One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

In the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, criminal Randle McMurphy checks into a mental institution to avoid hard labor during a short prison sentence. He shows no sign of mental illness, but remains at the institution for evaluation. The ward is run by tyrant Nurse Ratched who represses the patients through monotonous daily routines, unforgiving medical treatments, and group therapy humiliation. McMurphy seems to find that the other patients in the ward are more institutionalized and scared of the Nurse than they are focused on leaving the institution and becoming functional in the outside world.
In this context and from a sociological standpoint, the mental institution can be considered a total institution. “Total institutions are physical settings in which groups of individuals are separated from the broader society and forced to lead an enclosed, formally administered life.” In total institutions, a member loses their self identity completely and is only allowed and able to identify with the larger group. This process called “total control” nullifies individuality and identifies the newcomers’ subordinate status. As in the mental institution, patients must all wear the same clothing, take their medication at dictated times, and are forced to talk about themselves during group therapy. Even when the patients ask to “move on to some other business” because they are bothered or bored repetitively talking about the same issues, Nurse Ratched refuses and instead debases them entirely.
While the uniformity of appearance and values is intended to make the total institutions plans more effective, it seems that sometimes what is good for the larger group may not be what is best for the individual, nor can any benefits be applied to assist life in the outside world. The mandatorily forced conformity makes it so that the individual identifies only with the ideology of the total institution. As shown in the film, this compulsory conformance can truly be detrimental. As in the mental hospital, McMurphy says “I must be crazy to be in a loony bin like this”, and later asks “is that crazy enough for ya? Want me to take a shit on the floor?. McMurphy’s statements show that although Dr. Sanji and the psychiatrist agreed that they “don’t think he’s overly psychotic, but still think he’s quite sick” and absolutely dangerous, McMurphy is beginning to resocialize into a new set of norms, values, and expectations that label him as crazy because of his new social setting.
McMurphy’s previous socialization experiences were systematically destroyed by the practices forced upon him by Nurse Ratched, while she aimed to serve the interests of the larger group in the ward. However, the patients are made to share the same values, methods, and vocabulary of their caretakers, who treat them as crazy, mentally ill persons incapable of functioning in the outside world. While the entrants abandon their original expectations, they adopt a more realistic view of their occupation as a crazy patient. McMurphy tries to resist this norm of occupation, telling evaluator Dr. Spivey that the reason he believes others think he is mentally ill is because “it’s cause I, uh, fight and fuck too much” and that “now they're telling me I'm crazy over here because I don't sit there like a goddamn vegetable. Don't make a bit of sense to me. If that's what being crazy is, then I'm senseless, out of it, gone-down-the-road, wacko. But no more, no less, that's it.” McMurphy’s disobedience as defined by the values set in the mental institution ends when he is lobotomized, becoming unresponsive and lifeless.
The mental institution in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest works in the same way as a total institution functions because it does not support variation and forces individuals to lead a obligatory and formally administered life. Any deviance from conformity results in humiliation and punishment. Clearly this system can have wholly negative effects on the individuals within a group such as McMurphy and the group entirely, dependent upon the nature of the forced values and expectations.