Forensic Psychotherapy

Forensic psychotherapy explores the roots of violent, sexual and antisocial behaviour. It is a relatively recently created discipline that applies psychoanalytic knowledge to the assessment, management and treatment of mentally disordered offenders, forming a bridge between traditional forensic psychiatry - with its focus on diagnosis and risk - and traditional psychotherapy - with its focus on understanding why things happen. As a discipline, forensic psychotherapy seeks to understand the conscious and unconscious motivations that underpin specific offending behaviours. We need to understand not only the detail of the crime, but also the offender as a whole person within his environment, including the criminal justice environment. It aims to understand the perpetrator, the victim, and the victim within the perpetrator. In this collection, leading international experts in forensic psychotherapy explore the different aspects and developments within the field. These include first hand experiences of shaping the emerging discipline within the UK, Europe and the United States; working therapeutically with high-risk offenders in prisons and secure hospitals; exploration of female violence and work with incarcerated mothers and babies; and the latest developments in forensic psychotherapy training. This book will be of interest to professionals and academics working within the fields of forensic mental health, criminal justice, psychiatry, psychology, criminology, and sociology. This book was originally published as two special issues of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.

Jessica Yakeley is Consultant Psychiatrist in Forensic Psychotherapy and Director of the Portman Clinic, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK. Gill McGauley was Professor of Forensic Psychotherapy and Medical Education at St. George's, University of London, UK; and Consultant Forensic Psychotherapist, Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust.

Foreword 1. Forensic psychotherapy 2. Female violence and toxic couples 3. 3 Man unlock: out of sight, out of mind - Art psychotherapy with a woman with severe and dangerous personality disorder in prison 4. The place of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in the treatment of high-risk personality-disordered offenders 5. 'This is the pain I feel!' Projection and emotional pain in the nurse-patient relationship with people diagnosed with personality disorders in forensic and specialist personality disorder services: findings from a mixed methods study 6. Safety in numbers: group therapy-based index offence work in secure psychiatric care 7. Can psychoanalysis help us to understand the causes and prevention of violence? 8. Forensic follow-up care for outpatients in Germany 9. Creating mother and baby therapy groups in prison: emotional valuation 10. A child's loss becomes a young man's violence 11. In praise of Dr Leslie Sohn 1919-2013 12. A fertile matrix: the birth of the Forensic Psychotherapy Society