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In my view the main advantages which tape recording makes possible are three: (1) a record of the original exchange without some unknown degree of distortion in its recounting; (2) a permanent record which can be studied as often as one likes; (3) a record which can be listened to in a setting less influenced by the emotional stresses of the original exchange. Lindon's method usefully takes advantage of the last two. I think it should be pointed out, however, that the results that Lindon reports may well be in significant part related to the additional time spent in repeated listenings by supervisor and supervisee and not just to the use of recordings. It must also be emphasized that the recording is not of the usual face-to-face interaction of supervision, and
in this sense the stresses of the original interaction are bypassed. It is the tape which makes this possible, but at the same time I think this may be the major disadvantage of this method. I know that Dr. Lindon emphasizes that the participants are freer in the tape situation, but I think it would be more valuable to have this freedom while listening to the record of an original vis-à-vis with its inescapable confrontation.
When the pros and cons of recording are discussed, the issues of freedom and constraint appear regularly. On the one hand, recording is alleged to exercise a constraint. On the other hand, subsequent listening provides a greater freedom. Even if one were to grant that recording does indeed exercise a constraint, and further that this constraint is undesirable (Lindon suggests at one point that in the use he is describing, it may be desirable), is this disadvantage outweighed by the advantages of having an undistorted (albeit “modified” by the constraint) record available for repeated study in a situation in which the original stresses (there may be new ones in the listening situation) are significantly reduced? Almost all who have worked with recordings are convinced that this is so. A