{"id":9186,"date":"2022-05-09T08:22:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-09T12:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/?p=9186"},"modified":"2022-05-06T11:16:26","modified_gmt":"2022-05-06T15:16:26","slug":"its-never-as-simple-as-it-seems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/2022\/05\/09\/its-never-as-simple-as-it-seems\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Never as Simple as It Seems"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Psychologist
Photo by Colin Lenton<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Psychologist Anna Lawler \u201995 is a puzzle\nsolver, putting together the different pieces\nof the personalities of troubled individuals \u2014\nfrom children entangled in custody battles to\nmurderers on death row.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI come in, gather facts, make recommendations, and move on,\u201d she explains. \u201cI tend to focus on their social and personal history,\u201d she continues, noting that her double major in psychology and history at Colgate turned out to be the perfect starting point for her eventual career. \u201cHistory taught me how to synthesize events and to look for meaning [in the] narrative.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lawler first grew interested in psychology as a teenager listening to the conversations around her Brooklyn dinner table between her father and his good friends, a couple who worked in mental health. \u201cI thought, \u2018You talk to people all day?\u2019\u201d <\/em>she remembers with a laugh. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t get any better.\u201d She still feels that way, even though many of those she spends her time with have sad or frightening stories to unravel. \u201cBut someone can commit horrific crimes and also be a terrific son,\u201d she observes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her focus on forensics as a graduate student at Drexel University came about serendipitously because she couldn\u2019t get into her initial choice of a research lab on eating disorders. Instead, Lawler applied to join the lab of a professor who was performing psycho-sexual evaluations on developmentally disabled sex offenders who were on probation and in treatment. \u201cThat was not the population I thought I wanted to study,\u201d she says, \u201cbut the professor became a huge role model.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During her years in private practice and consulting with a variety of mental health agencies in southeastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Lawler has made determinations regarding competency to stand trial, sanity at the time of offense, risk of violent behavior, and malingering. She\u2019s also seen a lot of death penalty cases. \u201cThe defendant\u2019s attorneys might hire me
to tease out the good part. What was the path that got this person to this point? I might also interview parents and caregivers. If someone says, \u2018I\u2019ve been hearing voices since I was 12,\u2019 then I\u2019m going to uncover the records that support that trajectory. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you read about a horrific crime in\nthe newspaper and think, \u2018That person\u2019s a\nmonster,\u2019 it\u2019s never as simple as that.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2009 Lawler pivoted toward a different specialty: working as a contractor for nuclear power plants to help them determine if employees or job candidates are appropriate for unescorted access or fit for duty. \u201cThe nuclear industry is guided by specific federal regulations because of the potential dangers to the greater community,\u201d she says. \u201cPart of that concerns concrete, mandated processes about who gets unescorted access at a nuclear power plant.\u201d When standard background checks or psychological testing raise potential flags, or if the individual requires a higher level of access, Lawler steps in. \u201cThe biggest values in nuclear workplaces are trustworthiness and reliability,\u201d she says. \u201cI make a recommendation about that. I say, \u2018I think he\u2019s stable and reliable\u2019 or \u2018I\u2019m worried about his depression or the fact that he lied about something.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether working on forensic cases or\nfor the nuclear industry, the interviews she\nconducts never fail to surprise Lawler. \u201cThe\npeople I see are often facing so much stress\n\u2014 they\u2019re caretaking for a very sick child,\ntheir parent just died a few weeks ago \u2014\nand I\u2019m amazed that they\u2019ve stayed out of\ntrouble or have kept showing up for work,\u201d\nshe marvels. \u201cI\u2019ve learned so much from\ntheir resilience.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forensic psychologist Anna Lawler \u201995 gives her expert opinion on people’s personalities, in instances ranging from death penalty cases to hiring nuclear power plant employees. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1263,"featured_media":9425,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[165,898,99],"coauthors":[842],"class_list":["post-9186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-alumni-spotlights","category-alumni-updates","tag-history","tag-psychologist","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-2oa","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2022\/05\/0122_Anna_Lawler-0785-EditFeatured.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1263"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9186"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9426,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9186\/revisions\/9426"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9186"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}