WORKING WITH VIDEO IN ASSESSMENT AND PSYCHOTHERAPY OF AFFECTIVE-BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT DISORDERS

Abstract

The included therapeutic observation with videography and analysis of video recordings of patients’ behavior during the psychotherapeutic consultations provides a convincing alternative to cognitive and verbal methods of studying affect and behavior. This refers especially to the patients of early age and the ones with severe disorders of affect and behavior. The nature of affect is easier and more natural to detect by a method that directly elicits and works with it and is sensitive to current changes in a child’s emotional states. We propose a new direction – the use of videography and analysis of video recordings of a child’s behavior in the framework of psychotherapeutic consultations with the open participation of the operator. The analysis uses the author’s dynamic classifi cation of affective-behavioral development with a qualitative-quantitative form of results’ presentation. The data show the directions of development in different affective-behavioral complexes (ABC, Bardyshevskaya, -). Each ABC is determined by its motive of development. The ABC includes a special repertoire of emotions, behaviors, connections with objects and people (types of connections within each ABC and with other ABC refl ect them), symbolic activity, ways to prevent emotional breakdowns. There are  early-forming ABCs: the ABC of psychophysiological survival, the symbiosis-based ABC, the ABC of expansion, the play-dialogue and attachment ABC, the role-play ABC. According to the dynamics of emotions, behavior, contact, symbolic activity, the vectors of development of  types of behavior are defi ned. The central vector of abnormal development is distortion. The vectors going from it and to it (from high norm, norm, delay, damage, decay to distortion, and in the opposite direction) are easily seen in video and can be used for prognosis of further development. We spread N.A.Bernstein’s idea of the role of anticipation and an image of the future in the construction of movements to the whole development, which is at least partly under child’s choice and control. An open video recording of a consultation has therapeutic impact for the child: general activation, disclosure of latent, incomplete patterns, opening of hidden achievements, strengthening of refl ection and forming autobiographical memory. Analysis of video recordings according to the suggested scheme has advantages: () accuracy and funding of diagnostics due to expert evaluation, a directed selection of episodes (for the certain ABC and for the certain vector of development); () fl exibility: from express diagnostics (just the dominant and leading ABCs at the moment, the birth and dynamics of a new behaviour) to a longitudinal study, confi rming the primary short assessment; () unique diagnostics of the symbolizing of current experience; () refi ned selection of optimal therapeutic loads. For students video study of previously identifi ed and systematized developmental patterns gives a time-saving and deeper alternative to traditional perennial supervisions “in words”. We do such trainings at the psychology department at Moscow State University. More information can be found in the author’s book “Videography of development and analysis of video recordings in clinical psychology” (Bardyshevskaya M., Moscow University Publishing House, ).