[Psychotherapy in the psychiatric institution--on therapy at the other pole of the diagnostic spectrum].

In psychiatric facilities we treat patients with severe disturbances under conditions which do not fulfill what are generally thought to be the necessary ingredients of psychotherapy. Additionally our staff tend to devalorate themselves by thinking that in fact they should work differently that, what they do, was actually not real psychotherapy. The present paper shows with concrete examples what is psychiatric psychotherapy, it asks what are the needs of severely ill patients, and concludes that this difficult work is real psychotherapy in the best sense of the word.