The Two Cultures and the Total Institution

‘The geriatric hospital felt like a backwater’: aspects of older people’s nursing in Britain, 1955–1980

“…Perhaps here lies the first problem with his idea, that these are all very different types of institutions with varying degrees of compulsion and enclosure. Nevertheless, these ambiguities, while providing fuel for his critics (Perry 1974 and Davies 1989), do support the thesis of this article. Goffman did not consider those who worked in asylums to be part of the total institution; indeed he actually states that, staff are ‘socially integrated into the outside world’ (Goffman 1961, p. 18).…”

“…Perry’s (1974) article, which discusses the culture of the total institution, considers Goffman’s idea of the total institution as somewhere that, ‘members’ daily activity is carried on in the immediate company of a large batch of others all of whom are treated alike’ (Perry 1974, p. 347). This does seem to apply to both the nursing staff and the patients alike.…”

“…And were generally known as 'punishment wards' so if a nurse had been caught coming in late or blotted her copy book or if she'd been off sick and wasn't fit for the stress of an acute ward, or perhaps wasn't safe to practice, they were put on the chronic wards (Norton 1991). Perry's (1974) article, which discusses the culture of the total institution, considers Goffman's idea of the total institution as somewhere that, 'members' daily activity is carried on in the immediate company of a large batch of others all of whom are treated alike' (Perry 1974, p. 347). This does seem to apply to both the nursing staff and the patients alike.…”

Total Institutions and Reinvented Identities

“…Firstly, flaws in Goffman's methodology and theoretical analysis may render Asylums unreliable as a document of institutional practices at the time (Davies 1989;Smith 2006). As a case study, St. Elizabeth's was not necessarily representative of psychiatric hospitals, let alone other types of TI (Perry 1974), and so it may not have been appropriate to present as an ideal type (Levinson & Gallagher 1964). Institutions vary in their degrees of totality (Wallace 1971), just as inmates may vary in their degree of commitment to them (Lin 1968), while some TIs are more voluntaristic than coercive (Mouzelis 1971).…”

De‐institutionalisation, Psychiatric Treatment and Mentally Disordered Offenders in Italy: Some Critical Considerations

“…As to the premises of this policy, little attention has been devoted to them (Prior 1993). However some authors (for example , Perry 1974;Donnelly 1992) emphasised the importance of sociological analysis in the field of total institutions; others (Jervis 1979;Ramon 1985) thought that psychoanalysis obscured the distinction between normal and pathological behaviour; others (Scull 1984;Warner 1985) advanced the hypothesis that de-institutionalisation was the effect of new policies devised by capitalism, in a phase of stagnant economy needing cuts in the cost of public services. Last, the role of new psychodrugs was usually underlined.…”