Perspectives on Erving Goffman’s “Asylums” fifty years on

Abstract

Erving Goffman's "Asylums" is a key text in the development of contemporary, community-orientated mental health practice. It has survived as a trenchant critique of the asylum as total institution, and its publication in 1961 in book form marked a further stage in the discrediting of the asylum model of mental health care. In this paper, some responses from a range of disciplines to this text, 50 years on, are presented. A consultant psychiatrist with a special interest in cultural psychiatry and mental health legislation, two collaborating psychotherapists in adult and forensic mental health, a philosopher, and a recent medical graduate, present their varying responses to the text. The editors present these with the hope of encouraging further dialogue and debate from service users, carers, clinicians, and academics and researchers across a range of disciplines.

Autoethnography & Goffman`s Asylums: Re-Storying Mental Illness

“…However, when examining collections of critical perspectives on Goffman's (1990) work, I have found many of his initial stigmatizing attitudes remain in current sociological interpretations of mental illness. For example, while Adlam et al (2013) provide an interesting collection of perspectives on Goffman's Asylums, even after 50 years of medical innovation, the perspective of the patient is still devalued. It is alarming that a widespread collection on mental illness hopes to spark discussion "from service users, carers, clinicians, and academics and researchers across a range of disciplines" (p. 605) without once discussing the perspective of those with lived experience.…”

“…It is alarming that a widespread collection on mental illness hopes to spark discussion "from service users, carers, clinicians, and academics and researchers across a range of disciplines" (p. 605) without once discussing the perspective of those with lived experience. In my comparison of Goffman's (1990) research to my own institutionalization, I will also be contrasting Adlam's (2013) experts against my own experience. Shalin's (2014) case study surrounding Asylums takes, understandably, a much more comprehensive approach to evaluating Goffman's (1990) research.…”

Medical Sociology in Africa

“…Asylum is a work that facilitated the development of contemporary, communityorientated mental health practices or the process of deinstitutionalisation (Adlam et al 2012;Suibhne 2011). Goffman's polemics favour the humanisation of a dehumanised group of people.…”

Obituary: Dr Séamus Mac Suibhne (Sweeney) (1978–2019)

“…In his academic life, Séamus researched, wrote and cowrote about medical education [2][3][4][5][6] and had a particular interest in technology as a new and exciting element of both teaching and clinical care [7][8][9]. Séamus wrote extensively about philosophy [10,11] and classic texts in the history of psychiatry [12][13][14][15][16][17], and had a particular interest in psychotherapy. Séamus's other contributions and co-authored papers concerned a dizzying array of topics including psychiatric liaison with primary care [18], 'vampirism' as a mental illness [19], translation and interpretation in psychiatry [20,21], synaesthesia [22], 'new' mental illnesses such as solastalgia and hubris syndrome [23,24], various aspects of psychiatric medication [25,26], bibliotherapy [27] and the work of Nicholas Culpeper, a seventeenth-century English physician, herbalist, botanist and astrologer [28].…”