Erving Goffman revisited

Thirty years ago, when I was a medical student, I read two of Erving Goffman's books. Asylums(1961) examined “total institutions” such as mental hospitals and prisons and showed how inmates can become degraded and dehumanised. The other was Stigma(1963), which I found harder to read, the core of which was about the persona projected by people who carry a feeling of different-ness (or stigma). Compared with the standard texts on psychiatry we were advised to read, these books, written by a Canadian sociologist, were refreshing, particularly …