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Risk has become a rapid growth area both in current academic research, clinical governance and health service management. Risk and varied definitions of acute, chronic or potential dangerousness have spawned a multitude of assessment tools, guide lines, protocols and structured interviews. Risk and danger are generally placed within a narrow cultural frame with assumptions of shared belief systems. The German sociologist Ulrich Beck, coined the expression ‘the risk society’ in 1984. He referred to risk in an ecological context as the danger posed by scientific, technical or social developments with unknown and unpredictable consequences. We thus breathe a culture of risk and reap what our forefathers have sown. The British anthropologist, Mary Douglas, best known for Purity and Danger, an Analysis of Conceptions of Pollution and Taboo writes in Risk and Blame, Essays in Cultural Theory that risk and danger are culturally conditioned ideas, which have become politicized and thus engender social policy. She argues that the analysis of risk has become compartmentalized with the aim of locating blame. Risk has evolved into a portmanteaux concept with an actuarial base derived from probability theory and gambling. It is interesting to speculate on why society has moved from a moralistic blame culture to a pseudo scientific secular culture in which we act as if risk and danger can be statistically measured and safeguarded against. Instead of lighting votive candles we tick boxes in risk assessments. Mary Douglas argued in 1992 that this did not have to be taken as given and that cultural theory provided examples of no-blame cultures. The National Health Service is now attempting to follow some American examples and move towards a no-blame culture in which systemic failure can be identified without the fear of litigation and lead to safer practice rather than individual castigation. These are all important issues that psychotherapists and psychoanalysts are beginning to ta