A Practical Guide to Forensic Psychotherapy

`I think that many who work with offenders will find this volume useful, not just employees of NHS psychiatric services. It is short enough, and readable enough, to be read at a sitting. It has increased my awareness of the spread of sophisticated psychodynamic insights and skills among clinicians who work with offender patients. Even for experienced psychoanalytic psychotherapists, I think it would provide useful reading in relation to patients one might hesitate to treat.'

`In these pages the trainee will find the shape of things to come, whereas the trainer will be glad of promptings for informed debate and demands for elucidation. The vignettes, presented as case studies in Part II, thus provide excellent catalytic material on which to base a sequence of seminars.'

`This is an important book which I hope will be read by all those whose work may bring them into contact with mentally disordered offenders, who seek practical guidance. It should also be of interest further afield as policy makers and politicians try to respond to the widespread concern in society at large about criminal behaviour, its management and its causation.'

`…this book represents a good and personable overview of the field of forensic psychotherapy. It is accessible and engaging and should form part of the necessary required reading, not only in forensic psychiatry and psychotherapy settings but also to a wider group of trainees and practitioners in general psychiatry and law. it will help those who increasingly encounter patients or defendants with some of the problems outlined and for whom treatment is well represented as a cost-effective additional option or alternative to incarceration.'

`…the new discipline of Forensic Psychotherapy has an important role to play in confronting the ignorance which exists about many kinds of offender and in providing an alternative to the simplistic response of locking them up… it is all the more imperative that the work of practitioners is shared and that within our different professions new perspectives are debated… It is therefore with great enthusiasm that I congratulate the editors and authors of this fine piece of work which was informative, challenging and proof that the law and psychiatry share very fertile soil.'

`This Practical Guide is a prestigious compilation… There is a tremendous authenticity and depth of empathetic feeling in the case vignettes… The introductory chapters set out the task and the practical aspects of working with offender patients and an excellent section closes the book with clear guidelines about the requirements of the law and the processes of the court. The differing objectives of the forensic psychiatrist and the prosecuting or defending barristers are not shirked and the ethical dilemmas are highlighted… This is a publication that will be of value to all mental health workers and not just specialist forensic psychotherapists… It is a book which should be kept on a handy shelf for appropriate reference.'

`Psychodynamic concepts continue to evolve and this book serves a useful purpose in that it demonstrates how these developments can be applied to the specific problem of offending behaviour… the book is recommended to trainees in Forensic Psychiatry.'

`The introductory chapters contain helpful explanations of the concepts of transference and counter transference in therapy and emphasize the importance of careful assessment including the significance of the setting of the assessment. The bulk of the book consists of case studies, mostly of single cases treated by each of the contributors, illustrating the process of therapy with a wide range of offending behaviour form women who shoplift to arsonistsI thought the book achieved its modest aim of explaining the objectives and limitations of forensic psychotherapy.'

`…since the chapters are written by different clinicians, they are all very different from one another. In my view this adds to the richness of the text'