The Use of Videotapes in Preschool Group Therapy Supervision and Parent Counseling

This paper focuses on two different uses of a technological medium, videotaping, to enhance the supervision of the therapists in a preschool group therapy program and the counseling of the parents of children in that group, especially those parents who could not observe sessions directly. Because the therapists and supervisors involved with the group came from different educational and professional backgrounds, the availability of tapes of sessions facilitated the refinement of interventive strategies and the expression of different views as psychoanalytic and developmental principles were being applied. The videotape also allowed parents to observe their children without having care-giving responsibilities, which was a situation otherwise unavailable to them. Discussion of the various advantages as well as of the comparative benefits and risks of using such videotapes during parent counseling sessions is included in this paper.