ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a deep debt to the work of Dr. Tom Main during his years at the Cassel Hospital. One of his achievements was to transform a model of in-patient treatment of mental disturbance in which regressed patients were being attended to and passively nursed, into one in which the patient is actively involved in the psychotherapy and nursing processes. However, the Cassel Hospital focuses on these details: all the penumbra of resistances, denials, associations, and material that occupies the hospital during the day becomes a main agent of treatment and, hopefully for both the individual psychotherapy and the detailed and intensive psychosocial nursing work. Everyday activities are often charged with emotion and conflict for these patients, but they provide the material that becomes one of the main agents of treatment and hopefully of change and transformation. The work of the day is normally focused around essential activities and events such as eating, sleeping, and working.
