Forensic Psychology For Dummies (156 page)

This situation is especially true in cases where psychologists give advice to criminal investigations. It is usually best that there is no public indication that a psychologist is involved at all. Particularly in cases involving a lot of public interest, the psychologists can come under a great deal of unwanted pressure to reveal their opinions if people discover that the police have consulted them. The identities of psychologists who advise police investigations are therefore usually kept secret.

Professional Humility

Some years ago, I coined the term
professional humility
to draw attention to the fact that no single professional discipline has all the answers. The need always exists to work with others and learn from their insights.

Forensic psychologists may sometimes think that they hold the answers to a case just because they’re dealing directly with the key people involved, and exploring and finding out what the criminal felt or thought, and why he’s behaving the way he is. But that can be misleadingly arrogant.

Everyone involved in the case has a useful perspective and everyone needs to recognise that they see only a part of the picture.

Telling the Truth

You may think that the need to tell the truth in a court of law is stating the obvious, but forensic psychology is such a complex and growing area, having many challenges and demands, that I believe stressing the need for honesty is important.

Unfortunately, forensic psychologists may sometimes be tempted to take short cuts or give in to the pressures from clients, lawyers, the press or the police to provide the answers or opinions most wanted. Material can even be presented to the forensic psychologist in ways that are subtly biased to suggest the desired answer or, in some cases, the people commissioning the psychologists may omit crucial information to try and influence the opinion she forms. Psychologists, just like all the other advisors to the courts or investigations, therefore have to be alert to what background information they are given and whether it may be biased in any way.

On one occasion, I was asked to comment on a suspicious death, being told that, ‘We found the wife dead on the bed and the husband says he was away in Aberdeen at the time.’ Clearly, by phrasing the information in this way the person wanted an opinion that incriminated the husband. I had to step back from this nudge by trying to build up a picture of the circumstances of the death that made no assumptions about guilt. In other words, I had to tell the truth as I saw it.

Chapter 18

Ten Stages in Becoming a Professional Forensic Psychologist

In This Chapter

Becoming a professional psychologist

Examining opportunities to specialise along the way

Joining the road at different stages

One of the things that makes forensic psychology so fascinating is the overlap of the austere academic discipline of psychology with the law in its many manifestations, and the range of contexts in which the profession can be applied.

Although the professional position of the forensic psychologist is just getting a foothold in the US, it’s well established and protected in the UK and Australia. In these countries, controls exist on who can call themselves a forensic psychologist and the qualifications a person needs in order to practise.

The profession attracts loads of capable people who work in a wide range of different settings, not just prisons and mental hospitals. The various techniques, approaches and applications that I describe throughout this book provide plenty of work for the forensic psychologist, but getting into the profession is highly competitive, although this chapter can certainly help. Here I describe ten stages that a forensic psychologist goes through before they can practise as a professional.

Although you can read the following ten sections as a logical sequence, please don’t see the process as an inevitable route. For example, I became involved in forensic psychology after 25 years as an applied psychologist, and a number of my students moved into the profession from the police. People from backgrounds not directly related to psychology or the law have also become professionals in this area after experience in other contexts. When such people qualify, they often bring fresh perspectives and new insights not immediately available to people who follow the more traditional routes.

Thinking about the Profession While at School

If you’re at school and have a definite long-term goal of becoming a professional forensic psychologist, remember that the field is ever more competitive and so the most important aspect is to do well in whatever subjects you’re working on. But of course studying subjects relevant to psychology is a good idea: for example, biology, mathematics, philosophy and geography.

Personally, I don’t think that studying psychology at school is a great idea if you want to go on to be a psychologist professionally. I’m sure many of my colleagues will howl their disagreement, but my view is that in order to convert psychology into a subject that can be digested by teenagers it needs to be made less problematic than it really is, dumbed-down even. As a consequence, a lot of material presented in school as reasonably clear-cut has to be questioned later at university and so needs to be ‘unlearned’. Better, therefore, is to get a good grounding in other subjects that psychology feeds on than to start on a subject that can become your life’s obsession. I don’t mean to suggest, however, that you don’t read any psychology books before going to university. You’re reading this one and I certainly approve of that!

School students’ ideas of topics or professions are likely to change as they mature and gain a wider experience of the world. In addition, forensic psychology is evolving and changing and takes on many different forms in many different situations. For these reasons, having in mind only one fixed career choice can be a mistake. Many other possibilities may become attractive, and a wider education allows you to take advantage of new opportunities as they arise.

Studying at University

Forensic psychology isn’t usually a first (undergraduate) degree in any country, and so your choice of university and degree may be best based on opportunity, location and other interests rather than any particular focus on this area of psychology.

Of course, a degree in psychology is the most direct route towards becoming a forensic psychologist. Generally, any good university qualification in psychology is a sound basis for further professional development; it doesn’t have to be a focused psychology degree. Many other university qualifications may be acceptable for the academic step. Sometimes, some form of ‘topping up’ of a first degree as a preparation for subsequent high-level study is advisable if psychology wasn’t the dominant part of the first qualification.

As with the selection of subjects to study at school (see the preceding section), I counsel against focusing on forensic psychology as a major part of a first degree. Again, achieving a high standard in a highly regarded university is much more important than the specific topics that you study. However, as the big wide world beckons, a good idea is to start getting a taste for future professional prospects. Seize on any options at university that give you a feel for what different areas of psychology deal with in practice, because they can open up the vista to possible careers.

When choosing a university, many try to attract students by indicating that they offer courses that have plenty of bits and pieces of popular subjects (such as forensic psychology or, heaven forbid, ‘offender profiling’). In fact, the people teaching those subjects are often only a chapter ahead of the students using the book for the course. They may have no direct knowledge of the topics and give a bowdlerised version of them. Carry out a quick search on the Internet of who the lecturers are on any particular course. Find out what they’ve published to get an indication of what they’re likely to be expert in and able to offer.

For most serious university degrees, you need to do some sort of project towards the end of the course. This point is where you need to focus on something relevant to your later career. Not only do such projects help you explore in some depth a topic that’s relevant to your later ambitions (and therefore gain a better flavour of what that field is like), but also they provide a topic for future job or course applications and interviews, showing both some expertise in and commitment to the chosen profession.

Getting Direct Work Experience

Although forensic psychology work experience after graduating is a definite advantage, it isn’t essential to being accepted onto postgraduate courses that provide the thorough training necessary to become a professional (see the next section ‘Gaining a Master’s Qualification’).

Perhaps this is fortunate because getting such direct work experience is difficult. The number of people looking for such opportunities is so great that finding somewhere to provide you with practical activity is challenging. Part of the problem is that at this stage people looking for professional experience don’t have much in the way of skills to offer beyond what they’ve learned as an undergraduate.