A Society on the Margins of the Society – Therapeutic and Communal Practices in the Experimental Institute of Work Therapy in the 1950s and 1960s
Társadalom a társadalom peremén. Terápiás és közösségi gyakorlatok az intapusztai munkaterápiás intézetben az 1950-es, 1960-as években
Résumé
Based on Erving Goffman’s theory of total institutions, this case study examines the different forms of relations between the Experimental Institute of Work Therapy at Intapuszta, the local society beyond its walls, and the state-socialist system in Hungary. Applying the idea of therapeutic work and Marxist-Leninist visions of mental health and society, institutes of work therapy constituted an ideologically acceptable place of psychiatric normalization in the first one and a half decades of socialist regime. The main goal of my case study is to find out whether labor in therapeutic practice and the other healing and communal methods applied in these institutions were conform with the Party’s expectations and with social norms. What kind of limits and negotiations could influence the success of therapy and everyday life in the psychiatry? Moreover, the realization of local healthcare workers’ (psychiatrists, nurses, etc.) initiatives is also a key question of this article. These initiatives were occasionally inconsistent with the professional and political goals of the therapy, but they enabled a connection between the worlds within and beyond the psychiatric normalization.
To answer my questions, I analyze The Gilded Cage, the well-known documentary novel of István Benedek, oral history interviews made with the former employees of the Experimental Institute of Work Therapy, as well as the the documents of the archive of the institute and of Open Society Archives.