From reading about the Stanford Prison Experiment on the online website, I noticed how it could relate to the books we read (Bell Jar) or are reading (Cuckoo’s Nest).  For the experiment, average college students were selected to participate (volunteered) in the study where they act out the atmosphere and environment of a real prison.  They were separated into groups of guards whose job it was to enforce the rules, and the prisoner who obeyed what the authoritative figures said.  The place where all of this testing took place was like in an institution where they were all isolated from the outside world.  The institution provided confinement, commitment, and a structure of running the system while subordinating the rights of the individual to the needs of the group.  It can be debatable whether examples of institutions are more restrictive or less restrictive, however they behave like organisms where their main goals are to survive and reproduce.  In the Stanford Prison Experiment, it acted exactly like that, and to keep the prisoners in line and keep order of the place things were done to the prisoners to make them obey the rules; things such as wear dresses, shave their heads, be identified by an i.d. number, wear blindfolds, stripped naked and sprayed with de-germ spray, chains on their ankles, had physical punishments inflicted on them and many more things done to humiliate, degrade and emasculate them.  The prisoners were also restricted in many ways by not having any clocks or windows in the building for one, so they wouldn’t be aware of the time and the guards controlled and monitored the prisoner’s movements as well through intercoms.  This experiment was made to function just like a real prison, however I think it got slightly carried away/ out of hand because it was very restrictive  to the prisoners, and they had no control over what they were able to do.  This experiment can also relate to the environment of the hospitals and wards in the two books we have read (reading) because they make the prisoners (patients) feel confined, controlled, and restrained in some way that eventually affects the patients (prisoners) mentally.