Se un giorno mi capitasse la ventura

- This paper, written by the author in the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the psychiatric residential treatment center "il Caprifoglio" is a testimony of ten long years of work in a team and is the opportunity for recounting what is meant by therapeutic environment in that structure. What strategies and expedients are considered indispensable so that every guest of the residence can feel accepted as an individual with his or her subjectivity as a human being with a story, a personality, capacities, physical and organic characteristics and an inner world. The author chose to listen to the guests' voices. Not able to record them directly, he uses a narrative artifice which transforms their desires, fears, difficulties into a story. What emerges is a faithful and amazingly concrete view of community life.KEY WORDS: therapeutic environment, relationship, caring, containment, respect