Carlos Fishman Rosine Joze Perelberg (ed.), Psychoanalytic Understanding of Violence and Suicide, the New Library of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 33,  London: Routledge, 1999  xx + 177 pp. £55 hb., £18.99 pb.

This book is a collection of clinical papers on the treatment of patients who have acted violently against others or, in attempting to end their own lives, have acted violently against themselves. Although psychoanalysts have studied and written about suicide, this is one of the comparatively few books that contribute to the psychoanalytic literature on the treatment of violence. In doing so it revisits known ideas and

presents some original insights on the theories one can construe about borderline patients who act out violently. Repeatedly, it is made clear that this is about actual physical violence (or its threat) in or out of the clinical situation. All but one of the authors of the individual chapters belong to the Young Adults Research Group at the Anna Freud Centre, and some of these papers were presented at a conference organized by University College London in 1997.

The editor, a training analyst of the British Psycho-analytical Society, begins with a comprehensive review of the literature relevant to the subject and this provides an excellent starting point for anyone wishing to look further and in detail into particular aspects of the main theme of the book. Aggression and the controversies that surround the understanding of its nature, origins and manifestations are looked into from different and various perspectives. She also introduces each of the chapters and weaves a unifying thread in such a way that one can get a sense of coherence to the collection despite the different clinical style and thinking of each of its contributors.

Each chapter discusses clinical material in a clear and vivid way and does not for a moment fail to convey what it was like for each of the analysts to be in the room with their patient and the difficulties they encountered. The clinical material discussed illustrates the main three themes that the authors agree on and put forward as features that are present in their work with violent and suicidal patients.

The first is the