The conception of sociotherapy is for many workers inside the field of psychiatric care dependent on the point of view in their own daily workcircumstances. The current Administrative Psychiatry has difficulties with the foggy situation around sociotherapy and sociotherapists and asks: what is sociotherapy? Although some roots of sociotherapy are described, it is only by studying the essence of sociotherapy possible to answer this question. The Committee for Sociotherapy, founded by the State-Secretary of Health and Hygiene, considered the problems concerning sociotherapy. According to the author, the definition formulated by this committee gives the best answer: Sociotherapy is the methodical manipulation of the living-climate of a group of patients conformed to the deals of treatment of this group — with attention to the deals of treatment of the individual patient — within a functional unit of the intramural psychiatric care.