Stephen Blumenthal

• Doctor of Psychology
• Consultant at Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust

The author proposes that particular oedipal dynamics in individuals suffering with compulsive sexual behaviours tend to be characterized by imbalance between maternal and paternal functions. The maternal object is experienced as overwhelming and potentially annihilating. The paternal object is relatively weak and incapable of moderating fear of sym...

The term 'identity' has come to be associated with our membership of various groups based upon gender, sexuality, race, religion, culture and class. A psychological perspective moves beyond identity politics and emphasises both group and the individual. The selves we become are based upon who we internalise through identification. An aspect of this...

A presentation of emotional detachment is sometimes encountered in working with challenging patients. The term ‘disavowal’ describes a particular kind of splitting of consciousness in which the person repudiates awareness of disturbing realities or their meanings. Disavowal involves a distortion of emotional significance, rather than a distortion o...

The triarchic model posits that psychopathy is a combination of phenotypes related to boldness, meanness, and disinhibition. We examined how each of these phenotypes of psychopathy related to past violence and antisocial behavior and to behavior within the prison. The sample consisted of men (n = 108) with a history of serious offending and a diagn...

Objective: Violence-related cognitions may underpin many acts of violence, but explicit self-report measures of these cognitions may be inadequate to assess them fully due to their unconscious nature or due to deliberate dissimulation. We designed three versions of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) that separately examined violence-related associ...

Assessing Risk: A Relational Approachoffers the practitioner a novel framework for understanding the complex and subtle issues involved in assessing and managing risks related to violence and sexual offending. The authors draw on their considerable experience working with high risk individuals in assessment and treatment. They have for many years c...

Organisational consultation is widespread in the National Health Service (NHS), but little is known about its impact. To evaluate the impact of a psychodynamically informed consultation to a high-security hospital ward.  This prospective study compared measures before and after the consultation with similarly timed measures on a comparison ward in...

Risk assessment decisions have profound consequences. The contribution of affect to decision making is well established in the psychology literature, but this body of knowledge has had little influence in the field of violence risk assessment. We sought to establish the relative contribution of actuarial and emotive information in determining risk...

Since the late 1990s, in England and in Wales, there has been increasing interest in the particular challenges of managing offenders with personality disorder (PD). In 1999, a specialist hostel, managed by the probation service but with a high level of forensic mental health service input, was opened to high-risk PD offenders. To describe the first...

IntroductionThe developmental and attachment literature on violence is reviewed. Violence is conceptualized as an attempt to achieve justice. The cycle of violence is explored with reference to the early experience of perpetrators and their treatment by the criminal justice system after they have committed acts of violence.AetiologyThe origins of v...

Sexual offenders tend to hold attitudes and beliefs which minimize and justify their offending behavior. It was hypothesized that distorted thinking supporting sexual offending and blame attribution would differ depending on the offence characteristics of different groups of sexual offenders. Two groups of sexual offenders separated on the basis of...

Changes in roles and responsibilities brought about by community care and the reorganization of the UK National Health Service (NHS) have resulted in higher levels of stress and insecurity amongst residential nursing staff working with people with intellectual disability. In the light of these organizational changes, questions have arisen about the...

A questionnaire survey was undertaken to examine the perception of psychology services in community mental health teams (CMHTs). All mental health professionals other than psychologists in four CMHTs were surveyed (55). They were asked about their awareness of the activities of psychologists in their teams and their future expectations. In addition...

To examine cognitive function in chronic fatigue syndrome. Twenty patients with chronic fatigue syndrome recruited from primary care and 20 matched normal controls were given CANTAB computerised tests of visuospatial memory, attention, and executive function, and verbal tests of letter and category fluency and word association learning. Patients wi...

Speech and survival: tradeoffs between quality and quan tity of life in laryngeal cancer. New England Journal of Medicine, 305, 982-987. MENZEL. P.T. (1992) Oregon's denial: disabilities and quality oflife. Hastings Center Report, 22, 21-25. Mental Health Review Tribunals (MHRTs)are intended to protect the liberty of the detained patient. In practi...

There has been a substantial increase in the number of Mental Health Review Tribunals (MHRTs)and hence the cost of administering the tribunal system. We report an estimate of the cost of MHRTstaking account, for the first time, of both direct and indirect costs to the various government departments. We estimate that the total cost is currently £12...

We report a postal survey of all forensic and a random sample of general psychiatrists in England and Wales, concerning current and future contacts with the criminal justice system. Some form of professional contact with the criminal justice system was reported by 91% of general psychiatrists and 36% visit a magistrates' court, prison or police sta...

To assess the extent and nature of psychiatric assessment schemes based at magistrates' courts in England and Wales for the early diversion of mentally disordered offenders from custody and to determine the response of the NHS to new initiatives concerning alternatives to custody for this group. Postal survey of the probation service, petty session...