[Clinical psychotherapy as focal treatment]

The concept and organization of inpatient psychotherapeutic treatment as focal psychotherapy has proven helpful in many cases. The focus takes on an integrative and guiding function since various therapeutic activities are oriented toward the same focus. The focus recurs in varied thematic guises in different areas of therapeutic interaction. Among patients with so-called structural disturbances, the focus does not usually pick up a focal conflict but the typical disturbances of the self and object relations. Considerations of method retreat into the background of the thoughts and actions of all those involved in treatment. In their place, treatment is considered as a focally determined process of therapeutically conscious social interaction based on the individual patient and his or her particular disturbance.