In selecting primarily the formal structure of the hospital for study we recognize that insufficient attention has been paid to the informal aspects of hospital organization, and in particular to the question of patients’ relations with each other and with staff. To include this area of hospital life would have necessitated selecting a small number of wards and treatment units within each hospital and spending a great deal of time in them, since, unlike general hospitals, prisons, or institutions for old people, verbal communication is extremely difficult with the majority of subnormal patients in hospital, and until one has learned to understand both their words and their behaviour, any interpretation of relationships and feelings can be dangerously misleading.3