TY - JOUR
T1 - Dams, barriers and beating yourself up
T2 - Shame in groupwork for addressing sexual offending
AU - Mullins, Eve
AU - Kirkwood, Steve
PY - 2019/12
Y1 - 2019/12
N2 - Shame is a powerful emotional experience embedded in prevailing social and cultural norms. It is the judgement or fear of judgement for who we are rather than what we have done. Braithwaite (1989) proposes shame can be re-integrative or stigmatising, where re-integrative shaming condemns the behaviour not the person, to enable their re-entry into society. Shame is relevant to sexual offending and its treatment, yet little research has explored how it is expressed or responded to in treatment programmes. We applied conversation analysis and discourse analysis to examine expressions of shame in 12 video recorded sessions of a court mandated groupwork programme addressing sexual offending. Both social workers and the other men on the programme distinguished between being a bad person (shame) and being responsible for a bad act (guilt) as a way to empathise with the individual, build motivation, instil hope and leverage optimism towards positive change. We demonstrate that shame constitutes topics, resources and actions drawn on to achieve the programme’s rehabilitative aims, including separating the person from the behaviour, as per re-integrative shaming, demonstrating empathy and congruence, and motivating change. We discuss the paradoxes and dilemmas of shame for practice that addresses sexual offending.
AB - Shame is a powerful emotional experience embedded in prevailing social and cultural norms. It is the judgement or fear of judgement for who we are rather than what we have done. Braithwaite (1989) proposes shame can be re-integrative or stigmatising, where re-integrative shaming condemns the behaviour not the person, to enable their re-entry into society. Shame is relevant to sexual offending and its treatment, yet little research has explored how it is expressed or responded to in treatment programmes. We applied conversation analysis and discourse analysis to examine expressions of shame in 12 video recorded sessions of a court mandated groupwork programme addressing sexual offending. Both social workers and the other men on the programme distinguished between being a bad person (shame) and being responsible for a bad act (guilt) as a way to empathise with the individual, build motivation, instil hope and leverage optimism towards positive change. We demonstrate that shame constitutes topics, resources and actions drawn on to achieve the programme’s rehabilitative aims, including separating the person from the behaviour, as per re-integrative shaming, demonstrating empathy and congruence, and motivating change. We discuss the paradoxes and dilemmas of shame for practice that addresses sexual offending.
KW - shame
KW - sexual offending
KW - groupwork
KW - conversation analysis
KW - desistance
KW - discourse analysis
U2 - 10.1080/02650533.2019.1594735
DO - 10.1080/02650533.2019.1594735
M3 - Article
SN - 0265-0533
VL - 33
SP - 369
EP - 384
JO - Journal of Social Work Practice
JF - Journal of Social Work Practice
IS - 4
ER -