ABSTRACT
This chapter aims at the experience of inpatient hospital treatment at the Cassel Hospital and how formal psychoanalytic psychotherapy, with its emphasis on the transference and the inner world, fits into that context and orientates itself to some of the realities of the setting. It outlines how psychotherapy and psychosocial nursing can work to inform and enrich each other, and what is psychoanalytic about the overall work. Psychoanalytic treatment is possible at the Cassel because the patient is held in treatment by the mutually cooperative effort of nurse and therapist, and by the sustained involvement of patients and staff together in a "culture of enquiry" within the therapeutic community. There are essential differences between nursing and therapy, and each brings something quite distinct to treatment. Psychosocial nursing is different in kind from psychotherapy in its quality and depth of awareness and in its focus on promoting adolescent and adult development, but it is, also psychoanalytic.
