Because it has been recognized that teaching and learning psychotherapy are difficult tasks, better methods of implementing the supervision of psychotherapy have been sought, tested, and retained or discarded according to their usefulness. Three basic problems have been the evaluation of the resident or student psychotherapist, the minimization of the distortions inherent in traditional modes of supervision, and the avoidance of undue contamination of the interview situation by the presence of a nonparticipant third party.2,3,4,12 At the same time, the patient must receive optimum treatment. The need for confidentiality between doctor and patient is well recognized, but the learning of psychotherapy is a process that requires a preceptor relationship between supervisor and student, and consequently some invasion of privacy. Furthermore, in medical education generally, first-hand observation is recognized as a cardinal tenet.
Recent technological advances have placed closed-circuit television in the hands of medical