Forensic Psychology Essay

Using Forensic Psychology “Comes from the word "forensic" comes from the Latin word "forensis," meaning "of the forum," Where the law courts of ancient Rome were held” (ABFP). Having many different branches of forensic psychology in 2001 the American Psychological association named it a branch of clinical psychology. Forensic psychology is the study or practice of the law and expands to all aspects of law enforcement. Working closely with the court forensic psychologist is typically appointed to assess the client and their mental state, and determine the client sanity level before entering the court room.

Beyond the scope of the initial definition of forensic psychology there are two views. The first view is the broad view of the umbrella view of this specialty includes every type of work and field that a forensic psychologist may encounter in day to day life. The second view is the narrow view is how a forensic psychologist uses the application of a clinical psychologist in order to evaluate the patient properly while also accomplishing and finding the information that they need to gather in order to proceed with the trial.

Beginning in the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s forensic psychology originated when a man named James McKeen Cattell conducted a study at Columbia University. During his time learning and coming up with the idea that psychology could be used as a way to solve court cases he did many experiments with his students. In one study he allowed 56 of his students practice eye witness testimonies with a series of questions. He conducted the experiment by asking the students about trees and asked the students to rate their confidence in what they saw and recall what they saw hours later. During this experiment Cattell...

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... individuals that were evaluated suffered from substance abuse, broken homes, and at least one of the murders was driven by the a sexual desire. All of these cases consisted of mostly white victims and every case were repetitive in all of the individuals killings (Beasley).

Although the cases were similar, they were also diverse two of the criminals were black, and the murders varied over seven states all defendants killed their victims in different ways, and some of the defendants moved the bodies while others let them remain in the spot of the killings.

The researchers concluded that while most of the defendants enjoyed telling their story the researchers could not pinpoint the reason behind the killings. However, the similarities of the cases allowed the researchers to evaluate each case and determine what may be a common factor in a serial killers mind.