Of course, that should be symbolic interactionist thread, the astronomical thread is for astronomy.
Of course, that should be symbolic interactionist thread, the astronomical thread is for astronomy.
Of course, that should be symbolic interactionist thread, the astronomical thred is for astronomy
To be sure, DW!
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
Here is a link to all the work of Erving Goffman: http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/goffmanbio.html, the original symbolic interactionist of the study of individuals in interaction.
Goffman did a study of interaction in subsistence farming (crofting) in the Shetland Islands of Scotland ("Communication conduct in an island community",1953) as his unpublished Ph.D. in sociology at Chicago University. Everything in his life's work stemmed from that!
I've been reading Erving Goffman Asylums: essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates (Penguin, 1961). He tries to understand how people end up in an asylum. There is little hard information on this, but certainly a small percentage realise that life outside is hard for them to cope, and choose to enter an asylum. We also need to bear in mind that in the early 1960s it would have been even harder to find advice than is the case today, while considerable variations may be evident between countries. For someone trying to hold a job down but finding it increasingly problematic this may be something that emerges at an earlier stage than when the initial problems are "managed" by a sympathetic spouse or other relative.
Much more common is when their closest relative realises that things are amiss and they seek advice about what to do. This is the start of the pre-patient phase, involving abandonment, disloyalty, and embitterment. Goffman writes about the existence of a "betrayal funnel", where the next of kin seeks advice from his or her doctor. Already here there is the start of the betrayal funnel which perhaps ends with the spouse taking advice privately, and recommending that they together talk to someone who knows about these things.
Senility and admission to an old-peoples home is usually left as long as possible but here too there is a "career". Goffman writes very little about this, but problems maintaining basic bodily hygiene will need addressing sooner or later, and of other matters such as dementia I have equally little knowledge.
I read Asylum in the 70ies, when I still was as student at university. I guess many things have changed since them for better or for worse.
I noticed that in the city where I live several mental hospitals were closed. They are not so necessary any more these days because some of the mental illnesses can be treated at home or at day hospitals.
The situations of the prisons and the prisoners worsened terribly. These days I heard that there are about 600.000 prisoners in the whole country.
As for the aging people I think that people are getting older now than the y did in the 70ies. That poses the need for more retirement homes and also medical treatments.
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
I don't think Asylums involved any active "treatment", they were basically storage places for the mentally ill. That was in the 1960s, I don't think there is really any difference today, either. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychiatric_hospital
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