Movies such as Kiss the Girls, Manhunter or Resurrection are embellished to the point of ridicule by those that participate in real criminal investigations. Real life profiling (a term for assessing a psychological profile) is not exactly what you see in television shows and movies. There is an abundance of articles about forensic psychology, yet not one author can agree on exactly what forensic psychology is. Forensic Psychology (a.k.a.: profiling, personality profiling, or criminal investigative analyzing) is the scientific field which applies psychological knowledge to the science of forensics. However, most people -- even among the investigative professionals .
-- misunderstand its purpose, effectiveness, and classification in the forensic field. From the inquiries in the 'frequently asked questions' area of many psychology associated web pages, it appears that forensics is one of the most misunderstood of psychological disciplines. .
Everyone has a different way of explaining things. Three people can look at the same picture taken at a crime scene, but when writing a detailed report of what they are looking at, it would read as if they were looking at three different crime scene pictures. Describing a field of interest is much the same thing. A person can take the easy route. They can get the definition of their interest from the dictionary and just embellish. The encyclopedia is another useful means of getting brief, but concise information. When it comes to serious research and detailed explanations of a subject, we turn to books or articles written exclusively on a particular interest. Forensic psychology is one of those interests. When beginning my research in the field of forensic psychology my first step was to find the most precise definition. I read the definition in the first article I chose, but when I went to another article to clarify a point I noticed that the definition was similar, yet more detailed.