ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts the psychodynamic therapy of convicted criminals, including the consequence of their being convicted for murder. Meltzer's work and views on what he calls "The Claustrum" offer a conceptual framework by means of which it is possible to gain insight into the phenomenon of murderousness. Few tasks are more important than the reduction of its menace toward other people, victims, and the brand of Cain that marks the owner of such proclivities, which often defy therapeutic modification. In The Claustrum, subtitled An Investigation of Claustrophobic Phenomena, Meltzer stresses the ubiquitousness of projective identification. The phenomena tend to remain same over long periods of time and, like other pathological character organizations, strongly resist analytic process as far as change and development are concerned. The persistent constellation of murderous fantasies, impulses, and actions to the idea, that death had not been digested psychically, are related. A usual reason for this has been inadequacy of the baby-mother interchange of projective identification.
