ABSTRACT
To individual F-Seconders, there were also certain groups or classes of patients who significantly affected conception of Ward F-Second— its stresses and ways of coming to terms: Veteran patients of considerable seniority and status, because they personified, articulated, and enforced some of the predominant norms of Ward F-Second. New patients, because in the process of undergoing the strains of socialization into the sick role and the ward community, they gave voice to the stresses of Ward F-Second. Boy patients, terminally ill patients, and patients undergoing acute psychotic episodes, both because they were less inhibited about expressing some of the underlying sentiments of the ward, and because their presence on F-Second elicited deeply-felt reactions from other patients. A more objective and equipoised observer returned to the ward at a later time to do a follow-up study and to see which of her earlier perceptions and interpretations still held, and which no longer seemed to pertain.
