Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates

Through such now-classic works as The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), sociologist Erving Goffman (d. 1982) greatly influenced conceptions of the self and identity. In a new introduction to this reissued 1961 collection of four essays, Helmreich (sociology, CUNY Graduate Center and City College), explains Goffman's dramaturgical approach-based view that mental patients as well as prison inmates are shaped by "total institutions" and that their adjustments are a microcosm of social interactions in the world-at-large. The volume is not indexed. Annotation 穢2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)