Motivational interviewing is a brief treatment approach designed to produce rapid, internally motivated change in addictive behaviors. Motivational interviewing shows promise for engaging clients with dual psychiatric and psychoactive substance use diagnoses in treatment. While initially developed as an individual treatment approach, key motivational enhancement principles may be applied to structured group interventions to facilitate its introduction to inpatient dual-diagnosis treatment. We describe how we developed and pilot-tested a motivational interviewing group for dually diagnosed inpatients, and illustrate successes and pitfalls in clinicalimplementation. Group participants were readily engaged by the entertaining format and often provocative content, and appeared to benefit from exploration of their ambivalence regarding change. Directions for further development and evaluation are proposed. Copyright 2001, Pergamon Press