This research investigated the psychoanalytic idea of containment in the context of NHS staff responses to a person diagnosed with personality disorder. The aim was to identify what, if any, containment was provided by staff for someone diagnosed with personality disorder by recording staff responses to an assessment and analysing the discourse. The research was undertaken with participants selected to represent a cross section of staff in the organisation and included senior and junior, clinical, administrative and managerial staff. The discourse analysis of the interviews examined defences against containment such as splitting, projective identification and idealisation and the positions people occupied in relation to the material and the researcher, as well as looking for examples of containment. Reflexivity was a key part of the methodology, forms a significant part of the thesis and is used to contribute to the discussion. Reflexivity, findings from the review of the literature and the analysis of the interviews form the basis of the discussion and conclusions. The research showed that containment, in its psychoanalytic sense, is often avoided and defended against. Key difficulties with developing the capacity for containment were found to be: conflict between the personal and professional in staff and anxiety in relation to the power of others in the organisation. Suggestions are made for how changes could be made within the organisation and how this could benefit both staff and people who use services. Changing the approach to containment could save costs as some repeat admissions could be avoided and staff satisfaction enhanced. The conclusions from the research make a contribution to clinical practice in NHS settings, to the psychoanalytic theory of containment and to the methodology of psychoanalytic discourse analysis. Recommendations for further research include more psychoanalytic discourse analysis to identify defences in text and research evaluating reflective staff groups.

In this work I deal with the question of whether the use of the concept of overdetermination is coherent across 1) psychoanalytic theoretical and case studies and 2) different psychoanalytic directions. Based on the analysis of the most cited case studies dealing with the topic of narcissism in the field of Kleinian and Relational psychoanalysis, I come to the conclusion that the use of the concept of overdetermination is not completely coherent in psychoanalysis. This incoherence may be due to the different attitudes of different authors to abstract metapsychological assumptions. Narcissism of small differences, which in my opinion is evident between representatives of different psychoanalytic directions, can also play a role. And last but not least, it is possible to look at this incoherence as the result of so-called implicit theories, i.e. not entirely official and conscious theories that psychoanalysts follow in the course of their practical clinical work. Keywords Psychoanalytic discourse, overdetermination, analysis of psychotherapeutic case reports, the relationship between theory and practice ;

Esta tese traça um estudo comparativo entre o Romance policial contemporâneo e o discurso psicanalítico na produção ficcional de Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza (1936-) e Dennis Lehane (1963-), tomando, por base, relações de aproximação entre os métodos investigativos na literatura e na psicanálise. Para isso, o corpus constitui-se dos romances O silêncio da chuva (1996) e Espinosa sem saída (2006), ambos do escritor brasileiro e Sagrado [Sacred] (2004) e Paciente 67 [Shttter Island] (2005), do ficcionista norte-americano. A análise destas narrativas revela pontos de aproximação entre os dois discursos inseridos no cenário cultural caótico e desajustado. E questiona a emergência deste novo contexto sociocultural, onde personagens sem identidade definida, sendo o principal deles, o detetive, realizam sua flânerie através de deslocamentos constantes associados à paisagem e em busca do desvendamento do crime urbano. Como seres de ficção perdidos, estes private eyes precisam encontrar os desajustes psíquicos de toda espécie de criminosos daí a representação da cidade, que ora se converte no solo para a flânerie dos investigadores, ora contribui para o apagamento e/ou ocultamento das subjetividades criminais. A relação entre os discursos policial e psicanalítico aponta para a associação entre a obscuridade do texto literário e o da cultura onde estamos inseridos sem falar do mal-estar de um e de outro campo, que tem a ver com as transformações da esfera da sociedade contemporânea / This dissertation aims at outlining a comparative study between the contemporary detective novel and the psychoanalytical discourse in the fictional production by Luiz Alfredo Garcia Roza (1936- ) and Dennis Lahane (1966- ), approaching particular investigative methods in literature and psychoanalysis. To do so, the corpus consists of four novels altogether: O silêncio da chuva (1996) and Espinosa sem saída (2006) by the Brazilian writer and Sagrado [Sacred] (2004) and Paciente 67 [Shutter Island] (2005) by the American fictionist. The analysis on these narratives points out similarities and idiosyncrasies between two discourses within a conflictive and chaotic cultural environment. Moreover, it highlights this new social and cultural realm where characters with undefined identities (the detective, above all) strive to evade from the atmosphere in which they are set and search for the resolution of urban crimes. As lost subjectivities, these private eyes need to decipher psychic dysfunctions of every sort of criminal thence, the representation of the city, featuring sometimes as the ground on which investigators work for the law and, at other times, as a hiding space for murderers. The relation between detective and psychoanalytic discourses remarks the association between the obscurity of the literary text and our cultural background not to mention the overall discomfort triggered by changes in contemporary societies

Esta tese traça um estudo comparativo entre o Romance policial contemporâneo e o discurso psicanalítico na produção ficcional de Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza (1936-) e Dennis Lehane (1963-), tomando, por base, relações de aproximação entre os métodos investigativos na literatura e na psicanálise. Para isso, o corpus constitui-se dos romances O silêncio da chuva (1996) e Espinosa sem saída (2006), ambos do escritor brasileiro e Sagrado [Sacred] (2004) e Paciente 67 [Shttter Island] (2005), do ficcionista norte-americano. A análise destas narrativas revela pontos de aproximação entre os dois discursos inseridos no cenário cultural caótico e desajustado. E questiona a emergência deste novo contexto sociocultural, onde personagens sem identidade definida, sendo o principal deles, o detetive, realizam sua flânerie através de deslocamentos constantes associados à paisagem e em busca do desvendamento do crime urbano. Como seres de ficção perdidos, estes private eyes precisam encontrar os desajustes psíquicos de toda espécie de criminosos daí a representação da cidade, que ora se converte no solo para a flânerie dos investigadores, ora contribui para o apagamento e/ou ocultamento das subjetividades criminais. A relação entre os discursos policial e psicanalítico aponta para a associação entre a obscuridade do texto literário e o da cultura onde estamos inseridos sem falar do mal-estar de um e de outro campo, que tem a ver com as transformações da esfera da sociedade contemporânea / This dissertation aims at outlining a comparative study between the contemporary detective novel and the psychoanalytical discourse in the fictional production by Luiz Alfredo Garcia Roza (1936- ) and Dennis Lahane (1966- ), approaching particular investigative methods in literature and psychoanalysis. To do so, the corpus consists of four novels altogether: O silêncio da chuva (1996) and Espinosa sem saída (2006) by the Brazilian writer and Sagrado [Sacred] (2004) and Paciente 67 [Shutter Island] (2005) by the American fictionist. The analysis on these narratives points out similarities and idiosyncrasies between two discourses within a conflictive and chaotic cultural environment. Moreover, it highlights this new social and cultural realm where characters with undefined identities (the detective, above all) strive to evade from the atmosphere in which they are set and search for the resolution of urban crimes. As lost subjectivities, these private eyes need to decipher psychic dysfunctions of every sort of criminal thence, the representation of the city, featuring sometimes as the ground on which investigators work for the law and, at other times, as a hiding space for murderers. The relation between detective and psychoanalytic discourses remarks the association between the obscurity of the literary text and our cultural background not to mention the overall discomfort triggered by changes in contemporary societies