The client-system-approach, as we use it in our psychiatric department of a general hospital, intends to be a combination of the more classical individualizing patient-centered and the somewhat newer system-centered approach, as developed by family-therapists. This results in an integration of intra-psychic and inter-psychic phenomena. This client-system approach seems to be a very effective model, certainly when used in a setting where intensive short-term treatment is the main goal. The client-system treatment together with the admission of one or more members of a system on a psychiatric ward, operating on the basic principles of the therapeutic community, has been proved to be very effective.