This paper results from research developed among users of a psychosocial care center, in Salvador, Brazil. It aimed to understand how experience of territory use among these users could contribute towards broadening the centers' possibilities for action. With this objective, we conducted three case studies, using techniques of systematic observation of users' day-to-day routines, record-keeping in fieldwork diaries and auto-biographical interviews, involving analytical categories such as: the relationship between users and territory; economic and work spaces; and cultural, symbolic and aesthetic spaces. The users' territory was presented as a problematic territory, in the sense that it imposed non-passivity in relation to the object systems, thereby challenging them to formulate alternatives for the problems experienced in daily life. Thus, the challenge for psychosocial care centers that has emerged is for them to "finetune" their clinical practices to the specificities of the contexts and practices experienced by users.
Territory; Mental health; Deinstitutionalization; Social inclusion