Therapist at work

Press, 27 June 1983, Page 17

Therapist at work

Four years ago a documentary maker, Chris Ghent, began a very unusual project — to record the success of a Wellington psychotherapist, Margie BarrBrown, in her work with clients struggling with schizophrenia. “It was not a project we undertook lightly,” he says. “The difficulties in showing on film the subtle changes in ways of thinking seemed enormous, but on the other hand we felt the remarkable success of Margie’s approach needed to be widely understood.” First of all a trust and rapport had to be established with the therapist and her clients so that they could be filmed at all. A few of Ms Barr-Brown’s clients agreed to have their progress filmed, convinced that a film could help others with problems like their own. Over a period of weeks sufficient trust was established to enable Ghent

with his camera, and a sound recordist. Alister Barry, to film in the therapy room during therapy sessions. Week after week the two watched silently as client and therapist worked on problems of distorted emotion and reason. Often nothing developed worth filming; at other times they ran out of film at crucial moments. “We couldn’t help but be a part of the situation,” says Ghent. “Over the months we came to know the clients and their problems intimately. We became almost part of the therapy situation. “And the clients came to know us and our moods and frustrations. I would like to think that in indefinable ways we helped rather than hindered those sessions.” Ghent filmed six of Ms Barr-Brown’s clients but in the end decided to include only two in the film. Even then it proved difficult to

edit the material down tc give a rounded and honest picture of what both clients went through and at the same time to show sufficient of the therapy techniques to make Ms BarrBrown’s approach comprehensible. Alister Barry, the sound recordist, says that while Margie Barr-Brown and the therapeutic techniques she used were impressive, it was the clients who impressed him most — “literally changing their ways of thinking wilfully, coming to an understanding of why they can’t, if they like, think straight, and then changing it; and through all that to hold on to a belief that by letting us film them, other people’s lives might be made happier, fuller. “It was a privilege to get to know such very special people,” he says. © “Just Another Day,” a Vortex Films production, will be screened on One at 8 p.m. tomorrow.