Storytelling in Drug Treatment

Abstract

Professionals who provide drug treatment to young people regularly encounter what they conceive to be inauthentic client claims, that is, claims not in accordance with reality. Earlier research demonstrates how authenticity remains a key concern within drug treatment, but it has not sufficiently explained how professionals account for and distinguish between different types of inauthenticity. Building on the sociology of storytelling, this study opens up the category of inauthenticity through a narrative analysis and makes a novel contribution by identifying the following three distinctive stories that professionals activate to make sense of inauthenticity: (1) professionals routinely refer to what this study labels the story of institutional conformism, portraying institutionalized clients who have developed a habit of saying the “right” things rather than the “real” things, (2) in the somewhat taboo story of ulterior motives, clients are interpreted as making inauthentic claims because they want to obtain something externally from drug treatment (e.g., avoid prison or work training programs), and (3) the story of disorders explains inauthenticity as a result of pathology. The study illuminates how professionals assert narrative control through storytelling and how specific stories carry specific consequences and may ultimately contribute to the exclusion of some clients from treatment.