Asylums (book)

The book Asylums: Essays on the Condition of the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates was written by the Canadian-born American sociologist Erving Goffman. It was initially published by Anchor Books, Doubleday & Co in the United States in 1961 and was published by Penguin Classics in the United Kingdom in 2022. It comprises four essays: On the Characteristics of Total Institutions, The Moral Career of the Mental Patient, The Underlife of a Public Institution and The Medical Model and Mental Hospitalization. After experiencing the mental illness of someone close to him first-hand, Goffman remarked this book would have been 'very different' had he written it after the experience.