Considered a seminal work on the subject and an influence in the deinstitutionalization of America’s mentally ill.
The first ‘essay’ of the four that make up the book was the hardest to get through, because the author tries to define ‘total institutions’ as a class, using a wide range of examples from mental hospitals to concentration camps and prisons and monestaries and naval vessels. The other three essays deal almost exclusively with mental hospitals and felt stronger for it, particularly when the author drew on his own experience in one particular state hospital.

Wow, man. 1960 was a different world. Racially segregated wards. People hospitalized for homosexuality! As an illness! The hell?

So… by turns drearily academic and historically fascinating (and horrifying.)