The Total Institution

The total institution is a concept introduced by sociologist Erving Goffman in his 1961 book Asylums, describing a place of residence and work where a large number of similarly situated people are cut off from the wider society for an extended period and together lead an enclosed, formally administered, and tightly regimented round of life. Goffman identified five broad types: institutions caring for people seen as harmless (orphanages, nursing homes); institutions caring for people seen as incapable and a danger to themselves (mental hospitals); institutions protecting the community from perceived intentional dangers (prisons, camps); institutions organized around a worklike task (military barracks, ships, boarding schools); and institutions designed as retreats from the world (monasteries, convents). His analysis, based partly on fieldwork at a Washington, D.C. psychiatric hospital, focused on how such institutions strip incoming members of their prior identity through 'mortification of the self.' This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/