Review: Learning From Life: Becoming A Psychoanalyst Patrick Casement Routledge, 2006, pp 224; £29.95, pbk ISBN-13: 978—0—415—39931—9
| Author | Herschel Prins |
| DOI | 10.1177/02645505080550030702 |
| Date | 01 September 2008 |
| Published date | 01 September 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
text would have been appreciated by a wider audience – nevertheless this is an
important contribution to the literature that is worth persevering with.
Reference
UK Drug Policy Commission (2008) Reducing Drug Use, Reducing Reoffending.Are
Programmes for Problem Drug-using Offenders in the UK Supported by the
Evidence? London: UKDPC.
Julian Buchanan
Social Inclusion Research Unit, NEWI
Learning From Life: Becoming
A Psychoanalyst
Patrick Casement
Routledge, 2006, pp 224; £29.95, pbk
ISBN-13: 978–0–415–39931–9
In providing this review I feel I should make the now custom-
ary ‘declaration of interest’. Over 40 years ago, Patrick
Casement was one of my students in the Home Office
(Rainer House) Probation Training Course. In his latest book
he acknowledges, in very frank fashion, that he was a
somewhat ‘rebellious’ and ‘difficult’ student (I can vouch for that!). However he
cites, quite correctly, in his defence, that his state of mind and attitude at that time
had its origins in considerable personal difficulty. His current book indicates how
such difficulties cannot only be overcome, but can engender an ability for helping
others at the deepest levels. In acknowledging the help and understanding he
received as a Home Office student, he also has praise for the late doctor Stewart
Prince, the psychoanalytic psychiatrist who gave the Home Office the ‘go-ahead’
for accepting him for training. I suspect that Prince also provided something of a
future role model. Readers should not be put off reading this book by its sub-title.
Although it describes the pathways that led Casement to train and subsequently
practise as a psychoanalyst, this book, like the author’s two earlier titles (Casement,
1985, 1990), offers much guidance in learning to understand the minds and
attitudes of some of probation’s most troubled and troublesome ‘clients’ (not the
current ‘in-word’, but I don’t care for ‘consumer’ or ‘user’).
Casement is, of course, not alone in assessing the usefulness of adapting psycho-
analytic modes of thinking and practice to counselling offenders. Smith (2006)
has provided an excellent historical account of some aspects of this, to which I
subsequently added some brief supplementary comments (Prins, 2007). Casement
describes (with the use of compelling case vignettes) the journey he made through
probation and family casework into his eventual career as a psychoanalyst. It is
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