Final answer:
Goffman's work on asylums involved the examination of social dynamics within these institutions and how they affect individuals. He highlighted the social stigmas associated with mental illness and analyzed the institutional setting using his dramaturgical analysis approach.
Step-by-step explanation:
Erving Goffman explored the social dynamics within total institutions, like asylums, in his seminal work, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (1961). He investigated how these institutions function to socialize individuals into specific roles, often stripping them of their personal identity in the process. Goffman analyzed the social stigmas associated with mental illness and how such stigmas can affect the way patients are treated and perceived. This can lead to further marginalization and a host of negative implications for the individual's self-identity. The notion of a dramaturgical analysis, introduced earlier in his work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1958), is a significant underpinning of Goffman's analysis of asylums, where he likens social interaction to theater, with patients often finding themselves in involuntary roles, subject to the rigid scripts defined by the institutional setting.