History of Madness

by Foucault, Michel (2013)

Abstract

When it was first published in France in 1961 as Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la Folie à l'âge Classique, few had heard of a thirty-four year old philosopher by the name of Michel Foucault. By the time an abridged English edition was published in 1967 as Madness and Civilization, Michel Foucault had shaken the intellectual world. This translation is the first English edition of the complete French texts of the first and second edition, including all prefaces and appendices, some of them unavailable in the existing French edition. History of Madness begins in the Middle Ages with vivid descriptions of the exclusion and confinement of lepers. Why, Foucault asks, when the leper houses were emptied at the end of the Middle Ages, were they turned into places of confinement for the mad? Why, within the space of several months in 1656, was one out of every hundred people in Paris confined? Shifting brilliantly from Descartes and early Enlightenment thought to the founding of the Hôpital Général in Paris and the work of early psychiatrists Philippe Pinel and Samuel Tuke, Foucault focuses throughout, not only on scientific and medical analyses of madness, but also on the philosophical and cultural values attached to the mad. He also urges us to recognize the creative and liberating forces that madness represents, brilliantly drawing on examples from Goya, Nietzsche, Van Gogh and Artaud. The History of Madness is an inspiring and classic work that challenges us to understand madness, reason and power and the forces that shape them.

Key Passage

A general reorganisation took place at the beginning of the seventeenth  century,  and  a  fine  of  five  pounds  was  to  be  levied  on  any Justice of the Peace who did not have a house of correction in his jurisdiction.  There  was  an  obligation  to  install  looms  and  set  up  workshops  and factories  (for  milling,  spinning  or  weaving)  to  help  the  upkeep  of  the institution, and ensure that its inmates had work. (p.53)

Keywords

Foucault, Madness, Civilization, Foucauldian, Postmodern, Poststructuralism

Themes

History of Madness

Links to Reference

• https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=OT-VBQAAQBAJ
• https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=OT-VBQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=+History+of+madness+Foucault,+Michel&ots=7MmBO0YEn5&sig=RqNAAPT1XRXBBzcRB1QzWNbqkrs
• http://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/59674/1/96.pdf

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