RE: ETHICAL ISSUE? "Bush on the Couch" by Justin Frank, M.D.

[Rick Adams]

Nancy wrote:   =========== Profiling is a bunch of hoodoo. I am not proud of it, I loathe it. It's just one more media circus version of psychology. This is not my psychological science, it's simple bunk. ===========   Profiling, in the way it is portrayed on television, may be "simple bunk," but so are psychotherapy, behavior modification, and hypnosis. The fact that the media choose to inaccurately portray a field, or that a few so-called experts in that field choose to present absurd claims publicly doesn't reduce the entire field to "bunk" By that standard, modern medicine is "simple bunk" since M.D.s such as Atkins promote such absurd claims about the health.   Profiling is no more nor less a science than is clinical diagnosis. It is based on very sound principles of both psychology and criminology. Of course profilers don't have the absurd accuracy and success rates that TV claims for them--but do clinical diagnosticians invariably come to the correct conclusion with respect to the diagnosis and treatment of disorders? How often have inaccurate diagnoses of schizophrenia, ADHD, or Antisocial Personality Disorder been made (compare the diagnostic rates for schizophrenia in the US and the UK for a real eye-opener).   Profiling depends on a number of factors: The nature of the crime (terrorist activities, serial arson, and serial rape are normally profiled with rather high rates of accuracy), the number of crimes committed by the perpetrator (the greater the number, the more accurate the profile), the amount of evidence available (profilers, like any other professional, need data to work with), and the similarity of the victims (the closer they fit to a single "model" the better the profile). Such cases as Ted Bundy, the Uni-Bomber, John Gacy, and the Hillside Stranglers (to name a few famous cases) were profiled by criminal justice psychologists with at least as much accuracy as the typical client is assessed by a therapist.   Read some of the work by Curt Bartol, or the research conducted by the Association of Arson Investigators if you're looking for accurate information on the subject. Much of it is obviously anecdotal in nature--while it may seem reasonable to call for scientific research on the issue, how precisely could you conduct it? You could (obviously) compare the profiles prepared by a number of different profilers on the same case to determine if they were similar, but that proves nothing other than the fact that most profilers have similar training (the same would hold true of a number of clinicians provided diagnostic information concerning a client). You could compare the profiles made of offenders to the actual offenders when arrested, but that would (again) be primarily anecdotal in nature--and, worse, would suffer from the problem of selection; which cases do you choose to compare? Scientific research implies either the construction of a structured research project in which the variables are under the control of the experimenter (which is impossible in this case, unless we view it as reasonable for an experimenter to withhold the identity of an offender who was committing a series of crimes in order for the profilers to have the opportunity to evaluate the crimes and develop a profile, a patent absurdity), or observational research in which unknowing subjects are simply observed and their behavior recorded, again highly unreasonable when such an activity would allow an offender to continue committing crimes unapprehended.   Criminal Justice Psychology isn't an exact science. But neither is any other area of psychology (with the possible exception of neuropsychology, psychopharmacology, or biological psychology). It has its successes and its failures, exactly as psychotherapy does. And it attracts its share of "wangos" and extremists, but so does mainstream psychology as even a brief time spent watching some of the New Age "psychologists" on TV or reading the current crop of pop-psychology self-help books by licensed therapists will rapidly demonstrate.   Someone once commented that while we have a far greater knowledge of human behavior today than we ever had before, psychology as a science is still at the stage that physics was at during the time of Newton. If that's true (and whether we like it or not, it does have some elements of truth) then it should come as no surprise that psychological profiling is at the stage of Caesar Lombroso.   Rick   --   Rick Adams Capella University Grand Canyon University Jackson Community College   [EMAIL PROTECTED]   "... and the only measure of your worth and your deeds will be the love you leave behind when you're gone."    -Fred Small, J.D., "Everything Possible"   --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]