Examples of these are:

Psalm 13, 35, 51, 74, 86, 88, 95, 130, 137.

These psalms are for seasons of upheaval when things seem to fall apart and life is experienced in its brokenness. They are often honest words of anger, hurt, depression and despair. Sometimes it is represented by 'the pit' or 'the grave' - the psalmist has hit rock-bottom

God is questioned, but these psalms, spoken out of the depths are still bold acts of faith. 

Brueggemann lists them in the following categories:

1. Personal Lament

2. Communal Lament

3. 7 Penitential Psalms

4. Songs of Retribution

5. Psalms of Submission

See several works by Walter Brueggemann, eg The Message of the Psalms,  1984; Spirituality of the Psalms, 2002

Psalm 88 [87] is perhaps the bleakest and saddest of the Psalms, but it shows the depths of the Psalmist's despair.

LORD my God, I call for help by day;

I cry at night before you.

Let my prayer come into your presence.

O turn your ear to my cry

For my soul is filled with evils;

my life is on the brink of the grave.

I am reckoned as one in the tomb;

I have reached the end of my strength.

like one alone among the dead;

like the slain lying in their graves;

like those you remember no more,

cut off, as they are, from your hand.

You have laid me in the depths of the tomb,

in places that are dark, in the depths.

Your anger weighs down upon me:

I am drowned beneath your waves.

You have taken away my friends

and made me hateful in their sight.

Imprisoned, I cannot escape;

my eyes are sunken with grief.

I call to you, Lord, all the day long;

to you I stretch out my hands.

Will you work your wonders for the dead?

Will the shades stand and praise you?

Will your love be told in the grave

or your faithfulness among the dead?

Will your wonders be known in the dark

or your justice in the land of oblivion?

As for me, Lord, I call to you for help:

in the morning my prayer comes before you.

Lord, why do you reject me?

Why do you hide your face?

Wretched, close to death from my youth,

I have borne your trials, I am numb.

Your fury has swept down upon me;

your terrors have utterly destroyed me.

They surround me all the day like a flood,

they assail me all together.

Friend and neighbour you have taken away:

my one companion is darkness. 

Psalm 51[50], atttributed to King David, repenting of his sin with Bathsheba, is  the most perfect expression of contrition. 

Psalm 50

HAVE MERCY on me, God, in your kindness.

In your compassion blot out my offence.

O wash me more and more from my guilt

and cleanse me from my sin.

My offences truly I know them;

my sin is always before me.

Against you, you alone, have I sinned;

what is evil in your sight I have done.

That you may be justified when you give sentence

and be without reproach when you judge

O see, in guilt I was born,

a sinner was I conceived.

Indeed you love truth in the heart;

then in the secret of my heart teach me wisdom

O purify me, then I shall be clean;

O wash me, I shall be whiter than snow.

Make me hear rejoicing and gladness,

that the bones you have crushed may thrill.

From my sins turn away your face

and blot out all my guilt.

A pure heart create for me, O God,

put a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not cast me away from your presence,

nor deprive me of your holy spirit.

Give me again the joy of your help;

with a spirit of fervour sustain me,

that I may teach transgressors your ways

and sinners may return to you.

O rescue me, God my helper,

and my tongue shall ring out your goodness.

O Lord, open my lips

and my mouth shall declare your praise.

For in sacrifice you take no delight,

burnt offering from me you would refuse,

my sacrifice, a contrite spirit.

A humbled, contrite heart you will not spurn.

In your goodness show favour to Zion:

rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.

Then you will be pleased with lawful sacrifice,

(burnt offerings wholly consumed),

then you will be offered young bulls on your altar. 

Psalm 130[129]

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord,

Lord, hear my voice!

O let your ears be attentive 

to the voice of my pleading.

If you, O Lord, should mark our guilt,

Lord, who would survive?

But with you is found forgiveness:

for this we revere you.

My soul is waiting for the Lord,

I count on his word.

My soul is longing for the Lord

more than watchman for daybreak.

(Let the watchman count on daybreak

and Israel on the Lord.)

Because with the Lord there is mercy

and fullness of redemption,

Israel indeed he will redeem

from all its iniquity.

Psalm 139[138]  Sometimes called 'The Hound of Heaven, this is one of the most beautiful psalms to pray despite the disturbing verses at the end, referred to in the video.

O LORD, you search me and you know me,

you know my resting and my rising,

you discern my purpose from afar.

You mark when I walk or lie down,

all my ways lie open to you.

Before ever a word is on my tongue

you know it, O Lord, through and through.

Behind and before you besiege me,

your hand ever laid upon me.

Too wonderful for me, this knowledge,

too high, beyond my reach.

O where can I go from your spirit,

or where can I flee from your face?

If I climb the heavens, you are there.

If I lie in the grave, you are there.

If I take the wings of the dawn

and dwell at the sea's furthest end,

even there your hand would lead me,

your right hand would hold me fast.

If I say: "Let the darkness hide me

and the light around me be night,"

even darkness is not dark for you

and the night is as clear as the day.

For it was you who created my being,

knit me together in my mother's womb.

I thank you for the wonder of my being,

for the wonders of all your creation.

Already you knew my soul,

my body held no secret from you

when I was being fashioned in secret

and moulded in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw all my actions,

they were all of them written in your book;

every one of my days was decreed

before one of them came into being.

To me, how mysterious your thoughts,

the sum of them not to be numbered!

If I count them, they are more than the sand;

to finish, I must be eternal, like you.

O God, that you would slay the wicked!

Men of blood, keep far away from me!

With deceit they rebel against you

and set your designs at naught.

Do I not hate those who hate you,

abhor those who rise against you?

I hate them with a perfect hate

and they are foes to me.

O search me, God, and know my heart.

O test me and know my thoughts.

See that I follow not the wrong path

and lead me in the path of life eternal.

“Our Lord prayed these same psalms, even the vindictive and hate-filled ones.  The enemy remains but must no longer be seen as nations, peoples and deceitful friends. The enemy is the spiritual power of darkness at work in our attitudes and within our propensity for evil.

Throughout our youth we may have projected onto others our unacceptable emotions and our ignorance, displacing our own sin and seeing evil where our own shadow fell.

Now we need to venture into the heart, the seat of our personal truth and reality.  When we are honest, we find it unloving and hard, exclusive and vindictive, angry and vengeful, even full of hatred and loathing, and the Psalms can be instruments of catharsis.

“Could it be that these curses are my true voice, at least some of the time?”

AIM Bulletin

Conquered by the Easter Christ, the powers of evil still have a grip on this world in so far as it has not yet accepted his lordship. The enemies who for the Psalmist wore the masks of Egypt, Moab, Babylon or a man’s treacherous neighbour are with us still: the sin in our own hearts and the sinful structures we have built into our society oppose Christ cause. The warfare sung in the psalms was a primitive phase of a struggle between good and evil, love and hate, light and darkness, life and death, from which we have not yet emerged. Some of the psalmists’ pleas are sub-Christian, but so are some elements within ourselves, Christ is not yet Lord of everything in our own lives, and we all bear responsibility for ‘the sin of the world.

Marked for Life, Prayer in the Easter Christ, SPCK