Introduction O wad some Power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as ithers see us! —Burns These lines are from a poem written almost 200 years ago by Robert Burns. We feel that giving patients a chance to see themselves as others see them will have a marked and beneficial effect on their degree of improvement. To this end, every patient admitted to the private psychiatric inpatient service at the University of Mississippi Medical Center beginning in August of 1963 became a part of a survey project. At selected times during the hospital stay each patient had an interview with a psychiatrist which was video taped in progress. These tapes were then viewed by alternate patients, giving them a chance to see and hear themselves interacting in a way that they had never experienced before. A study by Cornelison and Arsenian,1in