Objective: Analyze the social interactions of the San Antonio asylum inmates (Barranquilla) from the dramatic perspective, in order to understand the mechanisms by which they assume their stigmas to accommodate the system. Method: Interactionist ethnography of an analytical nature. The information was collected through participant observation, field notes, photographic record and 22 in-depth interviews with key informants. The information, previously organized in units of registration, context and categories, underwent a critical discourse analysis to find patterns of relevance that served to develop, analytically, the results in five axes. Results: Five dramatic strategies were identified through which the inmates of the asylum incorporate the stigmas in order to tactfully please the system: the presence of the researchers themselves as stigmatizing agents, the attributed obedience, the excessive identity transparency as a patient, the self-imposed stigma and strategic ageism. Conclusion: The San Antonio asylum inmates end up participating in their own subjection, incorporating the stigmas attributed to them by the system. We advocate to develop a humanistic cultural vision of the care that restores, to the space of attention to sensitive people, its anthropological value, so that it prevails over institutional procedures.