ABSTRACT
Our society has many homes for unwanted people. In addition to custodial homes and hospitals like Farewell, we have numerous mental hospitals, institutions for the retarded, nursing homes, old-age homes, training schools for delinquents, and so on. The specific kind of institution a person "qualifies" for is often arbitrary. Many Farewell patients have sufficient signs of mental deterioration or behavior disturbing to others to qualify them for a mental hospital. Although institutions for the unwanted all do much the same thing, they have differing "excuses" for their existence, and these excuses make some difference in how they operate. In mental hospitals patients are trained for work to maintain the hospital, not for work outside the institution. The characteristic common to the institutions is that they foster a social and economic dependence. The stable ongoing part of the rehabilitation unit as well as of the rest of the institution is not the professional therapeutic staff, but the custodial staff.
