Abstract
This study was conducted to analyze how male sexual offenders construct mental images of masculinity and femininity to provide insight into therapeutic treatment for such patients. The material examined in this study was comprised of 21 videotaped prison group therapy sessions in which the participating sexual offenders talked about their crimes and biographies. A qualitative data analysis software was used to apply a modified grounded theory methodology to the transcribed sessions. The resulting categories can be understood as descriptions of how the imprisoned men constructed gender images, and were based on three narrative levels: the structure of narration, the narrative positions in the story, and the interaction between the narrator and the other participants. According to the categories described in the narrative positions (the narrated self and the narrated significant male others), we constructed masculinity categorizations which corresponded to specific images of femininity (derived from the narrated significant female others). The constructions provided insight into the self-image of the narrator, as well as the accountability and positioning of himself and the other in regard to perpetrator–victim constructions. The study further revealed whether the participants either accepted or rejected responsibility and guilt for their crimes; this is essential for psychotherapeutic process and treatment.
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Notes
The full project, including results relating to the conversational practice in group psychotherapy in prison, as well as information about biographical constructions of sex offenders, can be found in Buchholz, Lamott, and Mörtl (2008).
The confidential data were trustfully given to the Section for Forensic Psychotherapy at the University of Ulm.
All names in this article (also dates in the following original text examples) have been anonymized.
Within the 90 videotapes, there were some cassettes that could not be transcribed (for technical reasons). Therefore, the 21 identified introduction sessions resemble only the main part of the group participants.
ATLAS.ti (©1991–2006, ATLAS.ti Scientific Software Development GmbH) offers useful support with the intensive coding and categorization of a large, extensive body of text. The combination of editing and coding of quotations from the text material is conveniently possible. Since version 5, text analysis has been possible with relatively short periods of training, which has made ATLAS.ti 5 the instrument of our choice.
The third author is a sociologist and group psychoanalyst with expertise in various qualitative research projects (Lamott, 2005; Lamott, Fremmer-Bombik, & Pfäfflin, 2004; Lamott & Pfäfflin, 2001). She has been working in the forensic field for many years; besides research, she also provided supervision in forensic institutions. The first author, who is a psychologist with knowledge in computer assisted qualitative text analyses (Mörtl, Epple, Rothermund, & Wietersheim, 2008; Mörtl & Wietersheim, 2008), works as research assistant and has just completed her qualitative Ph.D. project about subjective experiences of patients in a partial hospitalization program. Buchholz is a psychoanalyst and qualitative researcher with expertise in conversational, narrative, and metaphor analyses (Buchholz, 1993, 1996).
Elliott et al. (1999) suggest using the term “credibility” rather than “reliability” when presenting quality criteria in qualitative projects. Reliability tests (one coder classifies a text passage as category A and a second coder agrees to this classification) may be carried out in qualitative research projects that aim to present and interpret the frequency of occurring categories (as an example, see Mörtl & Wietersheim, 2008). In the grounded theory approach, the frequency of categories is not of interest. The idea of grounded theory is to collect as many different categories as possible to come to a broad understanding of the examined phenomenon. These categories are accumulated through discussion of the involved and also independent researchers (in consensus ratings). Text passages are always classified in consensus and never by one coder alone, which eliminates the bias of “subjective coding.”
As well as the authors of this study, see Bulla, Buchholz, Pfäfflin, and Lamott (2005).
The reader might notice that the following section is a mixture of a presentation of the categories (typically included in the results section of an article) and their interpretation (typically in the discussion). In qualitative research projects, the interpretation and conceptualization of any found categories is central; thus, the interpretations can be understood as results and are, therefore, presented in results rather than in the discussion.
The given information refers to the session and line number in the according transcript. In this case, “Peter P.-2” is the second therapy session dedicated to the story of Peter P., the presented quote can be found in line 696 in this transcribed session.
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Acknowledgments
We want to thank our colleagues for their involvement in the expert validation and for their constructive comments on the text: Beata Balacz, Evelyn Hergrüter, Ellen Kammerer, Giulietta Tibone and Günter Lempa, Karl Meister, and Friedemann Pfäfflin. We also thank Michelle Fiorito and William Adamson for the intense work they did on the translation.
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Moertl, K., Buchholz, M.B. & Lamott, F. Gender Constructions of Male Sex Offenders in Germany: Narrative Analysis from Group Psychotherapy. Arch Sex Behav 39, 203–212 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-009-9588-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-009-9588-1