It is part of the magical aura of the physician that he must have some omnipotent tool with which he dramatically makes patients better. In individual psychotherapy the individual interview and the interpretation, like the surgeon's scalpel, provides such an omnipotent instrument. In therapeutic community practice it is often group therapy in the form of the daily ward meeting and the review that plays the role of the omnipotent therapeutic tool. But in our opinion it is the daily living situation and not the formally organized therapeutic meeting which provides the greatest potential for learning and growth on the part of patients and staff. We have found the crisis situation and its resolution to be potentially the most useful of these daily living situations.