婦人一時保護施設の機能

スタッフと入所者との問題認識をめぐって

抄録

　Women who suffer from their husband's violence, women whose relations with their family were reduced because of repeated hospitalization in mental hospitals or by their "career of prostitution" ---, "the institution for troubled women" receives women suffering from these "problems".
　Women encounter and interact, with the staff of the institution and also with other inmates. Interactions between inmates and staff have structural characteristics as follows; (1)staff need informations about inmates' careers and other private affairs in order to deal with them adequately, (2)on the basis of this information staff categorize inmates according to their "problems" and it means that inmates are assigned an identity, (3)the social setting of the institution pressures inmates to accept "an assigned identity".
　In conjunction with the type of the inmate's "problems" these structural characteristics determine interactions between inmates and staff. At the same time, the degree of "compatibility of recognition" of inmates' "problems" has significant influences on their interactions. Influences on the "compatibility of recognition" are as follows; (1)cognition of the existence of "problems" and their content, (2)estimates of inmates' careers, (3) estimates of their ability to solve their own "problems" (4)attribution of responsibility for "problems".
　For example, women who have the "problem" of "husband's violence" Inmates attribute its cause to their husband's personal character, but staff often attribute it, to the inmates own personal character, partly because of their restricted institutional competence. And so, compatibility of recognition is difficult. These incompatibilities sometimes make inmates take action escape from the institution without staff permission.
　But, even if compatibility of recognition can be gained, another type of inmates' reaction occurs. Though it is passive, it has a radical influence on inmates' personality. By accepting "the assigned identity" they accept that they have problems but no ability to solve them, and they attribute responsibility for or the cause of their "problems" to themselves. That is to say, they form an identity which may be called "a need to be protected identity" Contrary to the goal of the institution to help inmates' independence, some of the inmates increase their dependence upon the instituion.
　From the short term point of view, the institution contributes much to the inmates' problem-solving. However, from long term view point, it may be said to have produced women who have an affinity to the institution.