Teaching short-term psychotherapy with blind role playing.

This report describes the use of blind role playing to introduce the theory and techniques of the short-term psychotherapies in a combined "laboratory" and lecture course. "Therapist" and "patient" (but not instructor) are blind to each other's governing assumptions about therapy, yet must respond creatively to each other based on the algorithms of the "script" and on real-life experience as both doctor and patient.