People who are housed in an accomodation centre in order to facilitate their “social rehabilitation” are subject to controls and obligations that continuously threaten their intimacy. The author analyses the characteristics of this intimacy and shows that when a social being loses control over other people's opinion of himself, he feels threatened in his intimate and reassuring territory that enables him to define himself permanently. This territory is violated by the intrusion of other accomodated people and teachers. The attitude of social workers who stress the necessity of respecting the individual is legitimated by the definition of the accomodation centre: a social collective property that cannot be appropriated by private individuals. In this ideological perspective it is self-evident that the collectivity embodied by the employees has a right to control how the centre is used.