Expert: Bruce Borkosky, Psy.D. - 6/30/2010

Question
I don't know if you have seen this, but there is a movie called 'Copycat' starring Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter. In the film, Weaver plays a character who can tell what type of person the killer is, their personality and everything, by the crime scene. She looks at two identical crime scenes and points out that one is disorganised and one is organised, and she notices sometihng like how the killer put a rag over the victims head and that showed how they regretted the murder. I think it was something like "field expert on serial killers".
Anyway do you know what her profession is? And how easy it is to get that job, salary and how competitive the field is?

Many thanks.

Answer
Hi, Lorri, thanks for your question. I think there is a name for it in the U.S., but at the moment I don't recall. In the U.S., the FBI has a department - I think it's called the Behavioral Analysis unit. There are also similar agencies in state departments and intelligence agencies. There is a show called Criminal Minds, which supposedly shows the BAU. Here in FL, there was a show about an investigator who did similar consulting for the FDLE. I also took a class from Roy Hazelton, who used to be in the BAU, and I'm aware that he has a 2 week long class. I think most of the people in the field start with a doctorate in Psychology. Some, like the lady in FL, came from police backgrounds and were trained by the FBI. I think most of their knowledge base comes merely from interviewing lots of criminals, and visiting lots of crime scenes. No idea what the salary is, but I think almost everyone works within the field for many years. I think people work their way up, depending on their training and skill. So, If I were young and going to start in the field, I would get my police certification and start working as an officer, then sign up for as much training as possible. I would also go to school part time to get my Ph.D. I would also consider learning another language, such as arabic, korean, farsi, or chinese, as well as learning as much as possible about other cultures. These reason for this is because people are influenced by their cultures too, not just their individual personality. Also, experience with these cultures might put you in position do that kind of work chasing foreigners/terrorists. So, it a lot of well rounded education probably will help.

Hope that doesn't put you off doing that kind of work. I'm just saying that, at the highest levels, you have to have a lot of 'people' experience, not just academic knowledge. The best ones, have a 'gut sense', who can gauge their own reactions and feed off of that...

Dr. Borkosky