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When Michael Decaire wrote his first article "Forensic Psychology: The Misunderstood Beast" he felt he needed to explain why he wanted to write about this subject matter. Michael wrote "In my four-year undergraduate program, forensics was mentioned only once. And what was mentioned was a useless definition that really did not explain at all the intricacies of the field. The most common definition is: Forensic Psychology is the application of psychological knowledge to the criminal justice system." (Online) To any one not familiar with the field, this would probably break down to common descriptions. Psychological knowledge would be become "stuff psychologists know." They know how to psychoanalyze people. The criminal justice system has to do with lawyers and judges, so the common association would be that a forensic psychologist psychoanalyzes lawyers and judges. Well, this may need to happen in the criminal justice system, although it really has nothing to do with forensic psychology. .
The same applies to some television shows and movies. They don't do a very good job of clarifying the job description of the forensic psychologist. The field of forensic psychology is not popularized by most of the media in a serious manner like other fields of forensics. Television shows like The Learning Channel or the History Channel don't focus on specialties like forensic psychologists. It appears that the networks are mainly interested in the information acquired from an investigation that are seen, like fingerprint examinations and DNA analysis. It appears that the information like personality characteristics, motives, and mental disorders don't have enough visual action for the educational and informational type of shows. The television shows that do portray forensic psychologists are fascinating and entertaining to watch, (Millennium, X - Files, and Profiler for example) but the characters are not quite realistic, and the job is made to seem to easy, as if there is a magical quality about it.