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Product Description
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.
About the Author
Erving Goffman (1922-1982) was one of the most influential sociologists of the twentieth century. He was Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
30 of 33 people found the following review helpful
As a Nurse Lecturer I recommend this book to all my mental health students. I first read it as a first year trainee psychiatric nurse and it saved my career. There I was sitting in a care of the elderly ward in a mental hospital thinking "what the (*&^ is going on here!?", ready to pack it in, and then I started to read this book. As I progressed through the book it all began to make sense and Goffman became my hero! What a man, what a researcher, what a writer. His theory is punctuated here and there with anecdotes and as such his writing is highly accessible. Fortunately, the world I experienced as a student and that Goffman wrote of is dying, but its vestiges linger and this book is still useful today. This book will one day become a historical account, but will always stand a a testimony to the need for and effectiveness of covert qualitative research.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Erving Goffman's Asylums was first published in the same year as Thomas Szasz's The Myth of Mental Illness. Dutch historian Gemma Blok claims that these two books, by drawing attention to the terrible conditions in mental institutions, inducted a new era in psychiatry. Whether they actually had that impact is debatable, but neither are about conditions in mental institutions.
Asylums is not specifically about asylums, mental institutions, or psychiatry. It is about what Goffman calls "total institutions." Why the book is called Asylums remains obscure.
Total institutions are places where people, called inmates by Goffman, live, work, eat, sleep, and carry on all their social activities. Examples of voluntary total institutions are monasteries and ships' crews. Semi-voluntary total institutions might be boarding schools or sanatoria. Involuntary total institutions are compulsory military service, jails, concentrations camps, and mental institutions. Some total institutions have live-in staff. Others have staff coming in from the outside, serving as a bridge to society at large.
Goffman is interested in the relationships that develop in total institutions: inmates among themselves, inmates and staff, and staff among themselves. He draws on a vast array of anecdotes from various kinds of total institutions. Of course the relationships in involuntary institutions will inevitably reflect the bad conditions and/or injustices of these places, but this is not Goffman's primary concern. He has no problem comparing, for instance, a mental institution to a monastery, when discussing the alternative forms of communication developed by their inmates.
From the point of view of opposition to psychiatry, the most outstanding feature of Asylums may in fact be that Goffman makes such comparisons. Inmates are inmates to Goffman, psychiatric or not. Although not denying the existence of mental illness, Goffman assigns no role to it in influencing interpersonal relationships. The inmates of mental institutions he describes behave as rationally as inmates of other total institutions, and develop similar relationships and coping strategies, unless they are so brain-damaged that they are more like fixtures.
In the last section of the book, constituting only about 50 pages out of 336 (in the edition I read, which was published posthumously in the UK in 1986) Goffman examines psychiatry as a profession. He points out the social role of the psychiatrist as opposed to the service role of other physicians. Today we would call it eminence based medicine as opposed to evidence based medicine.
If you're looking for testimony about how bad conditions were in mental institutions, Asylums will disappoint you. If you're interested in micro-societies - Goffman calls them shadow societies - then you will surely find Asylums as fascinating as I did.
Copyright © MeTZelf
Asylums is not specifically about asylums, mental institutions, or psychiatry. It is about what Goffman calls "total institutions." Why the book is called Asylums remains obscure.
Total institutions are places where people, called inmates by Goffman, live, work, eat, sleep, and carry on all their social activities. Examples of voluntary total institutions are monasteries and ships' crews. Semi-voluntary total institutions might be boarding schools or sanatoria. Involuntary total institutions are compulsory military service, jails, concentrations camps, and mental institutions. Some total institutions have live-in staff. Others have staff coming in from the outside, serving as a bridge to society at large.
Goffman is interested in the relationships that develop in total institutions: inmates among themselves, inmates and staff, and staff among themselves. He draws on a vast array of anecdotes from various kinds of total institutions. Of course the relationships in involuntary institutions will inevitably reflect the bad conditions and/or injustices of these places, but this is not Goffman's primary concern. He has no problem comparing, for instance, a mental institution to a monastery, when discussing the alternative forms of communication developed by their inmates.
From the point of view of opposition to psychiatry, the most outstanding feature of Asylums may in fact be that Goffman makes such comparisons. Inmates are inmates to Goffman, psychiatric or not. Although not denying the existence of mental illness, Goffman assigns no role to it in influencing interpersonal relationships. The inmates of mental institutions he describes behave as rationally as inmates of other total institutions, and develop similar relationships and coping strategies, unless they are so brain-damaged that they are more like fixtures.
In the last section of the book, constituting only about 50 pages out of 336 (in the edition I read, which was published posthumously in the UK in 1986) Goffman examines psychiatry as a profession. He points out the social role of the psychiatrist as opposed to the service role of other physicians. Today we would call it eminence based medicine as opposed to evidence based medicine.
If you're looking for testimony about how bad conditions were in mental institutions, Asylums will disappoint you. If you're interested in micro-societies - Goffman calls them shadow societies - then you will surely find Asylums as fascinating as I did.
Copyright © MeTZelf
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
As a sociology postgraduate and teacher, I have come across this book many times in my academic career. Asylums is the result of many years of observation of mental institutes and is an excellent title that is easily accessible by any one studying at A-level or higher. If you plan to study and look at this book in great depth, then I would recommend looking first at Goffman's 'Frame Analysis' As with most of Goffman's work, it is best understood through his own words, as it can be open to interpretation and when reading other authors like Giddens, I feel more like I am getting their interpretation and opinion rather than the raw information.
It is a good segway into symbolic interactionist thought and discussion, though basic prior knowledge of the symbolic interactionist tradition would be useful, it does put you into the thick of the theory. This and its follow up paper 'Stigma. Notes on the management of spoiled identity' have been used countless times on my degree and postgraduate courses. Other works that may also interest you that also works on the idea of roles and dramaturgy is P.G.Zimbardo's prison experiment, which gives further validity to Asylums.
It is important to remember that this is not a medical text book, it is not meant to explain mental illness in any way, but rather show how his theory can be used to explore roles, stigma and identity, picking extreme cases like those within total institutions.
It is a good segway into symbolic interactionist thought and discussion, though basic prior knowledge of the symbolic interactionist tradition would be useful, it does put you into the thick of the theory. This and its follow up paper 'Stigma. Notes on the management of spoiled identity' have been used countless times on my degree and postgraduate courses. Other works that may also interest you that also works on the idea of roles and dramaturgy is P.G.Zimbardo's prison experiment, which gives further validity to Asylums.
It is important to remember that this is not a medical text book, it is not meant to explain mental illness in any way, but rather show how his theory can be used to explore roles, stigma and identity, picking extreme cases like those within total institutions.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Good
I ordered thi book as I am studying it at University, and I needed it to arrive promptly, which it did. It was brand new; in very good condition. I'm very happy with this book.
Published 7 months ago by Chantel
A Classic of Enduring Relevance
The fact that this collection of essays has been in print for almost four decades is consistent with its enduring signficance. Read more
Published on 21 Oct 2003 by Noel Byrne
yes, ok, hmm - NO!!!
I'm an undergraduate sociologist, who unfortunatly had to read this book for his exams. If you have any choice in the matter I say leave it alone. Now.
Goffman... He is a marvel. Read more
Published on 14 Sep 2003 by "a_sociologist"
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