Antisocial Personality Disorder: A Contemporary Introduction

This book offers a vital psychoanalytic overview of antisocial personality disorder, a condition that causes great distress to its sufferers, their families and society. This book offers a vital psychoanalytic overview of antisocial personality disorder, a condition that causes great distress to its sufferers, their families, and society. Following a historical introduction to how psychoanalysts, from Freud onwards, have conceptualised sociopathy, psychopathy, and delinquency, Jessica Yakeley presents a contemporary psychoanalytic understanding of antisocial personality disorder which integrates current psychoanalytic theory with cutting-edge empirical research findings from developmental and attachment studies. Drawing on her own experience of working with antisocial and violent patients, she offers a psychoanalytic framework to inform clinical work in managing and treating individuals with a diagnosis of this disorder. The reader is introduced to general treatment principles, followed by the latest evidence-based psychoanalytically-informed therapies for the condition. Yakeley also discusses the particular needs and treatment of specific populations of individuals with antisocial personality disorder, including women, sex offenders, and those from ethnic minority backgrounds, addressing issues of race, culture, stigma, and prejudice. Historically viewed as an untreatable mental disorder, this book offers hope to professionals and patients grappling with antisocial personality disorder, and will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, and other professionals, academics, and trainees working in mental health, criminal justice, and forensic fields.