ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes two patients, a man and a woman, to illustrate the triangular situation of society and power dynamics inherent in forensic psychotherapy. He compares their differences, with their disordered personalities bordering on psychosis and perversions, with particular emphasis on their sadism and destructiveness and how they deal with their oedipal anxieties by perverse defences. The author uses clinical material to describe how the patients’ sadistic and destructive defences may be difficult to stomach countertransferentially. He describes the presentations or “gifts” —both conscious and unconscious—that forensic patients bring to the therapy. For women it is the containing body and the narcissistic use of children or the extension of the body in the child in its various forms; and for the men it is the phallic body. To be present to the personality disorder as he or she is becomes the sine qua non of successful treatment.
