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Pain Bleeds Crime represents a non-fictional casebook style of writing, in this instance about true crime. Common in law and medicine Nathan adopts this form of writing as a powerful means of demonstrating the value of forensic psychoanalysis /psychotherapy. She also humanises the view of the perpetrator of violent and sexual crimes whilst compassionately acknowledging the suffering and horror that innocent victims endure at the hands of such perpetrators.
She achieves this by her vivid and creative writing style which provides the reader with an experiential immersion into serious crime through the eyes of a forensic psychotherapist. This potent style of writing means that what one learns from the book comes about from the synthesis of one's own intellectual and emotional engagement with the book.
Nathan confirms this noting that: “By narrating their compelling experiences as stories … I aim to make forensic encounters more accessible, extending beyond the professional sphere” … and that … “Storytelling in the forensic world of crime serves to humanise, foster empathy and promote deeper and more nuanced understandings”.
The author also takes the interested reader more deeply into an understanding of offending that the use of psychoanalytic theory facilitates. Nathan illustrates the utility of psychoanalytic concepts effortlessly but draws short of rendering her book a professional text. Notwithstanding this, she provides a sprinkling of tantalising references to key psychoanalytic theories for the interested reader to follow up.
I believe that Nathan achieves her primary aim, reflected in her creative title, by deftly making the point that in almost all cases in which she was involved there has been a traumatic developmental background to the crime committed. Most forensic psychotherapists who work or have worked with serious offenders would attest to this view. As such she echoes the view of Gilligan (2019) and Welldon (2015), who have noted how forensic psychotherapy