ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I describe my work as a forensic disability psychotherapist with two men with intellectually disabilities. Forensic disability psychotherapy does not condone crime but focuses on illness and risk (Corbett, 2014). It aims to foster a psychodynamic understanding of offenders and contribute to their treatment. This helps the offender to acknowledge responsibility, thereby protecting the offender and society from perpetration of further crimes. Each of the two men I worked with presented with sadistic states of mind and both struggled to make sense of their sadistic preoccupations. Both men displayed a limited capacity for self-reflection and resorted to enacting sadistic fantasies in an attempt to seek respite from unbearable feelings of anxiety. I discuss my work within the wider theoretical context of sadism and present my experience of the challenges of working with intellectually disabled people with compulsive sadistic preoccupations.
