This book is a reprint of the 1980 edition. Institutions serve to regulate psychological and social disorder, to tame spontaneity, in short: to train. Institutions have their own internal order, the highest guiding principle of which is smooth functioning. Christa and Thomas Fengler explored the everyday life of such institutions in 1980. They did this by examining a psychiatric clinic. They could just as easily have chosen a correctional facility, a boarding school, or perhaps even a department store. Those who are at home in psychiatry will quickly feel on familiar ground - but anyone who works, lives, or trains in other large institutions will also find their everyday experiences reflected in these stories full of sociological insights.