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First of all, I would like to thank the editorial board of The International Journal of Forensic Psychotherapy for the opportunity to share some thoughts on Carine Minne's article, whose clinical talent I have long admired. Since much of her work provides a glimpse into the clinical side of working with forensic patients, I would like, without pretending to be objective or complete, to discuss one important theoretical aspect, namely the “breakdown” or “ignition” that takes place in the process of this dramatic work.
Forensic patients are known to have a great propensity for enactments, both outside the consulting room (acting out), and also in their quietness (acting in). These patients' difficulty forming representations causes them to see their psyche and other people's minds experienced as concrete objects. In addition, because they often do not differentiate mind and body, their communication can often be via action rather than the symbolic activities of speech or thought (Yakeley, 2009). Thus, violent and antisocial behaviour is commonly understood not as meaningless actions, but often as an unconscious way of interacting with the outside world. Whereas “non-forensic” patients act in accordance with their memories, forming mostly psychological or somatic symptoms (Freud, 1914g), people who have transgressed the law, act in order not to remember. To paraphrase Sigmund Freud, we could say that one of the objectives working with forensic patients is to form a thought where before there was only an action.
Minne makes it one of the aims of her article to find an answer to the question of what caused the patient's “ignition”. However, if we consider enactments in sessions as the only form of communication available to these patients at times, these difficult moments can be seen as a necessary condition for understanding and subsequent change. Developing the “fire” metaphor suggested by the author, forensic patients can be compared to pyrophytes—plants not only adapte