Forensic Psychology For Dummies 2nd Edition – David V Canter (1)

They may even avoid the term psychologist altogether and just call themselves behavioral scientists. Yes, I realize that this topic is growing complicated, but the problem is that the term offender profiler is neither a legal nor professional label. It has more currency in the mass media and in fiction than in any professional gathering. People who want to claim they have special powers may call themselves profilers, but that doesn’t mean that they are forensic psychologists, or even criminolo- gists, or know much about the sorts of topics I describe in all the other chapters in this book.

Jack the Ripper Perhaps the first true professional offender profile in modern times was a report from a medical officer, Dr. Thomas Bond, who carried out autopsies and advised the police on the murders that became known as the work of Jack the Ripper (the killer of at least five women working as street sex workers in the Whitechapel area of London in 1888).

Bond offered the following opinion: The murderer must have been a man of physical strength and great coolness and daring. There is no evidence he had an accomplice. He must, in my People have always been ready to draw on their own particular expertise to tell detectives about the criminal they’re looking for — particularly, crime writers. An early instance of someone profiling a case was Edgar Allan Poe, famous for his dark stories of murder and mayhem.

In 1850, he wrote The Mystery of Marie Roget, which, although presented as a fiction set in Paris, was intended to be a contribution to the investigation of the murder of Mary Rogers in New York in 1842. From the crime scene details, Poe concluded that a gang of villains killed the hapless Mary, which contrasted with the police view that it was suicide. They didn’t take kindly to his suggestions, but because the case was never conclusively solved, it’s still anyone’s guess who was correct.

Conan Doyle also offered profiles on various real-life crimes that were troubling the police, although no indication exists that they took any notice of his advice or that it was ever of much use. Yet this shows, as with Poe, that helping the police was regarded as an act of imagination rather than as some scientific endeavor. This belief lingers, adding to the general mythology that profiling is a dark art, which owes more to the brilliance of the person producing the profile rather than to any systematic procedure.

170 PART 3 Assisting Law Enforcement opinion, be a man subject to periodic attacks of homicidal and erotic mania. The character of the mutilations indicates that the man may be in a condition sexually that may be called satyriasis.

by Professor David Canter foreword by Donna Youngs, PhD Forensic Psychology For Dummies®, 2nd Edition Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com Copyright © 2026 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial technologies or similar technologies. Media and software compilation copyright © 2026 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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