Three groups of hospitalized psychiatric women patients were exposed to three experimental situations. The first group saw videotaped recordings of themselves in biweekly scheduled sessions, the second group saw audiovisual recordings of another person and the third group was not shown any recordings. It was predicted that the first group would show greater clinical improvement and increased feelings of self-acceptance and enter into a closer relationship with an interviewer. A battery of evaluation procedures was administered at the beginning and at the end of the series of exposures. The battery included indicators of clinical improvement, measures of self-acceptance and measures of interpersonal relationships. The psychiatrists who conducted the viewing and videotaping sessions observed striking reactions in those patients who saw their own videotaped recordings. These patients seemed: a) to become aware of negative feelings about themselves; b) to experience a decrease in these feelings and become more self-accepting as the sessions progressed; c) to enter a closer relationship with the interviewers; and d) to disclose personal items more readily. The psychological test data did not confirm the clinical impressions. Statistically significant differences were not found among groups along the dimensions measured by the test battery. A comparison of our subjects with a control group of female patients meeting the same criteria, but not involved in this study, revealed no significant differences in clinical outcome or number of days spent in the hospital. Thus our study offers no evidence that these procedures are necessarily either helpful or harmful. © Williams & Wilkins 1969. All Rights Reserved.
