History and Methodology of Psychological Profiling

Abstract

The international publication of criminal or offender profiling goes back a long time, both
in practice and on the theoretical side. The first criminal profiles already appeared in
antiquity; and in the second half of the 1400s
during the Inquisition, in the witch trials, we
also find writings that correspond to the profiling of the time. From the second half of the
20th
century, the number of researches related to profiling increases exponentially, and thus
more and more applied profile analysis procedures are developed and introduced. One
of the several trends is psychological or clinical profiling, which is one of the first profiling
procedures – psychiatrists and psychologists achieved the first successes in criminal profiling.
Despite this, psychological profiling is methodologically the least researched, its method
is undeveloped and less empirically validated, which significantly discourages the practical
application of psychological profiles.
I present a review of the literature on where psychological or clinical profiling is going, and
what important milestones can be identified in the development and spread of the procedure.
Despite being the first of the major trends, psychological profiling suffers from several
shortcomings. For this purpose, it would be advisable to carry out empirical research that
validates the procedure.