12 February 2024

Anna Motz, Consultant Psychotherapist at CNWL, has been touring New York to promote her book, If Love Could Kill: The Myths and Truths of Women Who Commit Violence.

For more than three decades, Anna has worked in prisons, secure hospital wards, and the community. In this work, Anna has been occupied by the crimes and violence of women; which is “frequently misunderstood and too often disregarded”.

Discussing her work as a forensic psychotherapist using various patient accounts, If Love Could Kill explores the preconceptions about female violence embedded in history and culture, and the opportunities for rehabilitation.

“These women are not the inhuman monsters of tabloid myth,” she writes.

"They are not so different from the vast majority of us, for their crimes are often the cruel result of the emotions we all share—the longing to love and be loved, the frustration and fear of parenthood, the corrosion of shame and self-loathing.”

You can read more in this review from The New Yorker and this piece from Crime Reads, on the taboo of female violence.