Asylums Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates
Asylums Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates
Asylums is an analysis of life in “total institutions”–closed worlds like prisons, army camps, boarding schools, nursing homes and mental hospitals. It focuses on the relationship between the inmate and the institution, how the setting affects the person and how the person can deal with life on the inside.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars The self deprived of itself
Goffman is the master of understanding the way the self is constructed in social interactions. In this work he takes on ‘the Asylum’ the mental institution that is like a prison in being ‘total’ in its effort to shape, define, repress the self. Goffman has always been sympathetic with the lone self and how it withstands social pressures. In the Asylum the shaping forces are very strong, and there are no counter- social networks to help the inmate create and sustain an alternative independent self. This is one reason why Goffmann opposes such institutions as they do not truly prepare the inmates for the life outside, the life in a wholly different kind of social reality.
5 Stars Relevance tested in the 90s
I based a sociological study and wrote a very well received paper - A Study of an English Open Prison as a ‘Total Institution’ - as part of my studies in 1994, in the form of a reappraisal of the books main points measured against covert observational findings. ‘Asylums’ was recommended to me and proved invaluable in understanding behavioural data from a symbolic interaction theoretical perspective. I was impressed with the work then and remain so now - to the extent that I am frequently drawn back to it still. It was still relevant at that time and it has lost none of that relevance. I heartily commend it!
4 Stars The definitive sociological treatise of total institutions
Summary:
The contents of this book are really far too complex to summarize, but I will do my best. There are two major points made in this text. The first is the development of the concept of the total institution. Goffman gives the following characteristics of total institutions: (1)
Filed under: Mental Health Books