ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an observation of a community meeting on an acute psychiatric ward. The observation was conducted as part of a larger Observation Project, building on the work of Hinshelwood and Skogstad. The aim of the project was to gain, through a detailed study of the interactions between staff and patients, a deeper understanding of the complex issues faced by staff in this very disturbing setting. The chapter was inspired by a clinical commentary section in the British Journal of Psychotherapy, where transcripts were followed by analyses by a group analyst, a psychoanalyst, and an organizational consultant. If all the psychoanalysts in the world were expert in the analysis of schizophrenic patients and devoted themselves solely to this task, it would statistically do very little for the world problem of the treatment of psychosis.
