In many departments you will see that academics have a key theoretical approach to their work. In IP we have contributions from a number of social scientists. Therefore, many of the theoretical developments are somewhat eclectic and there is healthy debate amongst staff in terms of preferred hypotheses and models. You should also appreciate that the course can cover issues as broad ranging as the controversy over trauma-induced memory loss in police officers exposed to shooting incidents through to the interpersonal circle as a basis for understanding interactions between child abusers and their victims. Thus, it is hardly surprising that issues such as memory, cognition, affect and motivation are all touched upon throughout the course.

However, if one were to select an overarching 'paradigm' we would suggest that IP has much in common with an area of psychology that is enjoying a resurgence of interest in the US - namely 'pragmatic psychology'. The pragmatic paradigm begins with a particular problem as presented by a specific client (for example, in the early days of IP, it was Prof. Canter being approached by Surrey police in relation to the Railway Rapist). The researcher begins with an explicit guiding conception of the problem (in this case, David's work on environmental psychology). This guiding conception is then used to understand the problem in context (in this case in terms of how Duffy was developing as a criminal commuting out from his home base). Finally, principles previously applied to specific problems are employed to inform subsequent research but are not restricted by it. Thus, subsequent cases may introduce subtle differences, which then require further refinement of the model. The pragmatic approach is described in some detail in Fishman's (1999) excellent textbook.

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