An Interesting Career in Psychology:

Long-established ambitions can lead to great satisfaction. Mine began in elementary school with a fascination with crime solving. My twin and several neighborhood friends formed the typical “no girls allowed” tree house club we called the “Junior Detectives of America.” We thought everything about police work was cool, spending the summer between the fifth and sixth grades looking for lost pets and trying to solve other local mysteries.

When of age, we joined the Police Athletic League Rifle Team, and in time practiced with the police pistol team. With some new friends who shared our interests, we trained in first aid and rescue, establishing a “junior” auxiliary to the local ambulance corps. We reveled in the excitement of responding to emergencies. For a teen, it was empowering to have responsibilities that truly made a difference. Not to mention that it was really cool to occasionally be taken out of high school classes by a police officer with a waiting cruiser, speeding away with lights and siren to the scene of a fire or wreck. Talk about reinforcement.

In college I proudly enrolled in Air Force ROTC, but had no idea where that would lead. I was a psychology major, permitted to obtain a masters degree prior to entering active duty. I studied school psychology, which was qualifying for assignment as an Air Force Psychologist. My graduation present was a letter, informing me that the qualifying standards had just changed and now required a doctorate. I had to select another military career option and was asked, would I be interested in being a Special Agent of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations? Providence.

Following training I was assigned as a Special Investigations and Counterintelligence Officer to the Air Force OSI office in New York City. Later, I was reassigned to the Special Investigations Academy in Washington, DC where I instructed in a variety of topics, including interviewing and interrogating, due to my psychology background. But I wanted to do more. The field of police psychology was just emerging in 1973 and my interests were fired by behavioral science techniques such as forensic hypnosis, psychological autopsies and profiling. My efforts to practice in these areas were, however, blocked by the AF Surgeon General’s Office, properly declaring that these were “psychological” methods and by military standards, I wasn’t qualified. My agency fixed that, sponsoring a fellowship for doctoral study that I was the first to occupy, resulting in my being the first police psychologist in the federal government.

More good luck. I studied under Charlie Spielberger, who some readers may not know was an Officer in the Navy Reserve. I am indebted for his commitment to my goal in applying psychological science to military law enforcement. My master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation exposed the misuse of voice stress analysis for lie detection. Voice analysis is a process that now thirty years later is enjoying resurgence in the marketplace, despite the absence to date of any form of scientific validation.

Of the many applications of psychology to military, law enforcement and forensic arenas, several stand out for me due to their inherently interesting nature as well as the need for credible study. One, which has been a particular honor, regards espionage. In 1983, I participated in a conference at the CIA that was intended to reframe the counterintelligence field. The topic was personnel security; the intent was to start from square one, asking the hard questions, to include why espionage occurred, and how to investigate and stop it. The conference confirmed that the Intelligence Community had as many