Albert Goffman was a social psychiatrist, psychologist, and writer. In Canada, he is still regarded as the most influential American psychiatrist-psychologist of the 20th century. More information at edmontonka.
Goffman’s Life
Albert was born on June 11, 1922, in a small village near Mannville, Alberta, to a Ukrainian Jewish family. His father, Max, and his mother, Anna, had immigrated to Canada at the turn of the century. Immediately after arriving, Max opened his own tailoring business in Manitoba, which brought in good profits.
Starting in 1937, Albert Goffman attended St. John’s Tech High School in Winnipeg. In 1939, he enrolled at the University of Manitoba to study chemistry. While there, he became interested in sociology and psychology. After meeting famed sociologist Dennis Wong, Albert set out on a notable path. Wong recommended that Goffman leave the University of Manitoba and enroll at the University of Toronto. Albert took that advice, joining the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. In 1945, he graduated and then entered the University of Chicago.
Personal Life
Beyond his studies, Albert also established his personal life during his final year of university, marrying Angelica Schuyler. Sadly, their time together was brief. One year after the wedding, Albert became a father. Angelica suffered from a mental illness and took her own life shortly after giving birth.
Some time after his wife’s death, he married sociolinguist Gillian Sankoff.
Career
Goffman carried out many sociological studies. His first major work was The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, written in 1956. After completing his degree at Chicago, he served as an assistant director at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda. In that book, the author expanded on his observations. He describes the theatrical “performances” that take place in face-to-face interactions. Goffman believed that when an individual makes contact with another person, they seek to control or guide how the other person perceives them. He argued that participants in social encounters adopt particular practices to preserve their own face or the face of others.
Drawing on his observations, he wrote Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates, examining the details of psychiatric hospitalization, as well as the nature and outcomes of what he called “institutionalization.” He described how this process shapes individuals into the role of a “good patient,” reinforcing the notion that severe mental illnesses become chronic.
In 1958, Goffman joined the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1969, he was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 1970, he helped found the American Association for the Abolition of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization.
His 1971 book Relations in Public discusses various aspects of everyday life from both psychological and sociological perspectives. That publication brought him considerable success. By 1977, he had earned a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1979, he received the Cooley-Mead Award for Distinguished Scholarship from the Social Psychology Section of the American Sociological Association.
In 1981, Albert was chosen president of the American Sociological Association. He served for only two years due to a progressive illness that eventually claimed his life. In 1983, Goffman was posthumously awarded the Mead Award by the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.