History of Madness
Foucault examines how European practices isolated and constituted madness as an object of knowledge, from confinement to psychiatric institutions. He questions changing boundaries between reason and unreason rather than writing a purely medical history.
Understanding the text
His thesis appeared in 1961 under a longer title; abridged editions and translations do not always reproduce the full text. Its historical interpretations and access to the speech of confined people remain contested.
Key points
- 01
Exclusion
Confinement practices create social categories before psychiatric explanations stabilize.
- 02
Knowledge
Medical classifications belong to histories of institutions and social relations.
- 03
Archives
Reconstruction depends on institutional traces and does not directly recover every excluded voice.
How to read it
Check whether your edition is complete and compare categories across periods without equating them with current diagnoses.
Editions & sources
Summaries and key points are original editorial interpretations. They accompany reading the work and do not replace an edition of the text. Editorial method ↗