Puppet Therapy Tapes on Asthma, Diabetes, and Death and Loss

In the February issue of H&CP Susan Linn, Ed.M., and William Beardslee, M.D. (1), described their innovative work with the use of puppets in therapy as a short-term intervention for pediatric patients at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Boston. Puppets were used for a series of spontaneous interactive dialogues between individual young patients and therapists, and later a series of eight video tapes, The Children's Medical Series, was made. Transferring puppetry to video had the advantage of bringing this technique to clinicians who otherwise might not have had the opportunity or facility to work with this method.

Three of the tapes in the series are reviewed here. Our guest reviewer is Ferruccio di Cori, M.D., a distinguished psychoanalyst and clinician. He is on the faculty of the department of psychiatry at the Downstate Medical Center of the State University of New York and is director of research and training in psychodrama at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn.