ABSTRACT
The new staff coordinator entered the lodge directly from the hospital. That the change in social environments was rather dramatic for him is shown by a description of his initial perception of the lodge. It is contained in his entry in the research journal at the end of his first week at the lodge.
The difference in the atmosphere between this place and the hospital is very striking for someone who steps into it cold and with no preparation, as I have done. It really has the feeling of a going business, with none of the “marking time” mood of the hospital. In trying to analyze why it produces this impression, Tve decided that at least one reason is that the lodge is far more subject to contingencies set by the outside community than is the hospital. The simple fact of sending groups of men out to do productive work in the community for wages has generated a whole series of behaviors which are in contrast to those in the hospital. Because the men at the lodge are engaging in a whole series of activities which are necessary to operate in the community as a business, there is a general atmosphere of purposefulness. The men are engaged in meaningful tasks in the sense they are tasks which will produce a money reward in the society at large. This activity, plus the general absence of “busy work” or “work as therapy” hospital standards, generates the atmosphere I have described.
At present, it is hard to tell how typical this state of the lodge is. I 71know, from John’s [Dr. Cochran] reports, that the place has its ups and downs and I may be seeing it during an “up” period and I may be overly impressed. However, it is my impression that the kinds of behaviors which create this impression are simply those which are associated with the place running at all and that, while the effect may be less during a poorly functioning period, most of the features would remain while the place functioned at all.
There is obviously a wide range of difference among the men in performance, activity, etc. Some of them I have not known in the hospital setting and therefore cannot compare on in-and-out-of-hospital behavior. One characteristic seems common to all of the men and is a rather direct result of their changed role in this social situation as compared to the hospital —they are all more self-assured and direct in their approach to John and me than are the people on the ward, except for the psychopath or socially insensate patient who turns up on the ward occasionally. This difference is there to varying degrees in the different men but it is there in just about all of them.
