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Biographical note
Paul Williams is a training and supervising analyst with The British Psychoanalytical Society and a member of the Royal Anthropological Institute. He was a consultant psychotherapist in the British National Health Service, retiring in 2010. From 2001-2007 he was Joint Editor-in-Chief, with Glen O. Gabbard, of the 'International Journal of Psychoanalysis'. He has published widely on the subject of severe disturbance. He lives and practises in Hampshire, UK.'In the elliptical prose of Scum, Paul Williams captures exactly the darting, panic-stricken mentation of the unloved, unlovely adolescent who was once himself. By great good luck this boy is led to France, where as he falls into step with the peaceful rhythms of everyday French life he begins to discover his own humanity. An impressive continuation of Williams' life story.' - J.M.Coetzee
Scum by means of a particularly effective form of fragmentation of language, captures the disjunctive experience of a terrified boy. The life of the boy and the life of the sentences are lived entirely in the collision of the will to survive and the impossible demands of an incomprehensible, utterly senseless reality.