Monday 14 July 2008

Institutionalised volume 2: a titbit

(Left, taken from INSTITUTIONALISED: volume 2) Staff guidelines posted at the entrance to one of the three, closely linked, small, privately funded, experimental psychology units housed deep in the bowels of the St Mary's psychiatric wing.
As in the other two units, a small closely-knit team of psychiatric nurses have been put in control of the lives of a small group of medical research volunteers.

Hand-selected through psychological profiling for their latent propensity to dominance and their fondness for pretty young girls, here they have been given completely free rein, within a unit setup so as to approximate a Victorian workhouse, over five young women, all within their late teens to early twenties.
A sixth is on her way to join them: Susan Stringer, no longer strictly speaking a volunteer subject but legally now voluntarily committed, a voluntary mental patient ( though striving to deny it, even to herself).

Of course all institutions have to have guidelines to run by. Staff instructions prominently displayed where all can see them, not merely those to whom they directly apply, serves a twofold purpose; the new girl will soon be able to attest to the most major of these. It all about impact, psychological impac ;at the end of the day it's all about forming the right mindset from outset.

The drawing on the right I just found on the web and thought it put over the right atmosphere; although it has little to do with the type of surroundings our sweet subjects find themselves confined to in volume 2: theirs is a far more pristine aseptically medicalised environment. But rest assured, volunteers or not, they’re all kept safely under lock and key; it's just as secure, perhaps more so in its way.

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