Interventions in Treatment Groups for Intimately Violent Men Interaction and Therapeutic Interaction and Therapeutic Interventions in Treatment Groups for Intimately Violent Men

Partanen, Terhi Interaction and therapeutic interventions in treatment groups for intimately violent men Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2008, 46 p. (Jyväskylä Studies in Education, Psychology and Social Research ISSN 0075-4625; 332) ISBN 978-951-39-3197-1 (PDF), 978-951-39-3119-3 (nid.) Finnish Summary Diss. This thesis focuses on interaction and therapeutic interventions in treatment groups for intimately violent men. The aim of the studies was to describe one anti-violence group program and to examine in detail how the actual therapy work was done in this setting. The data of the studies consisted of videotaped and transcribed group therapy sessions, and the methodology employed was discourse analysis. Under scrutiny were the interaction and the talking practices of the participants, and the design and the use of different therapeutic strategies. The thesis also asks what discourses the male clients use in the context in making understandable their violent behavior and themselves. In the first study it was asked how the male clients and the therapists negotiate and construct clienthood in the conversations. The second study dealt with the clients’ problematic account of their loss of self-control. The third study concerned how reports of change were constructed and used in follow-up meetings after the group treatment process in order to consolidate the preferred outcome. The results of the thesis show how work in the field of intimate violence seems to require specific intervention practices compared to more traditional therapeutic settings. Various discursive strategies that are specific for the work on intimate violence were found and presented. The main function of these strategies was to make clients take responsibility for their problematic behavior, and further, if possible, to pinpoint an intentional nature in their actions. The aim of specific intervention strategies was to enhance clients’ agency by pointing out their ability to choose their way of acting moment by moment. What is also central is the neutrality of the strategies, the attempt to avoid attributing guilt, and the avoidance of excessive confrontation. Besides these specialized tools of interaction, the therapists also used more traditional therapeutic intervention strategies, and managing the balance between the two became the challenge for the work on violence.