#logic-and-deduction

Welcome to the first part of the Profiling series. Deduction itself can be broken into many subsections and branches, but mainly all of those are classified into 3 main parts: Physical, Language, and Psychological. These contain sub-topics within deduction ranging from body language to logic reasoning to personality typing. But to understand these, and to be able to use them accurately and to their full potential, you have to understand how they are classified and what they are primarily used for. In each part of this series we will introduce you to a new area of profiling.  There’s so much to talk about that we could never cover it in this introductory post, which is why this series is meant to frame your mind for much larger, future series that will go in depth on these topics. Here in Part 1 we'll be looking at the seemingly most popular: Physical Profiling.

WHAT IS PHYSICAL PROFILING?

Physical Profiling is a form of reading ones character, behaviour, and lifestyle from physical aspects such as hands, clothing, or belongings. This is often seen in Sherlock Holmes novels/representations, and similar characters. For Sherlock fans it’s known as regular deduction which we see in a typical Sherlock episode. Take “A Study in Pink” for example; in this episode Sherlock shows 2 extremely important deductions, not just to the episode as a story, but as an introduction to the character, and what we want to focus on, his way of thinking. So the question is, what does he actually do? We see him come to conclusions, and we see his reasoning, but what we don’t see is what actually goes on in his head. Does he pick the objects he picks at random? Does he just scan everything? How does he know what to look for? How does he know what something means? We see the trail he makes from point A to point B, but we don’t see how he makes this trail. So let’s shift away from the show and look at the actual method a bit.

What we have to understand is how physical profiling is composed. When we interact with our surroundings we leave residue behind, and the surroundings leave it on us, everything is connected to everything and when there’s a change caused by you or by anything else there will be a consequence to said change. Physical profiling is the method we use to identify said changes in the physical appearance or a person and recognize how they came to be. If I eat something, anything, that food is gonna leave a mark on me, I’m going to have crumbs on my shirt, or maybe a stain on my pants, my hands are going to get greasy. In deduction we learn to trace back those clues to their source, and from there build a scene of what happened in someone’s life. And we’re using the physical aspects of a person, the simple things we can see every day like their clothes or stains, or their shoes, or any accessories, to look for these clues and trace them back to find the information we want. Each time you look at a person you’ll come up with new questions. You know those questions are getting you somewhere when your answers start to overlap.

THINGS TO OBSERVE

So off the bat the first thing that we’re likely to do is observe, which is not the same as looking. Observation involves asking questions about what we take in with our senses. Let’s start from bottom and move to the top, beginning with shoes.

Shoes

Now these may seem very common but they can actually tell you a lot, they are in fact one of the most telling pieces of clothing people wear, think about it, how often do you wash them? How often do you check for scratches on the rubber? Or change the laces? Are they comfortable? Are they for work? What do you use them for? How often? Where do you go? Shoes are the one thing you will carry with you no matter where you go.

Shins & Knees

Let’s move on to shins and knees. This can tell you how someones been sitting, what they’ve been doing while sitting, how enjoyable their time was as they sat. If there’s some kind of residue it can tell you what else they’ve been doing and where they’ve been. Dust? Paint? Mud? Clean? Different color? Bleach stained? These things are worthy of noting.

Shirt & Pants

Next is shirt and pants. Is it stained, if so with what? If it’s food then what kind of food? Is it easy to spill? Look at the angle of the stain. Is it torn? Maybe they work with it a lot, or do sports with it. Material is also quite telling. Hot, cold, wet, rainy, dry, dusty, or hill covered places clothing specific to that environment. Comfort is also a factor - uncomfortable clothes lead to an uncomfortable situation or place - maybe a job or job interview they’re worried about.

Accessories

It’s important to keep in mind any accessories they have on them. This says a lot about what they value and prioritize.

Do they have a phone? In the pocket they can tell you handedness. Is it an expensive one? Does it have alarms? Does it have a case? What’s the background picture? Does it have scratches?

Do they have a purse?

Do they use pockets, if so which ones?

Rings? Do they correlate to social status and/or marriage?

Are they wearing earphones?

Important job?

How much exercise?

Owns a car or uses public transport?

Good health?

Watch? Is it analog? Is it expensive?

CONCLUSION

Welcome to Looking Glass. This is the place where you can learn the skills and tools of Sherlock Holmes, Apollo Robbins, Patrick Jane, Call Lightman, Paul Ekman, and Dr. Gregory House. My name is Michael Calladus, I’m one of three authors on this blog. I specialise in psychological profiling and memory palace techniques as well as general deduction. I solve cases as a consulting detective on my blog here: x. Every few weeks we will start a new series of posts designed to give you new lenses to observe the world through. These lenses are equally useful, and can be combined to create powerful tools for deduction.

The goal of this blog is to create a compilation of the knowledge and experience we have from years studying this science, and converting it into lessons for you guys. I am MT, i’m the co-owner of the blog, my areas of expertise are Logic Reasoning and Personality, i have a blog of my own which also focuses on deduction, as well as case solving, don’t be shy, you can find me here: x. These series will consist of everything you need to know about basically anything related to deduction that we can provide, as well as how to apply it and work with it, and even how to personalize these techniques to your individual way of learning and your goals. All of this to aid anyone, no matter their skill level

I’m Mary, the final member of this project, and you can find my new blog here. I’m a jack of all trades when it comes to the subject, but my strengths lie in psychological profiling. We’ll work together to create the content that we think will be most useful to deductionists of all skill levels, so feel free to ask questions.