- A daily life situation in a residential seling is presented. There are two authors. The first, a nurse who is the coordinator of the seling, recounts a difficult episode which happened during a vacation with the residential patients. The second, a psychotherapist and the director of the center, comments upon what happened and proposes a theoretical reflection on the "private ethics" of the therapeutic residence, where difficult patients, professionals and assistive personnel live together for long periods of time. The close cohabitation leads to a certain inevitable familiarity between patients and the various care workers. This often leads to the workers becoming the targets of violent emotional reactions on the part of the patients, to which they respond the best they can, either by using tried techniques or by resorting to good sense. Knowing well, however, that the emotional resonance that certain episodes illicit, merits being adequately faced in supervision. A question which remains open is how to conciliate the possibility of travelling new roads with that of maintaining consolidated practice.key words: residential seling, care workers, cohabitation, practices, ethics