The Life Sentence: Using a Narrative Approach in Group Psychotherapy with Offenders

In this article, I will discuss a narrative approach to psychodynamic group work with offenders. Drawing on my experience of running groups for offenders in a high secure psychiatric hospital, I will argue that (a) identity is created in narratives and stories and (b) that psychodynamic therapies allow people to change their narratives of themselves; and (c) that this is particularly significant when the story that must be told is one that involves a violent crime. I will try and set out how offender patients come with ‘cover’ stories, which are thin, and incoherent, and explore how dialogue in groups can facilitate changes of narrative and thus transform a thin story into something richer and more self-reflective.