Constructing and negotiating 'change' in follow-up meetings for intimately violent men

This study reports on follow-up meetings of a group treatment program for intimately violent men. The focus is on the construction of change narratives; on how indicators of 'successful change' are negotiated and produced in the conversations. We describe in detail five discursive strategies used by client and therapist participants, e.g., the construction of temporal differences, personalizing the problem, reformulations of failure stories, taking presence at the follow-up as evidence of success, and the use of out-siders as an audience. We also demonstrate how the notion of success is ascertained and to whom credit is given for achieving it. We conclude that the followup meetings are established as an integrated part of the whole treatment program, and contribute to the promotion of the treatment ideology.