The Making of a Violent Man’s Past: How Discursive Contexts in Batterer Intervention Programmes Shape Biographical Reconstructions

Discursive offers are crucial not only for understanding biographical reconstructions but also for processes of subjective change. In the context of batterer intervention programmes—where biographisation of past aggression and its subjective motivations are central—the notion that men exhibiting violent behaviours can adopt new perspectives on their past actions is pivotal to interventions, desistance policies, and downstream policing. This paper adopts a social constructivist approach to explore how treatment programmes frequently promote individualised reconstructions, advancing discourses that may clash with participants’ lived experiences. The study draws on narrative interviews with men at various stages of batterer interventions in Argentina and Uruguay, followed by biographical case reconstructions. I present the contrasting cases of Dalmiro and Pedro, who reinterpreted their life stories differently with respect to their experiences of victimisation. Dalmiro’s reconstruction enabled him to view his experiences in a ‘positive healing’ light, facilitating his navigation through the system. He understood his past victimisation as a trigger for his later behaviour. In contrast, Pedro struggled to accept his father’s violence as a trigger, encountering subjective and interpersonal barriers in his therapeutic journey. The notion of being a ‘victim’ and interpreting it as a conditioning factor for their own aggression was not a shared experience. These biographical reconstructions are far from neutral; they are shaped by power-laden discourses that decontextualise violence, oversimplify broader social processes, obscure the structural dimensions of intimate partner violence, and impede certain men’s desistance. The absence of alternative therapeutic discourses—those acknowledging the broader social forces shaping harmful behaviour—profoundly affects the therapeutic process and the formation of subjectivity. Ultimately, I argue that the discursive offer of these programmes also reflects pre-designed interventions for men, often developed in other regions.