Bycie pacjentem szpitala psychiatrycznego

The article is a translation of a fragment of "Asylums. Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates" by Erving Goffman. The chapter "The Moral Career of the Mental Patient" deals with changes of the self withift institutional or social systems such as the mental asylum. The self is defined here as something which inhabits these systems. In this sense the self is not a characteristic feature of the person to whom it is ascribed, but is rather situated in the patterns of social control.