The interplay between the internal world of individuals and the external, social world has been the theme of many papers R.D. Hinshelwood has published over the past two decades. In this book he brings these ideas together, and shows how they derive from therapeutic community practice, and have arisen from a psychoanalytic understanding of the human unconscious. Many institutional phenomena derive from this hidden level, and have implications for therapeutic work in communities and in psychiatry, for understanding institutions in general, and for reflecting on public and political aspects of society at large. These themes link discussions of communication phenomena, of thinking and action in institutions, of alienation, and of the place of therapeutic communities in a psychiatric service. Thinking About Institutions not only documents how a therapeutic community functions, it also contributes to understanding how people can be influenced by their social setting and how individuals can form coherent social organisations together.