Violent men’s paths to batterer intervention programmes: masculinity, turning points and narrative selves

ABSTRACT

Drawing on interviews with voluntary participants in intervention programmes for perpetrators of intimate partner violence in Sweden, the present article analyses violent men’s turning-point stories, that is, their narratives of deciding to start and starting treatment. Three types of turning-point stories are identified: narratives that describe men recognizing their violence either before or during treatment, and narratives of returning to treatment. Through these stories, the men not only present reasons for joining therapy, but also produce gendered narrative selves. In particular they present themselves as morally ‘good’ and self-conscious men by simultaneously acknowledging their abusive behaviour and distancing themselves from being violent men.

KEYWORDS:

• Batterer intervention programs
• desistance
• masculinity
• narrative analysis
• turning points
• violence prevention

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Margareta Hydén and Linn Sandberg for providing invaluable feedback on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research is part of the Men’s Violence Against Women in Intimate Relations: A Study of the Perpetrators’ Social Networks Project (principal investigator: Margareta Hydén); Forskningsrådet för Arbetsliv och Socialvetenskap [2010-1382].