Aspects of Supervision With the “Pick-a-Dali Circus” Model

Abstract

The approach that we have come to call the “Pick-a-Dali Circus” was begun by the first author (JLS) in the mid 1960s, although it has undergone modification and improvement during the ensuing years. It started as an informal team of professionals from different disciplines meeting more or less haphazardly together with families, rather than as a formalized “training of family therapists.” The method gradually evolved, partly for reasons of practicality in that some of the training of would-be family therapists that the author was undertaking occurred in centers which had no one-way mirrors or videotape equipment. Another factor was that the work took place in a developing country – South Africa – in which there were great numbers of trainees to be concurrently brought to a similar level of competence, along with an urgency to train supervisors. As will be described, this model, in addition to showing therapeutic efficacy, has evolved into a highly effective training method.