ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to illustrate the particular use made of a foren-sic psychoanalytic group by people with intellectual disabilities.I contextualise “disability therapy” within the psychodynamic frame, and examine some of the reasons why psychoanalysis with patients with disabilities has rarely been addressed within psychoanalytic history. I use material from the life of a forensic group for men with intellectual disabilities to examine some key clinical themes that accompany work with people with cognitive deficits, and conclude with some thoughts about the future of forensic group analysis with such patients. The material I examine in this chapter comes from a four-year group I conducted under the clinical supervision of Earl Hopper. Dr Hopper’s understanding of group and social unconscious processes (Hopper, 2003) became key to my ability to hold in mind experiences of disability, trauma, and abuse that, at times, felt unbearably painful.
