The Tribunal

Eight cases. Your group must rule on each one — psychotherapy, or not — and cite the clause. Then another group gets to attack your rulings.

40 minsmall groups

What students should get out of it

1Apply a definition to cases it was not written for
2Locate the exact clause on which a judgement turns, rather than reasoning from impression
3Defend a ruling against adversarial challenge, and change it when the challenge is good

Materials

One set of eight case cards per group (printed, one case per card)
The definition, printed at the top of the ruling sheet
One ruling sheet per group
Timer visible to the room

The brief

Student-facing. Hand this out, or project it.

You are a licensing board. A jurisdiction has adopted the definition on your sheet, and the word "psychotherapy" is now restricted: only practices meeting it may use the term, be reimbursed, or be regulated as therapy.

Eight applications have arrived. For each, your group must return one of three rulings — in scope, out of scope, or contested — and, critically, name the single clause the ruling turns on. A ruling without a clause is not a ruling.

The eight

1A self-help book, written by a clinical psychologist, based on a manualised protocol, read alone with no contact.
2A smartphone application delivering structured cognitive exercises, adapting to responses, no human involved.
3A twelve-step sponsor meeting a sponsee weekly for two years.
4A psychiatrist conducting a fifteen-minute medication review that includes advice on sleep and activity.
5A hospital chaplain sitting with a dying patient and their family.
6An executive coach working with a manager on avoidance of difficult conversations, using an exposure hierarchy.
7A practice offering to change a client’s sexual orientation. The client has requested it, and says the direction is theirs.
8A psychologist at a dinner party, giving a friend forty minutes of genuinely skilled help with their marriage.

How it runs

1
Assign roles
2 min
Every group needs three roles. Rotate them if you run this again — the recorder learns the least.
- ▸Chair — keeps the group to the clause, not to impressions
- ▸Recorder — writes the ruling and the clause for each case
- ▸Devil’s advocate — required to argue against the group’s emerging ruling on at least three of the eight
2
Rule on all eight
14 min
Under two minutes per case. Speed is deliberate: it forces you to the clause rather than into a discussion of how each case feels. If your group cannot agree, the ruling is "contested" and you must record what the disagreement is about.
Cases 6, 7 and 8 are the ones that split rooms. Do not save them for last — do them third, fourth and fifth, while you still have energy.
3
Exchange and attack
10 min
Swap sheets with another group. Find the two rulings you think are most wrong and build the strongest case against each. You are looking for a clause they misapplied or ignored, not for a different opinion.
- ▸One person prepares the attack on ruling A
- ▸One prepares ruling B
- ▸One prepares the defence of your own most vulnerable ruling
4
Two challenges, in front of everyone
8 min
The instructor picks the two cases with the widest disagreement across the room. The challenging group presents; the defending group responds; the room votes. Groups may change their ruling, and saying so out loud earns more credit than defending a position you no longer hold.
5
Amend the definition
6 min
Now you may change it. As a group, propose exactly one amendment — add, delete or reword a single clause — that would resolve a case the original could not. Write the amended clause out in full, and name the case it now handles and one case it now handles worse.
Every amendment costs something. A group that cannot say what their amendment breaks has not finished thinking.

Deliverable

What: One ruling sheet per group: eight rulings, each with its clause; plus one written amendment with the case it fixes and the case it breaks.
Length: One side of A4
Format: Handed in at the end of the session. Photograph it first — you will want it for the take-home.

Rubric

Share this with students before they start. A rubric kept secret is not an assessment criterion, it is a trap.

Criterion	Strong	Adequate	Weak
Rulings are anchored to a clause 40%	Every ruling names the specific clause and explains how the case does or does not satisfy it.	Most rulings cite a clause; one or two rest on impression.	Rulings are intuitions with a clause attached afterwards, or the same clause is cited for everything.
The contested cases are genuinely contested 20%	The group identifies which cases are hard and can articulate both readings, rather than forcing a verdict.	Hard cases marked contested, but only one side is stated.	Everything is confidently ruled. Confidence here is a failure mode, not a strength.
Response to challenge 20%	Engages the actual argument; changes position when the argument is better and says why.	Defends the ruling competently but does not move.	Restates the original ruling more loudly, or concedes without engaging.
The amendment 20%	A precisely worded clause, with an honest account of what it now admits or excludes wrongly.	A sensible amendment with a vague account of its cost.	A vaguer definition that resolves the hard case by no longer excluding anything.

Debrief

The activity is not finished until this has happened.

Five minutes, whole class, three questions:

1Which case moved the most people? Why that one?
2Which clause did the most work today? (It is almost always the last one.)
3Did anyone’s amendment make the definition worse? Say how.

Close by returning to the A/B vote from the start of the session, still on the board. Ask who has changed their mind, and ask one of them to say what changed it. That is the session’s evidence, produced by the room rather than asserted by you.

Instructor notes

Not for students.

What the eight cases are for

Case	The clause it attacks	What a good group discovers
Self-help book	Interpersonal stances	Method without relationship. Splits on whether a stance can be encoded in text.
App, no human	Interpersonal stances	The same question with commercial and regulatory stakes attached.
Twelve-step sponsor	Derived from psychological principles; clinical methods	Effective, structured, and not psychotherapy. Effectiveness is not the criterion.
Medication review	Clinical methods and interpersonal stances	Where medicine ends and psychotherapy begins is a matter of degree, not kind.
Chaplain	Derived from psychological principles	Enormously valuable, plainly out of scope. Good for separating worth from category.
Coach using exposure	Population and goals; all method clauses satisfied	The definition cannot exclude this. That is a real weakness, not a trick.
Conversion practice, client-requested	Directions the participants deem desirable	The hardest and the most important. See below.
Psychologist at dinner	Informed and intentional; role and contract	Skill without a frame. Introduces the boundary question that runs to Unit 19.

Case 7 requires you to be ready

Groups reliably split, and the split is instructive: some read "the participants" as satisfied by the client’s request, others argue that a preference formed under sustained social pressure is not straightforwardly the client’s own. Both moves are worth having in the open.

Do not leave it as a balanced debate. Once both readings are out, state the position of the field: these practices are ineffective, associated with harm, and prohibited or restricted in a growing number of jurisdictions, and every major professional body opposes them. The definitional argument and the empirical one point the same way.

Common failure to interrupt early

Groups drift into ranking the cases by how much they help people. Interrupt the first time you hear it. The chaplain case is the cure: obviously valuable, obviously not psychotherapy. Value and category are different axes.

Making it work for everyone in the room

Case cards in large print, and read aloud by the chair, so the activity does not depend on reading speed.
The devil’s advocate role is rotated and assigned, not volunteered for — it gives quieter students a licence to disagree without it being personal.
Groups of four, not six. Six produces two spectators.
A student may pass on case 7 without explanation and take the recorder role for it instead.

Extension

Add a ninth case of the group’s own invention, designed to defeat the amended definition. Best case wins the right to open the next session with it.