This is no essay on the history of psychiatry but rather fragments of stories from the lives of indivuduals recounted through the testimonies of people who have lived in a big asylum - a psychiatric hospital in the region of Paris, from the doctor to the patient, the nurse to the administrator... Through a portrait of this place, typical of health care establishments in western and westernised countries, the film attempts to deal with the fear of otherness, a fear which generates exclusion.