Discipline and dehumanization in a total institution: institutional survivors’ descriptions of Time‐Out Rooms

Abstract

This article reports on interviews with 21 institutional survivors who lived until the mid‐ to late‐1980s in a total institution for the ‘training and care’ of ‘mental defectives’, operating in Alberta, Canada. The focus is on survivors’ descriptions of ‘Time‐Out Rooms’, used to discipline unruly and escaped inmates. Foucault’s theories about the disciplinary properties of modern society, the use of the gaze, technologies of the self and scientific discourse are both supported and complicated by survivor narratives. In addition, the work of Erving Goffman is examined in terms of the process of dehumanization in total institutions. Ties between institutional practices and eugenics are speculated upon.