Allow users to publish content to their profiles I want my users to be able to upload content to their own profiles. then when people view their profile they see a list of links which lead to what the user has uploaded.  

Is this possible?
You can create a block view (Optional  with a filter to show the type of content you want to show) Add the Content title fields and any other field you want to add. 

Then You have to set a Contextual Filter of the type Content Author.
Select the "provide default" option and from the type dropdown select user id from url.

Place this block in the user profile page.