ABSTRACT
A couple of years ago our friends and colleagues, Melissa and Griff Griffith, were putting together an exam for the psychiatric residents they supervise in Mississippi. It was to cover some of the ideas and ways of working that constitute what we would call "postmodern psychotherapy." This is not an easy feat. When you have a body of knowledge that includes ideas such as "There are no essential truths" and "There are multiple possibilities for how to describe and classify the 'reality' of any situation," a true and false test is clearly out of the question. A multiple choice test would be possible to give, but impossible to grade. Melissa and Griff settled on putting together an essay test that they believed would allow each resident to write about his or her own ideas in this arena.
