General Theoretical Provisions of Forensic Psychology

Abstract

The author has emphasized on the need to provide higher education students with innovative teaching materials that would promote their comprehensive development and increase their competitiveness.

It has been noted that forensic psychology is an independent branch of legal psychology that studies psychological patterns and mechanisms of the development of processes and phenomena that arise during the performance of judicial activity. It has been emphasized that forensic psychology, as well as every branch of legal psychology, has its own objective, task, object of study, subject matter of study and subjects of study. It has been stressed that the scientific and applied provisions of forensic psychology should be based on certain principles and provide an understanding of the whole spectrum of psychological peculiarities of judicial activity.

The scientific novelty of the study is that:

1) the author for the first time: a) has defined the content of the objective, subjects of study, the object of study and the subject matter of study of forensic psychology; b) has specified the list of functions of scientific and applied provisions of forensic psychology (gnosiological, interpretative, explanatory, noteworthy, critical, practically applied, communicative, organizational, creative, perceptual, prognostic and synthesizing); and has considered their content; c) has distinguished the sections of forensic psychology (general theoretical provisions of forensic psychology, psychological peculiarities of judicial activity, psychological characteristics of a judge’s personality, psychological characteristics of the participants in court proceedings) in accordance with the directions of the subject of study, and the tasks are specified for each of them;

2) has improved the content of the concept of “forensic psychology”;

3) the principles of scientific and applied provisions of forensic psychology (legality, integrity, complexity, comprehensiveness, objectivity, consistency, systematicity, concreteness, determinism and flexibility) and their content have been further developed.

Everything will contribute to the systematization, specification, refinement and development of the main scientific and applied, general theoretical provisions of forensic psychology as an independent branch of legal psychology.