Typically, the person who is committed to a mental hospital has not broken the law but is locked up because of a "major mental illness." The people most likely to be committed are the powerless: poor, uneducated people who do not speak the language well, children, and the very old. Psychiatric sanctions came about because they satisfy a popular need for controlling certain behaviors that are not illegal but which "normal" people want controlled. The very essence of the mental hygiene laws is to serve a purpose quite different from the preservation of individual liberty. It is to preserve and promote a common ideology or world view; it is to preserve and protect the family from its excessively disruptive members who interfere with the well-being of the dominant members; and it is to do so under medical and therapeutic auspices.