ABSTRACT
I will begin this chapter with some personal experience and leave it to what follows to give it some context. In our long experience at the Portman Clinic, it was evident that male patients with a history of uncontained violent acting out were generally composed and well behaved when seeking help in an outpatient setting. It is a surprisingly quiet and dignified place. This applied to female patients too, but the only serious incidents, though these were very rare, more often involved them. It happened in the most disturbed women and seemed to me to illustrate a general lack of being able to feel contained. Either there was a suggestion of hysterical outburst, it had regressive features, or it indicated personality disorder or psychosis.
