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This short book, ten years old but of considerable relevance today, was written by forensic psychotherapists whose concern it is to develop a psychodynamic understanding of the offender patient and, in this context, to understand how the crime becomes the means of a behavioural enactment by the individual, which uniquely demonstrates something of their internal object relations. The treatment was carried out in remand/local prisons, Category A, B, C and D prisons, open prisons and young offender institutions, with a comprehensive description of each individual setting together with a flavour of life within these walls.
On reviewing this book, I was reminded of the four years I had spent practising psychotherapy in a regional secure unit with offenders who had all killed a loved one (Polledri, 1997). What I did not have to guide me was a book such as this one whose contributors have all worked in high security hospitals and prison settings and who all have a background history of considerable experience working for the forensic mental health services. For example, issues such as the ability to be able to step back and reflect upon the process of treatment with the prisoners in order to safeguard the capacity to think and feel within a system that tries not to. Another important dynamic which the contributors touch on but do not elaborate on is the ‘index offence’, that is, the criminal act itself - and just how brave one has to be to keep that in mind when practising psychotherapy with murderers - in such a split-off environment, whilst psychically digesting the horror of the crime committed by the person sitting opposite you in the treatment room. Never mind the institutional dynamics running parallel to such a process.
My overall impression is that this book spells out, in great detail, the problem that every prison system in the world faces; that is, the care and treatment of those who have committed the most outrageous crimes on their fellow men. Their care is beyo