ABSTRACT
There is a long and distinguished history within the therapeutic community (TC) tradition of working with a wide range of people with severe psychological disturbances, including those detained within the forensic system. A Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT)-informed approach could also help with the erroneous assumption that all problems are located within or immediately around the patient. The CAT model, with its early and joint collaborative creation of a reformulation, also assists staff both in understanding and in jointly working on a patient’s problems. CAT and the TC tradition share certain important fundamental features. Given that CAT was developed through an integration of both cognitive and psychoanalytic object-relations theory, there is of course also considerable overlap with various other current therapeutic approaches. For instance, the concept of motivation tends to be used as an all-or-nothing phenomenon by writers on psychotherapy in general, whether discussing willingness to stick to the therapeutic process or ultimate outcome, as for example, in forensic settings.
