Total Institutions Total Insitutions a Total Institution

Total Institutions Total Insitutions A total institution according to Goffman is a place of residence and work where a number of like individuals (with similar character orientation), cut off from the larger society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life. Examples include prisons, mental hospitals and many more.

In this regard every particular institution be it prison, monastery, mental institution captures something of the time and interest of its members and gives or rather provides something of a world to them that is to say every institution has an encompassing tendency. In this the encompassing is characterized or symbolized by a barrier to social intercourse with the outside world characterized by the physical plant, for instance locked doors, high walls and barbed wires and so forth.

The following are the different groupings in which total institutions of our society can be linked to: First are the institutions established to care for persons felt to be both incapable and harmless; these include the homes for the blind, the aged, and the orphaned. Second, the institutions established to care for individuals felt by society that they are incapable of looking after themselves and are threat to the community if not catered for, albeit an unintended one, these includes among others; TB sanitaria, mental hospitals, and leprosaria.

Third category of total institutions is made up in such a manner to protect the community against what it feels to be intentional dangers to it, with the welfare of the persons thereby sequestered but not the immediate issue this includes institutions like; jails, penitentiaries, and concentratsion camps.

Fourth, there are institutions established purposefully for people to pursue some work like tasks and justifying themselves only on these instrumental grounds, these institutions are army barracks, ships, boarding schools, work camps, colonial compounds among others Finally, there are those institutional establishments designed as retreats from the outside world even also they often serve as training centers for the religious; they include abbeys, monasteries, convents, and other cloisters. According to Goffman destruction to self in a total institution can be exhibited as below.

Dispossession role According to Goffman role dispossession can be described as a lack of freedom of an individual to schedule his own day in a manner fulfilling to him. A significant number of former members from total institutions have reported having their entire day dictated to them. In another incident, a story is told by Layton of a woman who worked hard to develop a recipe for good tasting nutritious jam using only the available foods at the compound.

Jones reprimanded the woman when she offered one to him; she was publicly rebuked for wasting the valuable resources of the people on a self seeking pursuit. The woman in this case had seen herself being a good cook, but her efforts at continuing in this part of her identity only caused her to be despised by the very person with whom she sought to be seen great.

In the end result the people become drones with no other use other than to perform duties assigned to them as they were told, no creativity was encouraged as this was seen as selfish (Layton, 1998). This is just a prototypical case that serves to indicate the lack of industriousness and creativity among the many total institutions, which only serve to destroy the persons admitted rather than aiding them in their quest for an all round life.

Programming and identity trimming Goffman asserts to a referencing that classifies the individual into "an object that can be fed into the administrative machinery of the establishment." As the individuals arrive at the institutional premises, every one had all of his or her belongings searched, and told the basic rules of what is allowed and expected at the institution. Here individuals are assigned a place to sleep, as well as given specific tasks, such as field worker, security guard, caregiver or cook.

Part of the human identity that is tied to roles is the belief in the value of the contribution made. At Jonestown for instance, residents were regularly reminded that they only served as tools by which greater things would be accomplished. Dispossession of name, property, and "identity kit" As mentioned above, at Jonestown followers give up all possessions upon entering the institution.

Residents are only allowed to have particular number of clothing items, and the rest go into a common pool for future use by those seen to be dire in need. In addition, individuals who are taking medications are at times shocked to have their prescriptions taken from their possession. Make-ups and extensive collections of personal hygiene items, such as hair rollers or colognes are confiscated. Another form of a total institution is prison; its entire structure is based on solitude and separatism.

The convict is isolated from the outside world and everything that motivated his crimes. In the second place, the prisons are to a large extent isolated from one another.

The use of solitary confinement was in the past designed to allow prisoners to rediscover their own conscience and better voice through spiritual conversion, this was unfortunately later discovered that no form of torture could have been worse than solitary confinement since it ended up causing within many prisoners adverse psychological effects among them; delusions, dissatisfaction with life, depression, feeling of panic and on many occasions madness. All of these are symptoms of chronophobia -- a state most of the times referred to as prison neurosis.

Uniforms issued by prison authorities also play a large part in destroying personal identity, and crashing down a person's spirits. The repetitive outfits are a way whereby prison authorities achieve unification among inmates, though these portrays that they (prisoners) are no longer individuals, but are part of a whole and That whole is symbolic of - society.(Jenny Krestev, et.al., 2011) The total institutions not only alter the physical life of the subject but there comes with it the psychological humiliation that the persons in authority may subject the.