The Founding and Early Years of the American Board of Forensic Psychology

This chapter chronicles the start of board certification by the American Board of Forensic Psychology and its partner, the American Academy of Forensic Psychology. It recapitulates the early organizational history, partly initiated when a small group of those involved in forensic psychology learned that psychiatry was rapidly moving toward establishing board certification in forensic psychiatry, which might threaten forensic psychologists’ claim to expertise in the field. This chapter also discusses the process of gaining acceptance as the sixth recognized specialty by the American Board of Professional Psychology and describes the growth of the field and our endeavors to expand it during the first decade and a half of its formal evolution.