COMPORTAMENTUL INDIVIDULUI INSTITUŢIONALIZAT. ANALIZĂ COMPARATIVĂ ÎNTRE FICŢIUNEA CINEMATOGRAFICĂ ŞI REALITATEA CARCERALĂ

The situation of institutionalized persons and the consequences of the forced institutionalization experience is a topic often addressed in scientific research, cinematographic productions or literary works. Living in closed and punitive environments such as prisons, correction schools, psychiatric hospitals, for a long time, involves a process of identity cancellation. Isolation from the rest of society makes it difficult to preserve the status of the individual and then recover the initial private identity. Regardless of the intensity of efforts made to support the preservation of individuality, the major difficulty manifests itself at the moment of reintegration into the external environment of "total institutions". Our paper analyzes the experience of institutionalization from the perspective of Erving Goffman's research. Reviewing this theoretical support, our work aims to analyze the films The Lobster (2015) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994), compared to the experience of a former prisoner of Bistrita Penitentiary in 2005 and of former prisoners in Pitesti Prison in the period 1949-1952. The objective of the research is to identify the primary, secondary behaviours and similarities between the selected cases.