 The research that Goffman had done in <unk> inspired him to write his first major work , The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life ( 1956 ) . After graduating from the University of Chicago , in 1954 – 57 he was an assistant to the athletic director at the National Institute for Mental Health in Bethesda , Maryland . <unk> observation done there led to his essays on mental illness and total institutions which came to form his second book , Asylums : Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates ( 1961 ) . 
