ABSTRACT
This chapter explores several different examples of violent behaviour that have taken place during the therapy of a young woman. The changing nature of the violent incidents reflects how her capacity for thought evolved slowly and painfully out of a state of stupefying mindlessness. The chapter provides a brief account of two of the most central theoretical concepts in psychoanalytic psychotherapy with borderline patients. The concept of "containment" grew out of Melanie Klein's original ideas about "a particular form of identification which establishes the prototype of an aggressive object-relation". The concept of countertransference is to do with the feelings, images, sensations, and so on that the psychotherapist experiences in relation to her patient. When the therapist is able to notice and think about this, then what may emerge with a sudden and surprising clarity is the realization that the patient has been repeating and enacting with the therapist an experience of past problematic relationships.
