 Goffman is sometimes credited with having in 1957 coined the term " total institution " , though Fine and Manning note that he had heard it in lectures by Everett Hughes in reference to any type of institution in which people are treated alike and in which behavior is regulated . Regardless of whether Goffman coined the term " total institution " , he popularized it with his 1961 book , Asylums : Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates . The book has been described as " ethnography of the concept of the total institution " . The book was one of the first sociological examinations of the social situation of mental patients in psychiatric hospitals and a major contribution to understanding of social aspects of mental illness . 
