooker to explode. I don't think that's an accurate "description of factors", unless you take into account the killer is crazy, in which case the most important factor is precisely that.

chancho 17y ago

"Dumbly applying the nearest pop-psych explanation..." If describing this tragedy as "someone going postal" isn't dumbly applying pop-psych, then I don't know what is.

mnemonicsloth 17y ago
"At an Academic Pressure Cooker, a Setback Turns Deadly," tells a simple little story. She was under great emotional stress, lost her bid for tenure, and snapped under the strain. "Going postal" is comparatively mum. It's a hybrid of "Going crazy" and "disgruntled postal worker," and suggests only that we think the perpetrator is not sane -- that we can't understand why they would do that. Where is the pop psychology?

timr 17y ago

"Going postal" is hardly a tactful way of describing that situation. I don't think it's pop psychology to acknowledge that a small percentage of people in extremely stressful situations lose control, and end up doing awful things. It's impossible to have sincere sympathy and respect without a healthy dose of empathy. And to have empathy, you have to be able to acknowledge truths about situations that may not be politically correct. We don't know if this woman lost control because of mental illness, or stress in her personal life, or simply because her superiors were assholes. But if it's the latter, I'd rather hear a discussion about the ugly realities of academic life, than another cliché conversation demanding "respect and sympathy" from total strangers.

narag 17y ago
...or simply because her superiors were assholes Really? I've had some of this kind, and even when I was in a very stressful personal situation, I've never even thought of resorting to any kind of violence, even less shooting anyone. These cases seem to be caused by mental illness. I agree with the person you're answering to that trying to "explain" a shooting this way is plainly wrong.
- timr 17y ago
  Regardless of what you've personally experienced, I would imagine that everyone has a limit, beyond which they lose control of their emotions. It happens. The question of whether this is called "mental illness" is open for debate. As far as I'm concerned, it's an academic question, unless the distinction can somehow lead to prevention of the act.

physcab 17y ago

I don't think the author was applying an explanation either dumbly or trying to reduce its significance. I think it is part of our human nature to try and contain a tragedy by labeling or attributing some cause to it. I'm not a therapist, but I sincerely believe this human trait persists in many people as a coping mechanism. That's why it makes sense (even as an academic myself) in some weird, comforting way.

flatline 17y ago
Exactly - for columbine, it was the video games and music, which is much more of a non-sequitur than working in the high pressure environments of academia and biotech startups. This did read like more of a human interest story though.
joe_the_user 17y ago
I think it is part of our human nature to try and contain a tragedy by labeling or attributing some cause to it. Are you implying that tragedies have no cause. It seems like human to try understand tragedies as they are significant part of our human world. Moreover, tragedies usually do have causes. Claiming that there is no cause to an event may serve some psychological purpose...
- nostrademons 17y ago
  Tragedies usually have so many causes that it's impossible to point out a single cause in a 3-paragraph comment and have it mean anything. Usually, if you do a root cause analysis of anything, you come up with so many contributing factors that the resulting document is hundreds of pages long. Think of industrial postmortems or court proceedings. Everything is more complicated than it seems at first. Saying "This was because she was denied tenure" does a disservice to everyone involved. It was probably partly because she was denied tenure. It was probably partly also because she had easy access to guns, and she was super focused on her research, and she didn't get along with the school administration, and she had once accidentally killed her brother, and plenty of other factors that we could never know about.

joe_the_user 17y ago

Hey, you could combine the abusive terminology and talk about "postal-track professors". But the need to "help the victims grieve" by labeling every killing "inexplicable" and so casting maximal moral unction on the killer is also just a variety of pop-psychology. However, this doesn't seem to be an "inexplicable" event. There's probably no single, easy explanation but there seem to be a variety of causal factors we can trace. "People with a history of violent behavior don't do well in situations of all-or-nothing achievement".

mnemonicsloth 17y ago
"help the victims grieve"... maximal moral unction... When an event like this touches your life, very few stimuli from outside your own personal bubble of pain and confusion have any chance of registering with you [1]. But having the national paper of record print headlines half-excusing your friend or family member's killer [2] because she's the right kind of people would definitely do it. [1] Some people express surprise that there are other people "out there," still going about their lives as if nothing had happened. [2] allegedly.
- joe_the_user 17y ago
  What does "half-excusing" mean? Or... In what way was does describing the factors influencing a person's behavior excuse it?
  - narag 17y ago
    In a pressure cooker the vapour has not many options: going through the security valve or making the cooker to explode. I don't think that's an accurate "description of factors", unless you take into account the killer is crazy, in which case the most important factor is precisely that.