What do you think?
Rate this book
Asyle.
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.
Paperback
First published January 1, 1961
251 people are currently reading
6836 people want to read
About the author
Erving Goffman
53 books522 followersErving Goffman was a Canadian-born American sociologist, social psychologist, and writer, considered by some "the most influential American sociologist of the twentieth century".
In 2007, The Times Higher Education Guide listed him as the sixth most-cited author of books in the humanities and social sciences.
Goffman was the 73rd president of the American Sociological Association. His best-known contribution to social theory is his study of symbolic interaction. This took the form of dramaturgical analysis, beginning with his 1956 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Goffman's other major works include Asylums (1961), Stigma (1963), Interaction Ritual (1967), Frame Analysis (1974), and Forms of Talk (1981). His major areas of study included the sociology of everyday life, social interaction, the social construction of self, social organization (framing) of experience, and particular elements of social life such as total institutions and stigmas.
In 2007, The Times Higher Education Guide listed him as the sixth most-cited author of books in the humanities and social sciences.
Goffman was the 73rd president of the American Sociological Association. His best-known contribution to social theory is his study of symbolic interaction. This took the form of dramaturgical analysis, beginning with his 1956 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Goffman's other major works include Asylums (1961), Stigma (1963), Interaction Ritual (1967), Frame Analysis (1974), and Forms of Talk (1981). His major areas of study included the sociology of everyday life, social interaction, the social construction of self, social organization (framing) of experience, and particular elements of social life such as total institutions and stigmas.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 79 reviews
December 7, 2023
Just in passing - the edition I read had a much better cover, the black and white photograph of a woman's hands covering her face with a cigarette between her fingers pretty much summed up my feelings about this book.
There is a sentence in Moab is My Wash Pot where Stephen Fry, at least, I’m nearly positive he’s not quoting someone else, says that it is easier for someone who has been to a public boarding school to be in prison than it is for anybody else in society. Not the most endearing advertisement for public schools, but then, neither are most people that seem to have attended one. The point is that both prisons and English public schools are examples of total institutions and these are precisely what Goffman is looking at here.
I really like Goffman – he has the keenest of eyes for little paradoxes and quirks. I was telling a friend over dinner the other week that I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he was really from Mars, or an alien at least. He seems to see the things that the rest of us miss because we take them for granted – you know, like that invisibility shield in Hitchhiker’s Guide – an SEP shield, somebody else’s problem, an invisibility shield that immediately tells you that whatever you are looking at is someone else’s problem and so makes it immediately and completely invisible to you. Somehow Goffman is able to see past this invisibility shield and show us exactly what is normally hidden.
A total institution is one where your whole life is going to be spent there, at least for a time. Prison, boarding school, monastery, mental asylum or the military are all examples. These are not always places of punishment, and they are not always identical, but they have very many similar characteristics and they generally have a ‘purpose’ as an institution. What Goffman does is look at this purpose from the perspective of the actors that play out their various roles within these institutions – or rather, he looks at the roles played in mental asylums as an example here, as this was where he performed his research.
These asylums are institutions that were designed for a number of purposes – firstly, to remove people from society that were considered to be behaving in ways that make them not appropriate to remain at liberty within society and secondly, to treat and eventually cure these people - the second of these purposes is the one the institutions themselves tend to stress. In one of his other books, Stigma, the possibility of effecting such a cure – given the ongoing stigma associated with having been in such a place (and therefore of having to be in such a place) would probably be enough to ensure a kind of alienation from society for the rest of one's life anyway. In many ways, being in such a place is proof enough of needing to be in such a place.
But Goffman is really interested in the relationships that occur between people, particularly people with different roles in these places.
The first essay is concerned with being inducted into a total institution and there is a lot of very interesting things said about the physical and mental ‘stripping’ that occurs when one enters such an institution. Like the scene in A Clockwork Orange where Alex is brought to prison and the guards index his belongings and place them in a box – you are often stripped naked as part of the induction into these institutions. The forsaking of all previous belongings as a mode of entering this new life seems to be an important aspect of these rites. But if you think about it, this is a very strange thing to do to a mental patient. The taking away of all markers of their previous identity isn’t an immediately obvious means of bringing them back to normality – whatever that might be. The other thing is that it is often someone very close to the patient that has brought them to the hospital for treatment. The patient is unlikely to be terribly happy about being brought to such a place – these places sound about as close to hell on earth as is possible to get outside of one of the US torture prisons – and the patients have generally been brought there by someone who claims to ‘love them’. This is likely to lead to awkward moments between these people, to say the least. But the other problem is that if the person is to get out they are likely to have to at least appear to be reconciled to this person that has imprisoned them – otherwise, isn’t that an instance of their continued lack of mental health?
These catch-22 situations are endless, as anyone who has read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest would already know. We like to imagine that the central fact of our society is our love of individual freedom and individual identity – but to be insane is to behave in particularly ‘individual ways’. If the fundamental dichotomy is between the individual and society, then surely the existence of asylums is a kind of victory of society over the individual. And to get back out of these places the individual must act in ways that are highly socially prescribed, in fact, so much so that the ability to suppress one’s inclinations is perhaps as good a definition of ‘getting well’ as any other.
The fact of these institutions is that they are always grossly underfunded and as such do more to act as prisons, keeping people off the streets, than as reformatories. But the myth of the institutions is that they are where people go to get well – so, the relationships that are set up, particularly between staff and inmates, are defined according to this fundamental contradiction. The problem is that when the ‘reason’ for an institution so poorly matches its realisation – when we say ‘we’re here to help’ but actually clearly are punishing people, then we humans tend to blame the victim. There is a punishment – so we’d better think up a crime that makes sense of the punishment, that justifies it… otherwise, we would be monsters.
I really enjoyed this book – a friend of mine asked me if it wasn’t too ‘heavy’, but while I absolutely understand what she means, and at times, it really was just that, mostly this book could just as easily have been about work in an office or life in a hospital. We still have total institutions and they create little social worlds that are defined by their own needs and their own interrelationships. Right at the end of this one he mentions insane women who got pregnant or people who would bite – and how the institutions would take these people and removed their wombs or pulled all of their teeth. This was said to be in the best interests of the patients, but really, it was designed for the administrative convenience of the institutions. We need people like Goffman in the world, people able to look at the institutions we form and the dehumanising effects these can cause.
Some quotes:
A chief concern is to develop a sociological version of the structure of the self. p. xiiv
All of these restrictions of contact presumably help to maintain the antagonistic stereotypes. Two different social and cultural worlds develop, jogging alongside each other with points of official contact but little mutual penetration. Significantly, the institutional plant and name come to be identified by both staff and inmates as somehow belonging to the staff, so that when either grouping refers to the views or interests of ‘the institution,’ by implication they are referring (as I shall also) to the views and concerns of the staff. p9
There are other reasons for being interested in these establishments, too. In our society, they are the forcing houses for changing persons; each is a natural experiment on what can be done to the self. p12
On admission to a total institution, however, the individual is likely to be stripped of his usual appearance and of the equipment and services by which he maintains it, thus suffering a personal defacement. Clothing, combs, needle and thread, cosmetics, towels, soaps, shaving sets, bathing facilities – all these may be taken away or denied him, although some may be kept in inaccessible storage, to be returned if and when he leaves. P20
As a result, the inmate tends to feel that for the duration of his required stay—his sentence—he has been totally exiled from living. P68
Many total institutions, most of the time, seem to function merely as storage dumps for inmates, but, as previously suggested, they usually present themselves to the public as rational organisations designed consciously, through and through, as effective machines for producing a few officially avowed and officially approved ends. It was also suggested that one frequent official objective is the reformation of inmates in the direction of some ideal standard. This contradiction, between what the institution does and what its officials must say it does, forms the basic context of the staff’s daily activity. P74
The personal possessions of an individual are an important part of the materials out of which he builds a self, but as an inmate the ease with which he can be managed by staff is likely to increase with the degree to which he is dispossessed. P78
One of the arguments advanced by officers of the Navy in favour of corporal punishment is this: it can be inflicted in a moment; it consumes no valuable time; and when the prisoner’s shirt is put on, that is the last of it. Whereas, if another punishment were substituted, it would probably occasion a great waste of time and trouble, besides thereby begetting in the sailor an undue idea of his importance. p79-80
An important part of the theory of human nature in many total institutions is the belief that if the new inmate can be made to show extreme deference to staff immediately upon arrival, he will thereafter be manageable—that in submitting to these initial demands, his ‘resistance’ or ‘spirit’ is somehow broken. P89
The visiting room in some total institutions is important here. Both décor and conduct in these places are typically closer to the outside standards than are those that prevail in the inmate’s actual living quarters. The view of inmates that outsiders get thus helps to decrease the pressure these outsiders might otherwise bring to bear on the institution. It is a melancholy human fact that after a time all three parties—inmate, visitor, and staff—realise that the visiting room presents a dressed up view, realise that the other parties realize this, too, and yet all tacitly agree to continue the fiction. P102
Visitors can easily take the loyalty and social skills of these receptionists as a sample of the character of the entire inmate group. P103
The display of photographs in the lobbies of total establishments, shown the cycle of activities the ideal inmate goes through with the ideal staff, often has extremely little to do with the facts of the institutional life, but at least a few inmates spent a pleasant morning posing for the pictures. P105
It is an odd social fact that free places are often to be found in the immediate vicinity of officials, part of whose function is to exercise surveillance over broad physical regions. For example, winos in small towns sometimes congregate on the lawn of the county courthouse, enjoying some rights of lounging assembly denied them in the main streets. P237 footnote
The study of underlife in restrictive total institutions has some special interest. When existence is cut to the bone, we can learn what people do to flesh out their lives. Stashes, means of transportation, free places, territories, supplies for economic and social exchange—these apparently are some of the minimal requirements for building up a life. P305
We now turn to the medical version of the tinkering-services model. Our giving our bodies up to the medical server, and his rational-empirical treatment of them, is surely one of the high points of the service complex. Interestingly enough, the gradual establishment of the body as a serviceable possession—a kind of physicochemical machine—is often cited as a triumph of the secular scientific spirit, when in fact this triumph seems in part to have been both cause and effect of the rising regard for all types of expert serving. P340
The client finds he must consider not how well he has done with the server, but rather how much worse he might have done without him, and with this understanding he is led to accord the ultimate tribute to esoteric skill: cheerful payment of the fee in spite of the loss of the object that the server was hired to save. P343
Further, to rest immobile in bed is, after all, defined as what one does in our society when one is sick P347
But there is still a more fundamental issue, which hinges on the applicability of the concept of ‘pathology’. Ordinarily the pathology which first draws attention to the patient’s condition is conduct that is ‘inappropriate in the situation.’ But the decision as to whether a given act is appropriate or inappropriate must often necessarily be a lay decision, simply because we have no technical mapping of the various behavioural subcultures in our society, let alone the standards of conduct prevailing in each of them. p363
The ideological or interpretative implications of management’s activity seems to focus on two issues, the nature of the patients and the nature of the hospital’s activity, in both cases bolstering up the medical-service definition of the situation. P374
The response of the patient to hospitalisation can itself be nicely handled by translating it into a technical frame of reference, whereby the contribution of the hospital to the patients trouble becomes incidental, the important thing being the internally generated mode of disturbance characteristic of the patient’s conduct. Interpersonal happenings are transferred into the patient, establishing him as a relatively closed system that can be thought of as pathological and correctable. P375
Thus, to cite a relatively extreme example, I have seen a therapist deal with a Negro patient’s complaints about race relations in a partially segregated hospital by telling the patient that he must ask himself why he, among all the other Negroes present, chose this particular moment to express this feeling, and what this expression could mean about him as a person, apart from the state of race relations in the hospital at the time. P376-7
The patient’s presence in the hospital is taken as prima facie evidence that he is mentally ill, since the hospitalization of these persons is what the institution is for. P380
In all of these cases, the medical action is presented to the patient and his relatives as an individual service, but what is being serviced here is the institution, the specification of the action fitting in to what will reduce the administrators management problems. P383
A crime must be found that fits the punishment, and the character of the inmate must be reconstituted to fit the crime. P384
…the further one’s claims diverge from the facts, the more effort one must exert and the more help one must have to bolster one’s position. p386
There is a sentence in Moab is My Wash Pot where Stephen Fry, at least, I’m nearly positive he’s not quoting someone else, says that it is easier for someone who has been to a public boarding school to be in prison than it is for anybody else in society. Not the most endearing advertisement for public schools, but then, neither are most people that seem to have attended one. The point is that both prisons and English public schools are examples of total institutions and these are precisely what Goffman is looking at here.
I really like Goffman – he has the keenest of eyes for little paradoxes and quirks. I was telling a friend over dinner the other week that I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he was really from Mars, or an alien at least. He seems to see the things that the rest of us miss because we take them for granted – you know, like that invisibility shield in Hitchhiker’s Guide – an SEP shield, somebody else’s problem, an invisibility shield that immediately tells you that whatever you are looking at is someone else’s problem and so makes it immediately and completely invisible to you. Somehow Goffman is able to see past this invisibility shield and show us exactly what is normally hidden.
A total institution is one where your whole life is going to be spent there, at least for a time. Prison, boarding school, monastery, mental asylum or the military are all examples. These are not always places of punishment, and they are not always identical, but they have very many similar characteristics and they generally have a ‘purpose’ as an institution. What Goffman does is look at this purpose from the perspective of the actors that play out their various roles within these institutions – or rather, he looks at the roles played in mental asylums as an example here, as this was where he performed his research.
These asylums are institutions that were designed for a number of purposes – firstly, to remove people from society that were considered to be behaving in ways that make them not appropriate to remain at liberty within society and secondly, to treat and eventually cure these people - the second of these purposes is the one the institutions themselves tend to stress. In one of his other books, Stigma, the possibility of effecting such a cure – given the ongoing stigma associated with having been in such a place (and therefore of having to be in such a place) would probably be enough to ensure a kind of alienation from society for the rest of one's life anyway. In many ways, being in such a place is proof enough of needing to be in such a place.
But Goffman is really interested in the relationships that occur between people, particularly people with different roles in these places.
The first essay is concerned with being inducted into a total institution and there is a lot of very interesting things said about the physical and mental ‘stripping’ that occurs when one enters such an institution. Like the scene in A Clockwork Orange where Alex is brought to prison and the guards index his belongings and place them in a box – you are often stripped naked as part of the induction into these institutions. The forsaking of all previous belongings as a mode of entering this new life seems to be an important aspect of these rites. But if you think about it, this is a very strange thing to do to a mental patient. The taking away of all markers of their previous identity isn’t an immediately obvious means of bringing them back to normality – whatever that might be. The other thing is that it is often someone very close to the patient that has brought them to the hospital for treatment. The patient is unlikely to be terribly happy about being brought to such a place – these places sound about as close to hell on earth as is possible to get outside of one of the US torture prisons – and the patients have generally been brought there by someone who claims to ‘love them’. This is likely to lead to awkward moments between these people, to say the least. But the other problem is that if the person is to get out they are likely to have to at least appear to be reconciled to this person that has imprisoned them – otherwise, isn’t that an instance of their continued lack of mental health?
These catch-22 situations are endless, as anyone who has read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest would already know. We like to imagine that the central fact of our society is our love of individual freedom and individual identity – but to be insane is to behave in particularly ‘individual ways’. If the fundamental dichotomy is between the individual and society, then surely the existence of asylums is a kind of victory of society over the individual. And to get back out of these places the individual must act in ways that are highly socially prescribed, in fact, so much so that the ability to suppress one’s inclinations is perhaps as good a definition of ‘getting well’ as any other.
The fact of these institutions is that they are always grossly underfunded and as such do more to act as prisons, keeping people off the streets, than as reformatories. But the myth of the institutions is that they are where people go to get well – so, the relationships that are set up, particularly between staff and inmates, are defined according to this fundamental contradiction. The problem is that when the ‘reason’ for an institution so poorly matches its realisation – when we say ‘we’re here to help’ but actually clearly are punishing people, then we humans tend to blame the victim. There is a punishment – so we’d better think up a crime that makes sense of the punishment, that justifies it… otherwise, we would be monsters.
I really enjoyed this book – a friend of mine asked me if it wasn’t too ‘heavy’, but while I absolutely understand what she means, and at times, it really was just that, mostly this book could just as easily have been about work in an office or life in a hospital. We still have total institutions and they create little social worlds that are defined by their own needs and their own interrelationships. Right at the end of this one he mentions insane women who got pregnant or people who would bite – and how the institutions would take these people and removed their wombs or pulled all of their teeth. This was said to be in the best interests of the patients, but really, it was designed for the administrative convenience of the institutions. We need people like Goffman in the world, people able to look at the institutions we form and the dehumanising effects these can cause.
Some quotes:
A chief concern is to develop a sociological version of the structure of the self. p. xiiv
All of these restrictions of contact presumably help to maintain the antagonistic stereotypes. Two different social and cultural worlds develop, jogging alongside each other with points of official contact but little mutual penetration. Significantly, the institutional plant and name come to be identified by both staff and inmates as somehow belonging to the staff, so that when either grouping refers to the views or interests of ‘the institution,’ by implication they are referring (as I shall also) to the views and concerns of the staff. p9
There are other reasons for being interested in these establishments, too. In our society, they are the forcing houses for changing persons; each is a natural experiment on what can be done to the self. p12
On admission to a total institution, however, the individual is likely to be stripped of his usual appearance and of the equipment and services by which he maintains it, thus suffering a personal defacement. Clothing, combs, needle and thread, cosmetics, towels, soaps, shaving sets, bathing facilities – all these may be taken away or denied him, although some may be kept in inaccessible storage, to be returned if and when he leaves. P20
As a result, the inmate tends to feel that for the duration of his required stay—his sentence—he has been totally exiled from living. P68
Many total institutions, most of the time, seem to function merely as storage dumps for inmates, but, as previously suggested, they usually present themselves to the public as rational organisations designed consciously, through and through, as effective machines for producing a few officially avowed and officially approved ends. It was also suggested that one frequent official objective is the reformation of inmates in the direction of some ideal standard. This contradiction, between what the institution does and what its officials must say it does, forms the basic context of the staff’s daily activity. P74
The personal possessions of an individual are an important part of the materials out of which he builds a self, but as an inmate the ease with which he can be managed by staff is likely to increase with the degree to which he is dispossessed. P78
One of the arguments advanced by officers of the Navy in favour of corporal punishment is this: it can be inflicted in a moment; it consumes no valuable time; and when the prisoner’s shirt is put on, that is the last of it. Whereas, if another punishment were substituted, it would probably occasion a great waste of time and trouble, besides thereby begetting in the sailor an undue idea of his importance. p79-80
An important part of the theory of human nature in many total institutions is the belief that if the new inmate can be made to show extreme deference to staff immediately upon arrival, he will thereafter be manageable—that in submitting to these initial demands, his ‘resistance’ or ‘spirit’ is somehow broken. P89
The visiting room in some total institutions is important here. Both décor and conduct in these places are typically closer to the outside standards than are those that prevail in the inmate’s actual living quarters. The view of inmates that outsiders get thus helps to decrease the pressure these outsiders might otherwise bring to bear on the institution. It is a melancholy human fact that after a time all three parties—inmate, visitor, and staff—realise that the visiting room presents a dressed up view, realise that the other parties realize this, too, and yet all tacitly agree to continue the fiction. P102
Visitors can easily take the loyalty and social skills of these receptionists as a sample of the character of the entire inmate group. P103
The display of photographs in the lobbies of total establishments, shown the cycle of activities the ideal inmate goes through with the ideal staff, often has extremely little to do with the facts of the institutional life, but at least a few inmates spent a pleasant morning posing for the pictures. P105
It is an odd social fact that free places are often to be found in the immediate vicinity of officials, part of whose function is to exercise surveillance over broad physical regions. For example, winos in small towns sometimes congregate on the lawn of the county courthouse, enjoying some rights of lounging assembly denied them in the main streets. P237 footnote
The study of underlife in restrictive total institutions has some special interest. When existence is cut to the bone, we can learn what people do to flesh out their lives. Stashes, means of transportation, free places, territories, supplies for economic and social exchange—these apparently are some of the minimal requirements for building up a life. P305
We now turn to the medical version of the tinkering-services model. Our giving our bodies up to the medical server, and his rational-empirical treatment of them, is surely one of the high points of the service complex. Interestingly enough, the gradual establishment of the body as a serviceable possession—a kind of physicochemical machine—is often cited as a triumph of the secular scientific spirit, when in fact this triumph seems in part to have been both cause and effect of the rising regard for all types of expert serving. P340
The client finds he must consider not how well he has done with the server, but rather how much worse he might have done without him, and with this understanding he is led to accord the ultimate tribute to esoteric skill: cheerful payment of the fee in spite of the loss of the object that the server was hired to save. P343
Further, to rest immobile in bed is, after all, defined as what one does in our society when one is sick P347
But there is still a more fundamental issue, which hinges on the applicability of the concept of ‘pathology’. Ordinarily the pathology which first draws attention to the patient’s condition is conduct that is ‘inappropriate in the situation.’ But the decision as to whether a given act is appropriate or inappropriate must often necessarily be a lay decision, simply because we have no technical mapping of the various behavioural subcultures in our society, let alone the standards of conduct prevailing in each of them. p363
The ideological or interpretative implications of management’s activity seems to focus on two issues, the nature of the patients and the nature of the hospital’s activity, in both cases bolstering up the medical-service definition of the situation. P374
The response of the patient to hospitalisation can itself be nicely handled by translating it into a technical frame of reference, whereby the contribution of the hospital to the patients trouble becomes incidental, the important thing being the internally generated mode of disturbance characteristic of the patient’s conduct. Interpersonal happenings are transferred into the patient, establishing him as a relatively closed system that can be thought of as pathological and correctable. P375
Thus, to cite a relatively extreme example, I have seen a therapist deal with a Negro patient’s complaints about race relations in a partially segregated hospital by telling the patient that he must ask himself why he, among all the other Negroes present, chose this particular moment to express this feeling, and what this expression could mean about him as a person, apart from the state of race relations in the hospital at the time. P376-7
The patient’s presence in the hospital is taken as prima facie evidence that he is mentally ill, since the hospitalization of these persons is what the institution is for. P380
In all of these cases, the medical action is presented to the patient and his relatives as an individual service, but what is being serviced here is the institution, the specification of the action fitting in to what will reduce the administrators management problems. P383
A crime must be found that fits the punishment, and the character of the inmate must be reconstituted to fit the crime. P384
…the further one’s claims diverge from the facts, the more effort one must exert and the more help one must have to bolster one’s position. p386
March 9, 2021
Remekdelo.
Ali kada pacijent kome se svake noći oduzima odeća napuni džepove komadićima žice i umotanog papira, i kada se bori da bi te stvari zadržao uprkos nelagodnostima zbog onih koji mu redovno moraju pretresati džepove, na njega se obično gleda kao na nekoga sa simptomatičnim ponašanjem primerenim veoma bolesnim pacijentima, a ne kao na nekoga ko pokušava da se izdvoji iz mesta koje mu je dodeljeno. (273)
Ali kada pacijent kome se svake noći oduzima odeća napuni džepove komadićima žice i umotanog papira, i kada se bori da bi te stvari zadržao uprkos nelagodnostima zbog onih koji mu redovno moraju pretresati džepove, na njega se obično gleda kao na nekoga sa simptomatičnim ponašanjem primerenim veoma bolesnim pacijentima, a ne kao na nekoga ko pokušava da se izdvoji iz mesta koje mu je dodeljeno. (273)
March 8, 2008
one of the most subtle, restrained, ferocious diatribes i have ever read. you can feel the fire roiling deep underneath the text, piercing the surface in quick flashes. should be required reading for all schoolteachers.
four long essays stemming from a year (1955-56) Goffman spent observing the daily operation of a huge (7000 inmates!) mental hospital. they were published separately, and in fact the first two are skippable - interesting at moments, but suffering from a great weight of psychobabble about the Self and one's projection of one's self onto other things and experiences and thus the (supposed) vulnerability of this thing, the Self, if one's possessions or activities are lost or damaged or curtailed, etc, etc, etc. Far too much time spent on bland generalities and references to outside sources (monasteries, convents, boot camp, prison, boarding school, all considered "total institutions") and far too little mention of WHAT HE SAW AND HEARD IN THE MENTAL HOSPITAL.
but the third essay is the money essay. we get story after story from the inside. the schemes of the patients and counterschemes of the staff. horrors and hilarity. adaptation to deprivation beyond the reader's imagination. still he mixes in lots of outside stories, but somehow these are a better selection - excerpts from melville's chronicle of life aboard a frigate, prison diaries, and tales directly from a concentration camp survivor. what is the content of a man's existence when fate throws him in a cage and treats him like an animal? it is not a pretty story. take away ALL possessions, ALL freedom, and what remains?
the fourth essay is also very good. it is an extended analysis of the "service model" in general, pervasive in modern society, in which a client brings his problem to a certified expert who then, for a fee, employs his expertise to solve the client's problem. this is then extended to the modern practice of medicine, and further to the treatment of mental patients. and while Goffman's chief specific target is indeed the modern approach to psychiatry, there is much more being said at the same time about the modern approach to humanity generally. where do we draw the line between someone who is simply 'different' and someone who must be changed? changed how, and why? for their own good, against their own wishes, or simply for the convenience of others?
as a schoolteacher who has come to question the entire idea of compulsory, standards-based schooling, i found endless parallels between the treatment of mental patients and the treatment of high school students. fascinating and depressing.
four long essays stemming from a year (1955-56) Goffman spent observing the daily operation of a huge (7000 inmates!) mental hospital. they were published separately, and in fact the first two are skippable - interesting at moments, but suffering from a great weight of psychobabble about the Self and one's projection of one's self onto other things and experiences and thus the (supposed) vulnerability of this thing, the Self, if one's possessions or activities are lost or damaged or curtailed, etc, etc, etc. Far too much time spent on bland generalities and references to outside sources (monasteries, convents, boot camp, prison, boarding school, all considered "total institutions") and far too little mention of WHAT HE SAW AND HEARD IN THE MENTAL HOSPITAL.
but the third essay is the money essay. we get story after story from the inside. the schemes of the patients and counterschemes of the staff. horrors and hilarity. adaptation to deprivation beyond the reader's imagination. still he mixes in lots of outside stories, but somehow these are a better selection - excerpts from melville's chronicle of life aboard a frigate, prison diaries, and tales directly from a concentration camp survivor. what is the content of a man's existence when fate throws him in a cage and treats him like an animal? it is not a pretty story. take away ALL possessions, ALL freedom, and what remains?
the fourth essay is also very good. it is an extended analysis of the "service model" in general, pervasive in modern society, in which a client brings his problem to a certified expert who then, for a fee, employs his expertise to solve the client's problem. this is then extended to the modern practice of medicine, and further to the treatment of mental patients. and while Goffman's chief specific target is indeed the modern approach to psychiatry, there is much more being said at the same time about the modern approach to humanity generally. where do we draw the line between someone who is simply 'different' and someone who must be changed? changed how, and why? for their own good, against their own wishes, or simply for the convenience of others?
as a schoolteacher who has come to question the entire idea of compulsory, standards-based schooling, i found endless parallels between the treatment of mental patients and the treatment of high school students. fascinating and depressing.
November 18, 2016
Goffman spent time in a mental institution and documented his experiences from the patient’s point of view. What started out as reminiscent of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest quickly turned to problematic similarities between mental institutions and concentration camps. Other “total institutions” that Goffman compared to mental institutions were religious monasteries, military camps, and prisons. It is interesting to compare institutions like mental institutions, concentration camps, and prisons where people are (usually) interred against their will for their own safety and/or for the safety of the greater community. After exploring the horrific, demoralizing, and mortifying conditions in which inmates are kept, why would anyone voluntarily sign up for this as in the religious and military institutions?
Goffman explains that in religious institutions, it is “necessary” to break down one’s own will in order to get closer to a higher power. In military institutions, it is also “necessary” to break down an individual in order to function as a unified whole. However, is public humiliation, degradation, and even contamination the best way to accomplish these goals? Luckily, this text was written in the 1960s, and we may see improvements in today’s institutions.
Regarding the involuntary institutions like mental institutions, concentration camps, and prisons, it seems to me that a primary goal of the institution would be rehabilitating the individual to be able to function well within the institution and, ideally, to function well once released back into the community. By controlling every minute of the day in such an unnatural way, such as forcing inmates to wake up at a specific hour, perform ritualized routines, and eat, bathe, and eliminate waste together and without privacy, these unnatural conditions do not condition the individual to function in society. Perhaps a better method, and one that is sometimes used today, is to model society and teach individuals how to operate within that setting so as not to remain institutionalized forever. Sometimes safety remains a concern, so in those situations, the best scenario would be to train the individual to function to the best of his or her abilities within the institution.
Goffman’s analysis was, I’m sure, crucial during its time for drawing awareness to the horrific conditions that were often present in a variety of social institutions. These inadequate and demoralizing conditions should have, and should still, spark outrage. I’m curious as to whether there are laws or standards in place to prevent this within mental institutions, especially because that population may not have the ability to advocate for themselves. On the other hand, we know that there are many horrifying things that happen in our prisons, especially with the increasing privatization of them, so who advocates for prisoner mental and physical wellbeing? In religious institutions, is it enough to argue that these practices get one closer to God? I’m sure Goffman’s study will continue to be used as “what not to do”.
Goffman explains that in religious institutions, it is “necessary” to break down one’s own will in order to get closer to a higher power. In military institutions, it is also “necessary” to break down an individual in order to function as a unified whole. However, is public humiliation, degradation, and even contamination the best way to accomplish these goals? Luckily, this text was written in the 1960s, and we may see improvements in today’s institutions.
Regarding the involuntary institutions like mental institutions, concentration camps, and prisons, it seems to me that a primary goal of the institution would be rehabilitating the individual to be able to function well within the institution and, ideally, to function well once released back into the community. By controlling every minute of the day in such an unnatural way, such as forcing inmates to wake up at a specific hour, perform ritualized routines, and eat, bathe, and eliminate waste together and without privacy, these unnatural conditions do not condition the individual to function in society. Perhaps a better method, and one that is sometimes used today, is to model society and teach individuals how to operate within that setting so as not to remain institutionalized forever. Sometimes safety remains a concern, so in those situations, the best scenario would be to train the individual to function to the best of his or her abilities within the institution.
Goffman’s analysis was, I’m sure, crucial during its time for drawing awareness to the horrific conditions that were often present in a variety of social institutions. These inadequate and demoralizing conditions should have, and should still, spark outrage. I’m curious as to whether there are laws or standards in place to prevent this within mental institutions, especially because that population may not have the ability to advocate for themselves. On the other hand, we know that there are many horrifying things that happen in our prisons, especially with the increasing privatization of them, so who advocates for prisoner mental and physical wellbeing? In religious institutions, is it enough to argue that these practices get one closer to God? I’m sure Goffman’s study will continue to be used as “what not to do”.
August 23, 2007
'm not a sociologist, a student of sociology or really, even that interested in sociology. I read about this book in David Orland's, Prisons: Houses of Darkness, where Orland often referred to Goffman's work in this book. I was not disappointed.
Goffman uses a mixture of field observation and references to literature to describe and critisize the theory and practice of the "Total Institution". As the reviewers note below, a "total institution" is an elastic concept. Goffman focuses on "strong" examples of T.I.'s: the mental hospital, prison, a 19th century man of war, monastery. Through these "strong" examples he fairly describes the concept and applies it well.
Less clear is the implications of Goffman's concept to those institutions which are either "weak" total institutions or non-total institutions with total institution tendencies. After reading this book, I saw aspects of "total" institutions in almost every institution I cared to think about: schools, churches, courts, etc.
I think it is fair to say that "All institutions dream of being total institutions." Therefore, this book has application beyond the world of "strong" total institutions. I recommend it highly.
Goffman uses a mixture of field observation and references to literature to describe and critisize the theory and practice of the "Total Institution". As the reviewers note below, a "total institution" is an elastic concept. Goffman focuses on "strong" examples of T.I.'s: the mental hospital, prison, a 19th century man of war, monastery. Through these "strong" examples he fairly describes the concept and applies it well.
Less clear is the implications of Goffman's concept to those institutions which are either "weak" total institutions or non-total institutions with total institution tendencies. After reading this book, I saw aspects of "total" institutions in almost every institution I cared to think about: schools, churches, courts, etc.
I think it is fair to say that "All institutions dream of being total institutions." Therefore, this book has application beyond the world of "strong" total institutions. I recommend it highly.
August 7, 2009
It was easier to read this book if I kept reminding myself that it was written in the 1950's. Psychiatric hospitals are nothing like this nowadays. But I appreciate they used to be different. Anyhow, I don't like that Goffman made some jabs at psychiatric nurses, implying that they are the nurses who didn't know how to draw blood (apparently, this is all that nurses do...?) and so couldn't get a job anywhere else. I think this guy needs to spend a day as a psychiatric nurse and see if he changes his mind at all. And, by the way, I CAN draw blood. So there.
August 27, 2013
An astute set of essays on the ways people find to maintain a self within an institution whose purpose is to control a person's every activity. Full of glancing observations of the strange ways people seek status, or worry about losing it, for example this passage about a customer of a service business such as a repair shop: "The client thinks, 'Is this server really competent? Is he acting in my own interests? Is he overcharging? Is he discreet? Is he secretly contemptuous of me because of the state in which he finds my possession?'" Touché.
Read
January 3, 2025Reads as kind of a throwback after the age of the asylum, though the sections on other forms of "total institutions" may remain more relevant, if similarly dated. The end of long-term involuntary institutionalization, to me, seems more a result of neoliberal austerity and mass incarceration than the antipsychiatry movement, though it could be said that this movement shared certain ideological underpinnings with the neoliberal mindset and provided convenient cover for the removal of this resource. This is not to belittle criticism of the era's mental healthcare infrastructure or label this text as "antipsychiatry". Though intensely critical of the asylum, Goffman does not make any suggestions at change and seems to imply a certain inevitability to their existence - ironic given their disappearance over the next few decades. It is not simply a matter of mistreatment or abuse within an ostensibly useful institution - even the reformed asylum, certainly an improvement to the "madhouse", but nevertheless containing certain deep-rooted paradoxes and contradictions that trap patients within an impossible maze. Even the category of the "mental patient" is brought into doubt. In those days, "mental illness" was defined in the popular imagination in terms of institutionalization, to the point that even people that the psychologically literate would deem mentally ill were not seen as such if they had not been institutionalized. Goffman points out that far more people suffer from mental illness than could ever be treated by institutionalization. This point in particular was amusing in comparison to today's increasingly frivolous definition of mental illness.
It seems that we are seeing a resurgence in interest in the asylum. The rise in homelessness and addiction emerging in the absence of this resource have many advocating for the return of long-term involuntary institutionalization. Today, many of those who might have in the past been placed in a mental hospital for years if not decades find themselves cycling between incarceration, hospitalization, temporary shelters and the streets. It's my opinion that despite the drawbacks of institutionalization it's an unambiguously better option than this alternative for individuals suffering from extreme mental illness along with the communities they inhabit. But I have my doubts about the actual prospects of this suggested return. For one, it's been embraced by Eric Adams. His endorsement alone should tell you how seriously this venture will be taken. If it's undertaken at all it will mean flimsy infrastructure and prison-like conditions unless large sums of money are to be invested. I simply don't see that happening. I believe we could have saved a lot of people from falling so far down the cracks with a little extra attention - an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But once they've fallen so far, it's hard to imagine anything but an extreme intervention being capable of handling such an extreme problem.
It seems that we are seeing a resurgence in interest in the asylum. The rise in homelessness and addiction emerging in the absence of this resource have many advocating for the return of long-term involuntary institutionalization. Today, many of those who might have in the past been placed in a mental hospital for years if not decades find themselves cycling between incarceration, hospitalization, temporary shelters and the streets. It's my opinion that despite the drawbacks of institutionalization it's an unambiguously better option than this alternative for individuals suffering from extreme mental illness along with the communities they inhabit. But I have my doubts about the actual prospects of this suggested return. For one, it's been embraced by Eric Adams. His endorsement alone should tell you how seriously this venture will be taken. If it's undertaken at all it will mean flimsy infrastructure and prison-like conditions unless large sums of money are to be invested. I simply don't see that happening. I believe we could have saved a lot of people from falling so far down the cracks with a little extra attention - an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But once they've fallen so far, it's hard to imagine anything but an extreme intervention being capable of handling such an extreme problem.
June 28, 2019
3.5 stars
Admittedly I didn't read this entire book in great depth.
Although the subject is of great interest to me, the anecdotal style writing concerning both patients and staff in institutions, rendered me a little disinterested. I felt like some paragraphs were repeats of what I had previously.
The book nevertheless highlights the great power and entitlement disparity in mental health facilities and their psychological effect on the patients. Although the book was written in the 1960's and feels a little outdated at times; sadly mental health in my experience doesn't seem to have progressed far enough since then, with constant residual stigma and some battling of wills between individuals and health care providers intent on removing their choice.
Admittedly I didn't read this entire book in great depth.
Although the subject is of great interest to me, the anecdotal style writing concerning both patients and staff in institutions, rendered me a little disinterested. I felt like some paragraphs were repeats of what I had previously.
The book nevertheless highlights the great power and entitlement disparity in mental health facilities and their psychological effect on the patients. Although the book was written in the 1960's and feels a little outdated at times; sadly mental health in my experience doesn't seem to have progressed far enough since then, with constant residual stigma and some battling of wills between individuals and health care providers intent on removing their choice.
January 25, 2025
bardzo nierówny zbiór esejów
II jest w miarę interesujący, gdyby nie on dałabym 2
część IV jest ciekawa
poza tym to całość bardzo lakoniczna, podkreśla dość dziwne i nieistotne aspekty, prześlizgujac się po jakichś bardziej przydatnych wnioskach
psychiatria musiała być naprawdę słaba w tamtych latach, skoro taka książka była w stanie jakkolwiek na nią wpłynąć
II jest w miarę interesujący, gdyby nie on dałabym 2
część IV jest ciekawa
poza tym to całość bardzo lakoniczna, podkreśla dość dziwne i nieistotne aspekty, prześlizgujac się po jakichś bardziej przydatnych wnioskach
psychiatria musiała być naprawdę słaba w tamtych latach, skoro taka książka była w stanie jakkolwiek na nią wpłynąć
February 19, 2025
a remarkable product of its time - concise yet vivid, simple but bold. had a blast reading this.
(for my sociological theories ii class)
(for my sociological theories ii class)
March 10, 2024
Planning to introduce this book to y Project Term cohort before we visit with criminal justice faculty at Oakland University. Here are my notes
Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates by Erving Goffman
P.23 [loss of identity/ physical indignities] In prisons, denial of heterosexual opportunities can induce fear of losing one’s masculinity.
There is another form of mortification in total institutions; beginning with admission a kind of contaminative exposure occurs. On the outside, the individual can hold objects of self-feeling– such as his body, his immediate actions, his thoughts, and some of his possessions– clear of contact with alien and contaminating things. But in total institutions these territories of the self are violated; the boundary at the individual places between his being and the environment is invaded and the embodiments of self profaned.
P.25 In general, of course, the inmate is never fully alone; he is always within sight and often earshot of someone, if only his fellow inmates. Prison cages with bars for walls fully realize such exposure.
P.28 I have suggested that the inmate undergoes mortification of the self by contaminative exposure of a physical kind, but this must be amplified: when the agency of contamination is another human being, the inmate is in addition contaminated by forced interpersonal contact and, in consequence, a forced social relationship.
The inmate himself may be frisked and searched to the extent– often reported in the literature– of a rectal examination.
P.29 Further, the practice of mixing age, ethnic, and racial groups in prisons and mental hospitals can lead an inmate to feel he is being contaminated by contact with undesirable fellow inmates.
P.31 One routine instance of this contaminative contact is the naming system for inmates. Staff and fellow inmates automatically assume the right to employ an intimate form of address or a truncated formal one; for a middle-class person, at least, this denies the right o hold oneself off from others through a formal style of address.
P.35 [disfigurement and defilement] I have considered some of the more elementary and direct assaults upon th self-various forms of disfigurement and defilement through which the symbolic meaning of events in the inmate’s immediate presence dramatically fails to corroborate his prior conception of self.
P.36 [looping effect] The individual finds that his protective response to an assault upon self is collapsed into the situation; he cannot defend himself in the usual way by establishing distance between the mortifying situation and himself.
P.37 A second assault upon the inmate’s status as an actor may not be cited, one that has been loosely described under the categories or regimentation and tyrannization.
P.42 [echelon authority] … any member of the staff class has certain rights to discipline any member of the inmate class, thereby markedly increasing the probability of sanction.
P.47 Two issues have been considered: the inmate’s sense of personal efficacy and the relation of his own desires to te the ideal interests of the establishment. The connection between these two issues is variable. Persons can voluntarily elect to enter a total institution and cease thereafter, to their regret, to be able to make such important decisions.
P.48 Mortification or curtailment of the self is very likely to involve acute psychological stress for the individual, but for an individual sick with his world or guilt-ridden in it mortification may bring psychological relief.
P.51 …punishments and privileges are themselves modes or organizations peculiar to total institutions. Whatever their severity, punishments are largely known in the inmate’s home world as something applied to animals and children; this conditioning, behavioristic model is not widely applied to adults, since failure to maintain required standards typically leads to indirect disadvantageous consequences and not to specific immediate punishment at all.
P.71 Total institutions frequently claim to be concerned with rehabilitation, that is, with resetting the inmate’s self-regulatory mechanisms so that after he leaves he will maintain the standards of the establishment of his own accord.
P.74 Many total institutions , most of the time, seem to function merely as storage dumps for inmates, but, as previously suggested, they usually present themselves to the public as rational organizations designed consciously, through and through, as effective machines for producing a few officially avowed and approved ends.
P.83 The avowed goals of total institutions are not great in number: accomplishment of some economic goal; education and training; medical or psychiatric treatment ; religious purification; protection of the wider community from pollution; and, as a student of prisons suggests, …”incapacitation, retribution, deterrence, and reformation”....
P.142 Inpatients commonly sense, at least for a tie, that hospitalization is a massive unjust deprivation, and sometimes succeed in convincing a few persons on the outside that this is the case
P.164 [wide fluctuation in regard] Learning to live under conditions of imminent exposure and wide fluctuation in regard, with little control over the granting or withholding of this regard, is an important step in the socialization of the patient a step that tells something important about what it is like to be an inmate in a mental hospital.
P.174 As Durkheim taught us, behind each contract there are non-contractual assumptions about the character of the participants.
P.176 Walled-in organizations have a characteristic they share with few other social entities: part of the individual’s obligation is to be visibly engaged at appropriate times in the activity of the organization, who entails a mobilization of attention and muscular effort, a bending of oneself to the activity at hand.
P.181 To accept privileges like yard exercises or art materials while in jail is to accept in part the captor’s view as to what one’s desires and needs are, placing one in a position of having to show a little gratitude and co-operativeness (if only in taking what is being given) and through this some acknowledgment of the right of the captor to make assumptions about oneself.
P.206 A criminal who “cops a plea” and elects to serve his time in a mental hospital instead of a jail can thus be thought to be really, underneath it all, in search of therapy, just as te malingerer in the army who affects mental symptoms can be thought to be genuinely ill, even though not ill with the particular disorder he is affecting. Similarly, a patient who settles down in the hospital, making a good thing of it, may be felt not to be abusing a place of treatment but to be really still ill since he elects this adaptation.
P.215 In considering the process of “working the system” one must inevitably consider the ways in which hospitalization itself was worked. For example, both the staff and inmates sometimes claimed that some patients came into the hospital to dodge family and work responsibilities, or to obtain free some major medical and dental work, or to void a criminal charge.
P.248 In everyday life, legitimate possessions employed in primary adjustments are typically stored, when not in use, in special places of safekeeping which can be gotten to at will, such as footlockers, cabinets, bureau drawers, and safe deposit boxes. These storage places protect the object from damage, misuse , and misappropriation, and allow the user to conceal what he possesses from others. More important, these places can represent an extension of the self and its autonomy, becoming more important as the individual foregoes other repositories of selfhood. If nothing can be kept for oneself, and everything one uses is used by others, too, then little protection from social contamination by others is possible.
P.255 Illicit transportation systems for objects are of course common and could hardly be omitted from any study of secondary adjustments. The venerable arts of smuggling provide the leading examples, and whether the point of reference is the national state or a social establishment, many mechanisms of concealed transportation can be cited.
P.257 One type of undercover communication is face to face. In prisons, inmates have developed a technique of talking without either moving their lips or looking at the person they are talking with.
P.259 In addition to exploiting disguised means of direct communication, inmates in total institutions develop mediated systems– the American prison term for which is “kiting”-- and the official systems already in use are sometimes exploited.
P.263 One way in which an individual may incorporate another’s effort into his own plans is based on unrationalized force or what might be called private coercion: here the helper helps not because his present condition will improve but because failure to comply will be costly enough to make him perceive compliance as involuntary; and here the person demanding help provides no pretext for the legitimacy of his demand.
P.275 Because of identification wit the plight or life situation of another, one individual may voluntarily assist another or proffer him a ceremonial demonstration of regard, in the first instance providing the student with a sign of solidarity, in the second with a symbol of it. Such signs and symbols of concern for another are typically reciprocated in some way , since a person to whom one stands in this kind of supportive relation often stands in a supportive relation to oneself. An exchange of desirables in effect therefore emerges and, where the relation is an equalitarian one, the exchange is often nicely balanced.
P.300 There is a popular view that the inmate group’s social control of its members is well organized and strong, as in the case of “kangaroo courts.” And apparently in prisons the trustworthiness of an inmate regarding other inmates’ secondary adjustments is an important basis of social typing
P.307 [Cantine and Rainer] Prison clothing is anonymous. One’s possessions are limited to toothbrush, comb, upper or lower cot, half the space upon a narrow table, a razor. As in jail, the urge to collect possessions is carried to preposterous extents. Rocks, string, knives– anything made by man and forbidden in man’s institution– anything– a red comb, a different kind of toothbrush, a belt– these things are assiduously gathered, jealously hidden or triumphantly displayed.
P.312 Another property is clearly evident in some undercover practices and possibly a factor in all of them: I refer to what Freudians sometimes call “overdetermination.” Some illicit activities are pursued with a measure of spite, malice, glee, and triumph, and at a personal cost that cannot be accounted for by the intrinsic pleasure of consuming te product.
Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates by Erving Goffman
P.23 [loss of identity/ physical indignities] In prisons, denial of heterosexual opportunities can induce fear of losing one’s masculinity.
There is another form of mortification in total institutions; beginning with admission a kind of contaminative exposure occurs. On the outside, the individual can hold objects of self-feeling– such as his body, his immediate actions, his thoughts, and some of his possessions– clear of contact with alien and contaminating things. But in total institutions these territories of the self are violated; the boundary at the individual places between his being and the environment is invaded and the embodiments of self profaned.
P.25 In general, of course, the inmate is never fully alone; he is always within sight and often earshot of someone, if only his fellow inmates. Prison cages with bars for walls fully realize such exposure.
P.28 I have suggested that the inmate undergoes mortification of the self by contaminative exposure of a physical kind, but this must be amplified: when the agency of contamination is another human being, the inmate is in addition contaminated by forced interpersonal contact and, in consequence, a forced social relationship.
The inmate himself may be frisked and searched to the extent– often reported in the literature– of a rectal examination.
P.29 Further, the practice of mixing age, ethnic, and racial groups in prisons and mental hospitals can lead an inmate to feel he is being contaminated by contact with undesirable fellow inmates.
P.31 One routine instance of this contaminative contact is the naming system for inmates. Staff and fellow inmates automatically assume the right to employ an intimate form of address or a truncated formal one; for a middle-class person, at least, this denies the right o hold oneself off from others through a formal style of address.
P.35 [disfigurement and defilement] I have considered some of the more elementary and direct assaults upon th self-various forms of disfigurement and defilement through which the symbolic meaning of events in the inmate’s immediate presence dramatically fails to corroborate his prior conception of self.
P.36 [looping effect] The individual finds that his protective response to an assault upon self is collapsed into the situation; he cannot defend himself in the usual way by establishing distance between the mortifying situation and himself.
P.37 A second assault upon the inmate’s status as an actor may not be cited, one that has been loosely described under the categories or regimentation and tyrannization.
P.42 [echelon authority] … any member of the staff class has certain rights to discipline any member of the inmate class, thereby markedly increasing the probability of sanction.
P.47 Two issues have been considered: the inmate’s sense of personal efficacy and the relation of his own desires to te the ideal interests of the establishment. The connection between these two issues is variable. Persons can voluntarily elect to enter a total institution and cease thereafter, to their regret, to be able to make such important decisions.
P.48 Mortification or curtailment of the self is very likely to involve acute psychological stress for the individual, but for an individual sick with his world or guilt-ridden in it mortification may bring psychological relief.
P.51 …punishments and privileges are themselves modes or organizations peculiar to total institutions. Whatever their severity, punishments are largely known in the inmate’s home world as something applied to animals and children; this conditioning, behavioristic model is not widely applied to adults, since failure to maintain required standards typically leads to indirect disadvantageous consequences and not to specific immediate punishment at all.
P.71 Total institutions frequently claim to be concerned with rehabilitation, that is, with resetting the inmate’s self-regulatory mechanisms so that after he leaves he will maintain the standards of the establishment of his own accord.
P.74 Many total institutions , most of the time, seem to function merely as storage dumps for inmates, but, as previously suggested, they usually present themselves to the public as rational organizations designed consciously, through and through, as effective machines for producing a few officially avowed and approved ends.
P.83 The avowed goals of total institutions are not great in number: accomplishment of some economic goal; education and training; medical or psychiatric treatment ; religious purification; protection of the wider community from pollution; and, as a student of prisons suggests, …”incapacitation, retribution, deterrence, and reformation”....
P.142 Inpatients commonly sense, at least for a tie, that hospitalization is a massive unjust deprivation, and sometimes succeed in convincing a few persons on the outside that this is the case
P.164 [wide fluctuation in regard] Learning to live under conditions of imminent exposure and wide fluctuation in regard, with little control over the granting or withholding of this regard, is an important step in the socialization of the patient a step that tells something important about what it is like to be an inmate in a mental hospital.
P.174 As Durkheim taught us, behind each contract there are non-contractual assumptions about the character of the participants.
P.176 Walled-in organizations have a characteristic they share with few other social entities: part of the individual’s obligation is to be visibly engaged at appropriate times in the activity of the organization, who entails a mobilization of attention and muscular effort, a bending of oneself to the activity at hand.
P.181 To accept privileges like yard exercises or art materials while in jail is to accept in part the captor’s view as to what one’s desires and needs are, placing one in a position of having to show a little gratitude and co-operativeness (if only in taking what is being given) and through this some acknowledgment of the right of the captor to make assumptions about oneself.
P.206 A criminal who “cops a plea” and elects to serve his time in a mental hospital instead of a jail can thus be thought to be really, underneath it all, in search of therapy, just as te malingerer in the army who affects mental symptoms can be thought to be genuinely ill, even though not ill with the particular disorder he is affecting. Similarly, a patient who settles down in the hospital, making a good thing of it, may be felt not to be abusing a place of treatment but to be really still ill since he elects this adaptation.
P.215 In considering the process of “working the system” one must inevitably consider the ways in which hospitalization itself was worked. For example, both the staff and inmates sometimes claimed that some patients came into the hospital to dodge family and work responsibilities, or to obtain free some major medical and dental work, or to void a criminal charge.
P.248 In everyday life, legitimate possessions employed in primary adjustments are typically stored, when not in use, in special places of safekeeping which can be gotten to at will, such as footlockers, cabinets, bureau drawers, and safe deposit boxes. These storage places protect the object from damage, misuse , and misappropriation, and allow the user to conceal what he possesses from others. More important, these places can represent an extension of the self and its autonomy, becoming more important as the individual foregoes other repositories of selfhood. If nothing can be kept for oneself, and everything one uses is used by others, too, then little protection from social contamination by others is possible.
P.255 Illicit transportation systems for objects are of course common and could hardly be omitted from any study of secondary adjustments. The venerable arts of smuggling provide the leading examples, and whether the point of reference is the national state or a social establishment, many mechanisms of concealed transportation can be cited.
P.257 One type of undercover communication is face to face. In prisons, inmates have developed a technique of talking without either moving their lips or looking at the person they are talking with.
P.259 In addition to exploiting disguised means of direct communication, inmates in total institutions develop mediated systems– the American prison term for which is “kiting”-- and the official systems already in use are sometimes exploited.
P.263 One way in which an individual may incorporate another’s effort into his own plans is based on unrationalized force or what might be called private coercion: here the helper helps not because his present condition will improve but because failure to comply will be costly enough to make him perceive compliance as involuntary; and here the person demanding help provides no pretext for the legitimacy of his demand.
P.275 Because of identification wit the plight or life situation of another, one individual may voluntarily assist another or proffer him a ceremonial demonstration of regard, in the first instance providing the student with a sign of solidarity, in the second with a symbol of it. Such signs and symbols of concern for another are typically reciprocated in some way , since a person to whom one stands in this kind of supportive relation often stands in a supportive relation to oneself. An exchange of desirables in effect therefore emerges and, where the relation is an equalitarian one, the exchange is often nicely balanced.
P.300 There is a popular view that the inmate group’s social control of its members is well organized and strong, as in the case of “kangaroo courts.” And apparently in prisons the trustworthiness of an inmate regarding other inmates’ secondary adjustments is an important basis of social typing
P.307 [Cantine and Rainer] Prison clothing is anonymous. One’s possessions are limited to toothbrush, comb, upper or lower cot, half the space upon a narrow table, a razor. As in jail, the urge to collect possessions is carried to preposterous extents. Rocks, string, knives– anything made by man and forbidden in man’s institution– anything– a red comb, a different kind of toothbrush, a belt– these things are assiduously gathered, jealously hidden or triumphantly displayed.
P.312 Another property is clearly evident in some undercover practices and possibly a factor in all of them: I refer to what Freudians sometimes call “overdetermination.” Some illicit activities are pursued with a measure of spite, malice, glee, and triumph, and at a personal cost that cannot be accounted for by the intrinsic pleasure of consuming te product.
May 27, 2020
Excellent analysis about total institutions. Goffman descripes all the variations of total insitution and espesially mental institutions. And he shows us how patients and the worker in this institutions interact to each other.
April 13, 2010
I read this for a history class while in college. I was in a religious scholarship program that functioned as a cult. The 12 students receiving the scholarship were not allowed to attend any social events outside the group and were more or less prevented from interfacing with society outside the "program". As far as I could see there was no relevance between this book and the history we were studying. It's possible that the professor suggest I (and I alone) report on this book to help me to gain insight to cultish groups. I agree with Rob, this book should be required reading for all schoolteachers. Schools could be considered cultish in that there is a tendency to try to help students learn by redirecting how they think and learn.
August 9, 2019
Overall, this has to be celebrated as a great piece of work. However, it is very dry and a bit boring; it takes some determination to plough through.
Some of the sentences and paragraphs are overly-complicated and unnecessarily long-winded, which is a shame in that this takes away from the messages trying to get through.
All 4 essays are worth a read but essays 3 & 4 are really where it’s at. If you can only bear to read one of them, go for number 4.
Some of the sentences and paragraphs are overly-complicated and unnecessarily long-winded, which is a shame in that this takes away from the messages trying to get through.
All 4 essays are worth a read but essays 3 & 4 are really where it’s at. If you can only bear to read one of them, go for number 4.
July 31, 2021
Tragic, realistic, horrible, but also interesting analysis in this book.
Not everyones cup of tea, but helps to understand why people experiencing these kind of places want to and/or try to forget their experiences.
Especially important to read for someone who has seen people been tormented, badly treated in the circumstances or places described in this book. Or even more so, if having experienced these surroundings or (mal)practises themselves.
Not everyones cup of tea, but helps to understand why people experiencing these kind of places want to and/or try to forget their experiences.
Especially important to read for someone who has seen people been tormented, badly treated in the circumstances or places described in this book. Or even more so, if having experienced these surroundings or (mal)practises themselves.
Read
December 27, 2015Read for school. I especially found the essay concerning the life inside prisons to be of interest, although some things certainly were hard to read (especially concerning shaming and degrading actions). Some parts of the book are definitely outdated but a lot of the general points are still relevant.
December 22, 2011
This was assigned for a college course called "Alienation and Mental Illness". An interesting look at how the conditions and treatment of in patient psychiatric hospitals strip one of their sense of self to the extent that the appearance of illness is greatly enhanced.
March 7, 2018
dated like a motherfucker. however, the first essay still holds weight well enough where it comes to describing and denoting goffman's view of 'total institutions.'
January 17, 2019
I actually enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I would. I knew I would appreciate it as a historical text, one that had such an impact on the deinstitutionalization movement and a key example of the thoughts on mental illness at the time. But I found his writing style quite enjoyable, especially considering that it's a study on such a serious matter. He writes in a very clear, intelligible way and even difficult concepts were made easy to understand. I did think there were perhaps too many examples, particularly in the first essays, but those were easy enough to skim over. I also would have liked some kind of final synthesis of the four essays since they were a bit disjointed, but as it is a collection of essays I suppose that comes with the territory. I also would have liked more examples from his experience doing field work in an institution - though surely most of his arguments stem from that, I expected more direct evidence from his time spent there, particularly direct quotes from patients. The lack of this latter point was a big oversight, in my opinion.
I don't agree with Goffman's overall message that mental illness is largely socially constructed, particularly constructed by asylums. That mass deinstitutionalization occurred and mental illness still persists is proof that his theory is not entirely sound, though of course he wouldn't have known that at the time unless he had a time machine. So I expected to disagree with most of what he said, but I was actually swayed by a lot of it. I am of the opinion that institutions have the potential to be very untherapeutic, damaging places, so his explanations of why they're this way was very interesting and convincing. However, like I said, where it drifted into the area of "and thus institutions create mental illness," I was not as persuaded by (though I certainly agree that institutions can exacerbate certain symptoms and thoughts).
I don't agree with Goffman's overall message that mental illness is largely socially constructed, particularly constructed by asylums. That mass deinstitutionalization occurred and mental illness still persists is proof that his theory is not entirely sound, though of course he wouldn't have known that at the time unless he had a time machine. So I expected to disagree with most of what he said, but I was actually swayed by a lot of it. I am of the opinion that institutions have the potential to be very untherapeutic, damaging places, so his explanations of why they're this way was very interesting and convincing. However, like I said, where it drifted into the area of "and thus institutions create mental illness," I was not as persuaded by (though I certainly agree that institutions can exacerbate certain symptoms and thoughts).
July 29, 2018
Published in 1961, the book relates to an earlier time, about 1956, as there is about a 5 yr delay between researching, writing, and publishing. Since the articles relate to prisons as well as mental hospitals, and since I have worked in both, my curiosity brought me to read this book. In addition, I believe it was recommended to me in my student days.
Reading it was a labor as it was written from a sociological perspective, which for me is cumbersome reading, to say the least.
However, I believe I would have found the sections on the "underlife" of a public institution, helpful in preparing to work in a prison. Perhaps the entire book would have been useful to prepare myself for my nursing school psychiatric placement (1958) in Cook County Hospital (Chicago),receiving center for mental patients. That was truly an eyeopening experience.
The fourth section is called, "The Medical Model and Mental Hospitalization:Some Notes on the Vicissitudes of the Tinkering." Mr. Goffman has not much good to say of psychiatrists (the tinkerers), or the nurses, "who have long since forgotten how to do medical services such as a blood draw."
One has to remember that the entire mental health field has developed and evolved to a much different entity from what it was in the late 50's. State mental hospitals, which have been mostly closed since 1964 are probably the institutions to which Mr Goffman is referring. Nevertheless, I have to say that Ypsilanti State Hospital in 1962/3 was pretty much as Mr Goffman describes, except for the Yorkwoods children's unit and the Washtenaw County unit. Much of the problem all through these years was due to lack of qualified staff.
Then there was/is social pressure to remove "these people" from the community at large.
Reading it was a labor as it was written from a sociological perspective, which for me is cumbersome reading, to say the least.
However, I believe I would have found the sections on the "underlife" of a public institution, helpful in preparing to work in a prison. Perhaps the entire book would have been useful to prepare myself for my nursing school psychiatric placement (1958) in Cook County Hospital (Chicago),receiving center for mental patients. That was truly an eyeopening experience.
The fourth section is called, "The Medical Model and Mental Hospitalization:Some Notes on the Vicissitudes of the Tinkering." Mr. Goffman has not much good to say of psychiatrists (the tinkerers), or the nurses, "who have long since forgotten how to do medical services such as a blood draw."
One has to remember that the entire mental health field has developed and evolved to a much different entity from what it was in the late 50's. State mental hospitals, which have been mostly closed since 1964 are probably the institutions to which Mr Goffman is referring. Nevertheless, I have to say that Ypsilanti State Hospital in 1962/3 was pretty much as Mr Goffman describes, except for the Yorkwoods children's unit and the Washtenaw County unit. Much of the problem all through these years was due to lack of qualified staff.
Then there was/is social pressure to remove "these people" from the community at large.
February 10, 2025
En urholkande redogörelse av samhällets så kallade "totala institutioner" och deras förhållanden. Villkoren vid platser som mentalsjukhus, men också militärförläggningar, fängelser och kloster, framläggs. Utifrån redogörelsen dras slutsatser om dessa institutioners egentliga syften. Kritiken är skriven som logisk argumentation, som ger intrycket att det första förhållandet med nödvändighet leder till, eller resulterar i, det andra förhållandet.
Det är en bok där varje stycke, mening och ordval tycks vara noggrant genomtänkt. Det känns alltid givande att läsa någonting som skribenten i fråga verkar ha tänkt igenom mycket noga och engagerat sig i, nästan oavsett vad ämnet är.
Ser min tid som sommarvikarie på psykiatriska vårdavdelningar i nytt ljus, vilket ju känns berikande men som förvisso också kan förväntas av en bok som denna, inte minst också av sociologin som helhet som i sin essens verkar ämna att plocka isär vår tillvaro och få oss att se det vi gör och våra organisationer i nytt ljus. Så allt är som sig bör med den saken. Likväl intressant.
I övrigt: även om genomtänkta ordval och formuleringar ihop med användningen av logik bidrar till fördjupad förståelse (om man anstränger sig tillräckligt för att förstå meningen och därmed ta till sig innehållet) så kan det också bli torrt och oinspirerande. Inte någon bladvändare.
Det är en bok där varje stycke, mening och ordval tycks vara noggrant genomtänkt. Det känns alltid givande att läsa någonting som skribenten i fråga verkar ha tänkt igenom mycket noga och engagerat sig i, nästan oavsett vad ämnet är.
Ser min tid som sommarvikarie på psykiatriska vårdavdelningar i nytt ljus, vilket ju känns berikande men som förvisso också kan förväntas av en bok som denna, inte minst också av sociologin som helhet som i sin essens verkar ämna att plocka isär vår tillvaro och få oss att se det vi gör och våra organisationer i nytt ljus. Så allt är som sig bör med den saken. Likväl intressant.
I övrigt: även om genomtänkta ordval och formuleringar ihop med användningen av logik bidrar till fördjupad förståelse (om man anstränger sig tillräckligt för att förstå meningen och därmed ta till sig innehållet) så kan det också bli torrt och oinspirerande. Inte någon bladvändare.
November 26, 2023
3.5 but closer to a 3 I think. I was hoping for more analysis and criticism and further probing of the political implications of involuntary commitment, but I found most of the book just to be a very descriptive sociological overview of total institutions. But then, the last 20 pages came, and Goffman just kept hitting me with one-sentence critical punches that he quickly moved on from without elaboration. So frustrating!! But I guess I just expected too much from what is ultimately a piece of empirical sociology. The last essay of the four was definitely my favourite, and the quote that sticks with me is
‘To be made a patient is to be remade into a serviceable object, the irony being that so little service is available once this is done.’
You can see why I wanted more cultural and political analysis of this, and to be fair Goffman suggests plenty of extra reading. Some of the concepts such as ‘looping’ discussed in the context of behaviour, and the idea of translating corrective procedures into medical ones were also super fascinating and definitely have application outside of this analysis.
Will definitely read more Goffman!!
‘To be made a patient is to be remade into a serviceable object, the irony being that so little service is available once this is done.’
You can see why I wanted more cultural and political analysis of this, and to be fair Goffman suggests plenty of extra reading. Some of the concepts such as ‘looping’ discussed in the context of behaviour, and the idea of translating corrective procedures into medical ones were also super fascinating and definitely have application outside of this analysis.
Will definitely read more Goffman!!
February 2, 2025
So, I’m sure this collection of academic essays was groundbreaking when it was originally published. And, it would be fascinating if one were researching the history/evolution of mental hospitals over time. However, to the casual sociology buff, this was a very dense, extremely dated analysis of mid-twentieth century mental hospitals. It certainly had its moments and the author presented his research with candor and objectivity. It just took me forever to plod through, ultimately grateful for how far we’ve come in the treatment of mental illness in the past fifty years.
April 17, 2021
"Nella società dell'abbondanza-fame, o c'è abbondanza o c'è fame. Ma la fame (...) non può manifestarsi brutalmente per ciò che è (ciò che consente all'abbondanza di essere e di mantenersi tale), ma deve venir velata e schermata attraverso le ideologie che la definiranno di volta in volta come vizio, malattia, razza, colpa."
Basaglia
Basaglia
October 21, 2024
“Every total institution can be seen as a kind of dead sea in which little islands of vivid, encapturing activity appear”
Really useful book for my thesis! Interesting that this work has recieved such critique within carceral georgaphy, when most of his research aligns with the wider conceptualisations of carcerality.
4/5
Really useful book for my thesis! Interesting that this work has recieved such critique within carceral georgaphy, when most of his research aligns with the wider conceptualisations of carcerality.
4/5
February 18, 2020
Ethnography of life in asylums. a sociological view of "total institutions" done in the 1950's. Interesting stories, and landmark book on certain aspects of how institutions influence behavior, if a bit dated.
February 19, 2023
Jos kiinnostaa sosiologian versio klassikoista "yksi lensi yli käenpesän tai full metal jacket", niin tämä kannattaa lukea. Kirja tiivistää mainiosti kamppailut erilaisten laitoksien maailmoista ja kuinka minuus tuhotaan struktuureissa.
Read
December 24, 2024“In ogni società si vive, ci si ammala, si diventa vecchi, si è soli.
[…]
Nel nostro sistema sociale non c’è posto per la dialettica; o si è formiche, alienate nella produzione; o cicale imprevidenti destinate a morire.”
[…]
Nel nostro sistema sociale non c’è posto per la dialettica; o si è formiche, alienate nella produzione; o cicale imprevidenti destinate a morire.”
Read
January 19, 2025It is an interesting book if you're interested in a different perspective of institutionalization and the "anti-psychiatrie" movement; psychiatric hospitals back in the day, and how the conditions took human autonomy.
Key concepts: the total institution, mental health, in-person experience
Key concepts: the total institution, mental health, in-person experience
Displaying 1 - 30 of 79 reviews