From Autumn 1954 to the end of 1957 I was a visiting member of the Laboratory of Soda-environmental Studies of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. During those three years I did some brief studies of ward behavior in the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. In 1955-56 I did a year's field work at St. Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, DC, a federal institution of somewhat over 7000 inmates that draws three quarters of its patients from the District of Columbia. Later additional time for writing up the material was made possible by an NIMH grant, M4111 (A), and through participation in the Center for the Integration of Social Science Theory at the University of California at Berkeley.

My immediate object in doing field work at St. Elizabeths was to try to learn about the social world of the hospital inmate, as this world is subjectively experienced by him. I started out in the role of an assistant to the athletic director, when pressed avowing to be a student of recreation and community life, and I passed the day