ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book talks about people who are at the end of the road, and what happens to them in a rehabilitation program, which implies that they have a future ahead of them. It describes some typical coping patterns which analysts' observed among the inmates. The book discusses some of the ways in which inmates create areas of choice in the interstices of the "system." It also examines explicitly some of the outcomes of the rehab program. The book includes the staff's own working definitions of success and failure to measure how they fared. It presents evidence to support some assertion that the program was largely a failure from the point of view of both the staff and the patients. The book draws heavily on Erving Goffman's analysis of total institutions.
