ABSTRACT
The term 'profiler' has commonly been applied to the media hungry defintion of a sole individual responsible for solving an offence where others have failed. This chapter extends the meaning to any individual or self professed 'expert' who has attempted to explain the motivations of others and categorise certain details of their backgrounds. This may include clients within therapy, suspects within a police enquiry or assessments of the likely motives and qualities that lie behind different written texts. In expanding the term this chapter explores the extent to which profiling has been abused. Where the area has been redolent with poor policy and practice we attempt to outline an alternative to the scenario of the lonely expert contributing to the enquiry. This involves closer liaison with and education of the individuals relevant to the enquiry and of conceptual and empirically derivable hypotheses appropriate to developing systematic and replicable models of behaviour set within a social science framework.
