[The public health office and its clientele--on the conditions of psychiatric practice in the public health office].

The public health office is analysed as an administration of peoples health with its structure and function. By aiming at the order of health, not at the pathology of an inner world, it guarantees - paradoxically enough - for a reservation of individual disorder. This structure corresponds with the clients' coping strategies and represents the condition of a problematic coexistence. By three cases it is demonstrated how different configurations of order develop from these conditions.