INPATIENT HUMAN STRUCTURAL MILIEU THERAPY - HISTORICAL ROOTS AND ESSENTIAL ASPECTS OF TODAYS PRACTICE

The history of psychoanalytically based hospital treatment is discusse d. It stares with Ernst Simmel in Berlin. In the United States William and Karl Menninger were important representatives of psychoanalytical ly oriented clinical work including milieu therapy, Gunter Ammon devel oped his human-structural milieu therapy in the first dynamic psychiat ric hospital, established in 1975 in Munich. The whole hospital is see n as a milieu-therapeutic social-energetic field, in which group-dynam ic principles are used for therapeutic aims. In human-structural inpat ient milieu therapy the constructive parts and creative potentialities of the patients are supported in daily life. The milieu-therapeutic p roject work in the sense of a,third object helps the patients to learn to develop relationships and friendships, to get more trust in their own possibilities and to gain more quality in life. The work with the team members is of great importance.