Research on facilitating successful treatment processes in perpetrator programs

The Jyväskylä model of working with intimate partner violence (IPV) started twenty years ago as a multi-professional collaborative project in Jyväskylä, Finland. The two main collaborating agencies, the local Crisis Centre Mobile and Jyväskylä University Psychotherapy Training and Research Centre, serve both victims and perpetrators of IPV, and co-operate with various social and welfare agencies and the police. Perpetrators are offered group treatment preceded by individual treatment. From the outset, the process and utility of group treatment for male perpetrators of IPV has mainly been researched by applying discursive and narrative approaches. The treatment program combines a feminist perspective and psychotherapeutic approaches to violence-specific interventions, such as safety planning. These aspects have also been a focus of research. Dialogical and discursive approaches have been applied in analyzing interaction at both the group and individual levels. This chapter reviews the latest results of this research project. Recently, languagebased analyses have focused on the identity construction of male perpetrators as well as on the discursive processes and therapeutic strategies used in the treatment group. From the gendered viewpoint, the findings point to the importance of focusing on the construction of masculine identity, especially in relation to fatherhood. The findings also demonstrate how therapists can model the division of power between the genders as well as how sexuality and sexual violence are addressed in the group discussions. Moreover, the findings of the project show how IPV perpetrators vary in their individual processes of change. Change has been approached from the perspectives of reflexivity, mentalization, attachment style, and problem assimilation. In these studies, the success of the process has been evaluated on the basis of partner interviews. Overall, the results demonstrate the diversity that exists among perpetrators and point to the importance of adapting the therapeutic strategies deployed in group interventions for IPV to serve clients' individual needs.