Abstract
This paper focuses on the interaction between clients and clinicians in the context of drug treatment in Norway. The 23 clients were adults with different non-Norwegian ethnic backgrounds, and the 61 clinicians were mainly professional social workers and trained nurses. The interaction took place in institutions such as treatment and detoxification centres, special institutions and social security offices. In order to study this interaction I was involved in a six month period of fieldwork in 1998 as an observing participant. After the fieldwork I regularly had interviews with four clients over a period of one year. The clinicians' working days were characterised by a culture of meeting and talking in which they expected the clients to take part. The dominant treatment method aiming at enabling clients to quit drug abuse was participation in the ‘Talking Cure’. Many of the clients evidently thought that such treatment would merely tend to confirm their identity as drug abusers. Instead, they asked for help in obtaining a job and consigning their problems to the Ocean of Oblivion. The clients and the clinicians tried to co-operate without possessing a common definition of the situation, which was not very successful. The nature of their relationship changed from intense to more tense when the staff's therapeutic model of treatment became the prevailing one. For the clients, this meant entering a ‘Therapeutic ‘öffentlichkeit’, which they rejected because they did not have sufficient trust in the expert system or faith in the Talking Cure. This resulted in a break in the interaction, and many of the clients dropped out of treatment. The problems involved in entering the Therapeutic “öffentlichkeit” were not confined to these ethnic clients: Norwegian clients also showed mistrust towards the clinicians and a lack of faith in the Talking Cure. Since positive interaction is a very important aspect of treatment, there should be an intensified focus on this theme so that it can be improved.