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In recent years forensic psychology and related topics such as criminal profiling have been the subject of a whole host of books, films and television series. While this has undoubtedly raised the profile of forensic psychology, the subject has often been presented in a distorted, sensationalised and inaccurate way.

With this very much in mind, this article outlines what you need to be aware of in order to provide a satisfactory answer to the question, what is forensic psychology?

When my students arrived for their first lecture, I would always start by giving them 10 minutes to write down an answer to the question what is forensic psychology? Before reading on, why not quickly write down what you think forensic psychology is.

The reason I did this was because despite the fact that every single undergraduate psychology student (about 180 of them) chose to do the forensic psychology course, not one of them came to see me in advance to ask what the course was about. Now bear in mind students chose their optional courses well in advance of the start date, and in order to make an informed choice they were all strongly advised to speak to the lecturer running the courses they were interested in before making a final decision.

So why the no show?

I suspect, actually I know because I discussed it with the students afterwards, that they didn’t feel they had to find out what forensic psychology is, because they already had a preconceived idea.

I mentioned that at the start of the first lecture I would give students 10 minutes to write down an answer to the question what is forensic psychology. What I didn’t mention, however, is that after about 2 minutes I would ask for their attention and apologise for forgetting to tell them that they weren’t allowed to use the words serial killers or silence of the lambs in their answer. It was usually as this point that most of the writing in the lecture theatre stopped.

If you’re thinking I would have stopped writing as well, please contain your disappointment and don’t rush off just yet. The answer to the question, what is forensic psychology may not quite be what you thought, but that doesn’t mean that the subject has to be any less engaging.

The first thing to appreciate when addressing the question is that even psychologists in the field are divided as to what the answer is. The division of criminological and legal psychology within the British Psychological Society argued for twenty years as to whether their members should be entitled to call themselves Chartered Forensic Psychologists. It was finally agreed that they should, however, there still remains a great deal of debate and controversy surrounding the issue.

The central problem is that its members are drawn from a wide range of disciplines, so it is always difficult to state what the boundaries are when you talk of Forensic Psychology.

A fragmented discipline?

Psychologists in the prison/correctional services. Clinical psychologists in special hospitals & the psychiatric services. Educational psychologists. Occupational psychologists. Academics

Now while it is important to acknowledge that this fragmentation of role exists, it is just as important to realise that these different groups are linked to forensic psychology because their work, expert knowledge or research activity is somehow connected with the law.

This legal connection makes perfect sense when you consider that the word forensic comes from the Latin forensis, which literally means appertaining to the forum, specifically the imperial court of Rome. So in essence:

The debate as to what is and what isn’t forensic psychology rests primarily on the nature of psychology’s relationship with the legal system.

Let me give you an example, imagine 2 clinical psychologists meet at a conference and they begin talking about the work they do. The first psychologist tells the second that she recently gave expert testimony in court arguing that the defendant in a murder case was criminally insane; the judge and jury agreed and having been found guilty on the grounds of diminished responsibility the defendant was going to be sent to a secure psychiatric unit. Now there’s a coincidence the second psychologist says I work in the unit where they’re sending him, so I’ll be dealing and treating this guy when he arrives.

So here you have a situation where two psychologists are linked to the legal system by way of a legal decision and you could argue, therefore, that both deserve to be seen as engaging in Forensic Psychology. However, there’s a crucial difference.

The first psychologist actually helped inform the legal decision based on her psychological knowledge and expertise. The second psychologists’ involvement on the other hand arose as a consequence of a legal decision that she had no direct influence over.

My preferred forensic psychology definition acknowledges this key distinction, namely:

That branch of applied psychology which is concerned with the collection, examination and presentation of evidence for judicial purposes’ (Haward 1981).

If you adopt this definition you are stating categorically that Forensic Psychology relates to:

The provision of psychological information for the purpose of facilitating a legal decision (Blackburn 1996).

So in the case of our two psychologists, strictly speaking only the first can be said to be engaged in Forensic Psychology.

Not everybody would agree with this, because there is a school of thought that would claim that any activity that links psychology to the law deserves to be described as Forensic. I’m not going to try and convince you which is right, although I do have a strong opinion on the mater; the main thing is that you know that this debate exists.

Summary

In answering the question, what is forensic psychology we have discovered that:

In essence, forensic psychology refers to the application of psychology within a legal context.

The debate as to what is & what is not forensic psychology relates to the nature of this legal application & the level at which it is applied.

And this debate raises a number of questions that you need to think about. In particular:

The boundaries of forensic psychology?

The role of the forensic psychologist?

The credibility of forensic psychology.

To find out more about the fascinating world of forensic psychology visit www.all-about-forensic-psychology.com

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By pursuing the psychology degree online, you can select any degree program that meets your area of interest without the need to consider the geography factor. This means you can enroll into a psychology degree program offered by university abroad. As long as the university offers their psychology courses online and it accepts international students, then you can enroll into their online degree program and start attending courses online from your home country.

In order to benefit from the advantages of online psychology degree, you need to ensure that you are able to adapt to online learning style. Online learning requires you to have self motivation and self discipline to plan your study schedule and follow your plan until you complete the program. Beside that, a proper time management is important especially if you are taking the psychology degree while focusing your career at the same time.

Summary

Flexibility and convenient in term of time and location of study are the key advantages of pursue a psychology degree online. You can greatly benefit from these advantages by pursuing your psychology degree online and work your way to next career level.

Carl Jung discovered the unique method of dream interpretation. I continued his research, discovered the meaning of more dream symbols and the existence of a wild and primitive conscience that causes craziness to our conscience.

If you learn how to interpret your dreams by using this scientific method, you will be able to penetrate the hidden world of the unconscious and anti-conscience, in addition to understanding how your human conscience works. What does this mean? This means that you will penetrate your mind and start understanding why you behave the way you do, why you think and feel the way you do and so on.

You will then start understanding your mistakes and to correct them and develop your conscience. This means that you become more intelligent because you start paying attention to other psychological functions that you have at your disposition. You can learn many things and better judge the world: these are the functions you never use because you are always dominated by only one fully developed psychological function, which you prefer, and another one that is only partially developed and only partly helps you.

In the beginning, your dreams will help you develop you conscience by showing you all the aspects of reality that you have to consider when you make your decisions or judge someone. For example, if you belong to a psychological type that is extroverted and based on sensations, you will care only for the way you feel, the food you eat, the clothes you wear and all the material pleasures you can have.

What can happen to you? A lot!

If you don’t think logically or analyze your life seriously, you’ll surely face many problems in your life. On the other hand, if you don’t pay attention to your feelings but only care for the gratification of your senses, you may get involved with someone you don’t really love but who can give you the material pleasure you desire…only to discover later that you cannot live with that person no matter how much money they may have.

If you don’t pay attention to what you “can guess” about each person, to the impression and the feeling they give you, you are ignoring a very important psychological function whose functionalism is a mystery—intuition. This psychological function is in fact the ability to predict the future without any logical explanation besides the impressions that you obtain about someone or something. This psychological function when completely developed can help you actually guess, for instance, the person who will buy your products and who will never do that. You can understand from the beginning who is the right person for you and immediately decide the next actions to take.

When this psychological function is not well developed, you receive no help in your decisions. You cannot guess anything about what you are trying to examine.

Therefore, when you completely develop your conscience through dream interpretation, you start discovering the hidden meaning of reality that you could not see before because you were too ignorant and based on only one entire and one partial psychological function each.

On the other hand, when you completely develop your conscience and eliminate the dangerous influence of the wild and primitive anti-conscience, you discover how reality is prepared and how you can transform it according to what will bring you good results.

You acquire a “third eye” that can read and decipher the symbols existent not only in dreams but also everywhere else, and you will be guided to solve all the problems of your life.

When you reach this level, you will learn the meaning of many other things that you now ignore. You will learn how to think according to another system of logic that is completely different from the selfish logic that you use now, in addition to understanding the meaning of life and death.

You can learn all that you wish by interpreting your dreams, and you can interpret everything that happens to you in your daily life just as you interpret dreams, and thus have more information about reality, other people and the future.