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.
Table of Contents:
Foreword by Ian Hacking ix
Introduction by Jean Khalfa xiii
Preface to the 1961 edition xxvii
Preface to the 1972 edition xxxvii
PART ONE
I Stultifera Navis 3
II The great confinement 44
III The correctional world 78
IV Experiences of madness 108
V The insane 132
PART TWO
Introduction 163
I The madman in the garden of species 175
II The transcendence of delirium 208
III Figures of madness 251
IV Doctors and patients 297
PART THREE
Introduction 343
I The great fear 353
II The new division 381
III The proper use of liberty 419
IV Birth of the asylum 463
V The anthropological circle 512
APPENDICES
I Madness, the absence of an oeuvre. Appendix I of 1972 edition 541
II My body, this paper, this fire. Appendix II of 1972 edition 550
III Reply to Derrida (‘Michel Foucault Derrida e no kaino’. Paideia (Tokyo)
February 1972) 575
Endnotes 591
ANNEXES
I Documents 649
II Foucault’s original bibliography 665
III Bibliography of English works quoted in this translation 674
IV Critical bibliography on Foucault’s History of Madness 677
Index 695
