Wilfred Bion's insights into the analytic process have had a profound influence on how psychoanalysts and psychotherapists understand emotional change and pathological mental states. One of his most influential ideas concerns the notion that we need the minds of others to develop our own emotional and cognitive capacities. In Containing States of Mind Duncan Cartwright explores and develops some of the implications that Bion's container model has on clinical practice. He argues that the analyst or therapist best fulfils a containing function by negotiating irreconcilable internal tensions between his role as 'dream object' and 'proper object'. The container model is also used to illustrate different 'modes of interaction' in the analytic field, the nature of particular pathological states and some of the key dilemmas faced in attempting to make unbearable mental states more bearable. As well as addressing key theoretical problems, Containing States of Mind is a clinical text that renders complex ideas accessible and useful for psychotherapeutic and analytic practice and as such will be essential reading for all those involved in the fields of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.

What turns an apparently 'normal' individual into a killer?
Many people who commit "rage type" murders have no history of violence. Using psychoanalytic theory and a number of case studies, this book isolates key psychological factors that appear to help explain why such acts of extreme violence occur.
Starting from a psychoanalytic standpoint, Psychoanalysis, Violence and Rage-Type Murder argues for a pluralistic approach to understanding aggression, and claims that the origins of aggression have no single source or cause. Drawing broadly on psychological, criminological and psychoanalytic research the author outlines the clinical features of the act and explores the possible role that psychopathology and personality might play in the build up to murder. These observations raise a number of questions about the so-called 'normality' of the individual alongside the capacity to commit murder, and how we might understand the stability of such offenders. Psychoanalysis, Violence and Rage-Type Murder will be of great interest to psychotherapists, forensic psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, psychologists, criminologists and health care workers.

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