ABSTRACT
This chapter explores an approach to working with risk in approved social work, based on principles originating in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The relationship between psychoanalytic psychotherapy and approved social work has so far been a neglected area of study. Writers on the former have tended to concentrate on what might be termed the more recognisable, or easily acknowledged, areas of psychotherapy either in private practice or in NHS services. The hoarding of rubbish is a common phenomenon in schizophrenia, and seems to represent not being able to differentiate between what is ultimately good or bad, made manifest and concrete in a psychotic person's living situation. The chapter demonstrates that, by combining skills and insights derived from psychoanalytic psychotherapy, the approved social worker can assist some patients in obtaining psychiatric help without recourse to compulsion or the loss of liberty. The approved social worker can use such skills to manage risk in positive ways.
