“I overheard you talking to one of the teachers in the hallway on Tuesday. Hope you don’t mind. Consider it a gift. This is just my way of thanking you for helping to make my transition here a smooth one.”
The secretary studied the young man, finally taking the book from him. “Kiddo, you are definitely not from around here.”
“Is that Alex?” a voice barked from the inner office. It was the campus psychologist. “Get in here, son.”
The boy turned, wrung his hands together, and inhaled deeply.
“Good luck,” whispered the secretary.
Thank you, he mouthed back to her.
Alex sat, staring at his hands, while the campus psychologist rifled through his file. He had been watching Alex, from a distance these past few weeks, to see how he was adjusting to his new environment. So far, he was pleased with the young man. The few grades that Alex had earned at Warner were solid. The boy appeared to be even-tempered, polite and comfortable. They could sure use more like him.
“We don’t have your transfer grades yet, but your teachers seem to like you. That’s a good start.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The psychologist regarded him. “Alex, I want you to take a short test for me.”
“Sure. Anything,” said the boy.
He slipped Alex a piece of paper and pencil. “This test involves just one question. Nothing too taxing, so don’t get flustered or anything. Students usually take no more than a couple of minutes to think about the question before committing to an answer. What do you say, son?”
“Sure. I’ll do my best.”
“Good man.”
He watched Alex exhale, grip the pencil and focus on the question.
Gretchen, a beautiful young woman, attended the funeral of her mother. While there, she met a man. Gretchen did not know him. He did not speak much about himself. Nevertheless, she fell in love with him during this brief encounter. A few days later Gretchen killed her sister. When the police asked her why she committed this heinous crime, she gave a shocking answer. What did she say?
The psychologist turned his attention back to the project he’d started that morning: analysis of the first semester grade distribution in the sophomore class. He slumped. The news wasn’t good. The number of F’s had edged up from 9.6% to 11.2%; D’s from 18.2% to a flat 21%. The area superintendent, who’d been riding Warner’s ass since the day they were granted that 4 million to build a new gymnasium adjacent to the baseball field, would blow a fuse for sure. The guy wanted Warner to be the flagship high school of Cleveland County. Student performance should be commensurate with the quality of the physical plant. In fact, student performance—
“Excuse me,” Alex muttered.
The psychologist looked up from the file and frowned. “You’re not finished already, are you?”
“There wasn’t much to think about,” the boy said, handing back the paper and pencil. “Will that be all?”
I guess so. “I’ll write you a pass back to class. You’re sure about your answer?”
“Absolutely sure. Thank you for your time.”
He watched Alexander leave the office. The psychologist sat back and read the boy’s answer, scribbled in an odd, spiky backhand. He digested the answer. At length, the psychologist set the paper down, stroked his chin, then grabbed the phone.
“Is it done?” snapped the principal’s raspy voice at the other end.
“He just left my office.”
“Gave the sociopathic answer, didn’t he? Well?”
The psychologist wasn’t sure what to say. He couldn’t find the words. Alex’s answer wasn’t exactly what he had expected. But should that upset him?
“Told you he was a sociopath, didn’t I?”
He refocused. “Just a minute. I have to disagree with you. Your so-called sociopathic answer is given by eleven percent of the kids I interview. There’s no way that many kids in this school are sociopaths. Besides, an answer like this one can mean creativity, enhanced imagination, or a kid who’ll make one heck of an FBI agent one day.”
“Sure, or the Archbishop of Canterbury. You shrinks are the most gullible people on the planet. I mean, do they teach you this crap in graduate school or do you guys come by it naturally? He’s a goddamn sociopath if I’ve ever seen one. The Gretchen Scenario proves it.”
He dismissed the insult, and stared at the ceiling. In a very short time at Warner, Alex had distinguished himself as a gentleman. He was intelligent, calm and confident. Just because he was a transfer, and the only kid in this school with manners, didn’t mean he was a potential menace to society. Were they even talking about the same kid?
“You’ve had me administering this Gretchen Scenario for the past three months, but I’ve yet to run across it in any of the literature. Are you sure it’s legit?”
“I’ve already told you—buddy of mine in the Boston public school system came up with the Gretchen, and he’s been using it for the past year. It’s kosher, trust me.” The principal continued, “Besides, you haven’t seen Alex’s psych eval, his personality inventory.”
Whoa. Wait a minute. The psychologist frowned and sat up. “I didn’t know he had one.”
“Mount Saint Mary’s just sent the eval along with his transfer grades. I’m looking at it now. It’s a thorough one, too. Somebody over there took an interest in him. That should tell you something.”
The psychologist frowned. “What did they use, the MMPI?”
“You got it.”
The Minnesota Multi-phasic Personality Inventory, originally published in 1942, and copyrighted by the University of Minnesota, was a favorite among those in the mental health field. Originally developed by Hathaway and McKinley, the exhaustive test searched for pathologies in an individual’s personality: hypochondriasis, depression, paranoia, schizophrenia and psychopathic deviation—just to name a few.
He could hear the principal chuckling at the other end. “You should see his Psychopathic Deviate score— it’s off the charts. There are fifty items on that scale and the kid hit on almost every one of them.”
The psychologist immediately thought of some of the more obvious psychopathic deviant statements in the test: I sometimes tease animals; If I could get into a movie without paying, and be sure I was not seen, I would probably do it;It doesn’t bother me particularly to see animals suffer;At times I feel like smashing things; and It would be better if almost all laws were thrown away. Nevertheless, any psychologist worth his weight would realize a high score on the psychopathic deviate scale did not necessarily mean the subject was, in fact, a psychopath. Far from it. In fact, most high scorers on Scale 4 tipped the scale due to their tendency toward anger, conflict, struggle, disobedience and
