Citation

Polledri P. Br. J. Psychother. 1997; 13(4): 473-488.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1997, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1752-0118.1997.tb00333.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Treatment with the patient described here, a 28-year-old man in a Regional Secure Unit on a Pre-Discharge ward who had murdered his mother during late adolescence, was aimed at altering the intrapsychic factors through transference-based psychoanalytical psychotherapy in order to facilitate a change of attachment to the internal mother/object and to women, whom he had devalued at part-object level, based on his primitive perception of his mother as 'Satan's dog?and the?devil's jackal?. There was an apparent change in the way he eventually interacted with the therapist as a whole object. Where the condition of latent murderousness exists, internal (intrapsychic) factors, or external ones, can become the reactivating agents which set into motion a sequence which ends in actual murder. The relationship of such events to a psychotic personality organization is variable and often difficult to delineate because the catastrophic deed itself greatly alters the intrapsychic as well as the external situation. More importantly, the control should be intrapsychic and not externally imposed if we are to deal adequately not only with murder but murderousness.