ABSTRACT
The basic therapy consisted of allowing the patients to sit on benches and stare at the blank walls. Many observers have tried to make sense of this phenomenon, but perhaps the best theoretical work on the meaning of the custodial approach has been that of Erving Goffman. In Asylums, Goffman used his research in a mental hospital to develop a theory of the world of the "total institution", a category that includes not only mental hospitals, but prison, the armed services, and so on. Goffman defined the total institution as a place of residence and work where a number of individuals in similar situations are cut off from the wider society and lead an enclosed, formally administered life. Institutionalized patients asked if they considered it healthy to remain in a mental hospital for a long time, saw nothing essentially unhealthy in such a situation. Noninstitutionalized patients saw it as essentially undesirable, as interfering with therapy.
