Symfora tapes

master clinicians at work

Many years ago a famous film showed how three well-known therapists, Carl Rogers, Fritz perls, and Elbert Ellis, approached the same patient: a young female called Gloria. Highlighting the uniqueness of their styles and personalities. ”Gloria’’ became a classic in the field. Produced along the same lines the ‘Symfora Tapes’ show seven leading contemporary therapists, representing major frames of refenrence, viz. Salman Akhtar, Arthur Freeman, Otto Kernberg, Marsha Linehan, Lawrence Rockland,Lorna Smith Benjamin and Micheal Stone. They all conduct a first interview with the same patient, who is Alfred Koops, a middle-aged man suffering from personality disorder.

Like “Gloria”, the Symfora Tapes offer a unique opportunity to observe master clinicians at work, and enjoy their skill. You will see at first hand how different schools use different strategies, how they apply different techniques. Equally interesting, you will be able to watch them acting in the same way, applying the rules of contemporary psychotherapy. The approaches shown are: cognitive-behavioral variations: interpersonal psychotherapy and transference focused-, supportive-, and integrated forms of  psychodynamic psychotherapy.

The character of ‘Alfred Koops’ is portrayed by Hendrik Grashuis, a leading Dutch actor in this field. The actor was not using set lines and you will see him improvising on the basis of the information he received from the producers on the dynamics of the character. The only thing all clinicians knew was that an actor would be playing the part of the patient. They did not know the actor, nor were they given any information about the case being portrayed.

The Symfora Tapes were produced by Hendrik-Jan Dalewijk and Bert van Luijn as part of a series of workshops on personality disorders and the series was organized by Psychiatry in Progress, a program for postgraduate education in psychiatry and psychotherapy from the Symfora groep, a group of psychiatric and mental health services in the Netherlands.

Symfora groep, Utrechtseweg 266, Postbus 3051, 3800 DB Amersfoort, tel +31 (0)33 4609609