During the second half of the 20th century a fundamental change of psychiatric care was witnessed in Sweden (as in many other countries). The number of hospital beds decreased and so did the number of care days, institutions liquidated and closed; the psychiatric space changed. In this paper, I study this development and process focusing on the spatial changes. The main question is: in which spaces were the patients placed during the time when the large mental hospitals started to shrink and close? To study this, the process of discharges is in focus and the sources are material from the committee of discharges from roughly 1950 up to 1990. One of the driving hypotheses in the paper is that the power of enclosure space does not disappear; it rather moves and takes on different shapes. What distinguishes the psychiatric care during the second half of the 20th century is a kind of flexibility that dissolves the difference between inside and outside; the walls of the institutions are moving and indefinite.