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History of Madness

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12 Reviews
Taylor & Francis, Apr 24, 2006 - Philosophy - 725 pages

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.

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Review: History of Madness

User Review  - Cameron - Goodreads

Bought this in Seattle in October. Read full review

Review: History of Madness

User Review  - Melissa Engberg - Goodreads

This is one of my favorites; I'm re-reading it now. F's acumen on our relationship to madness through history is astoundingly clever, of course, and I find something new each time I approach this book. Read full review

All 12 reviews »

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References from web pages

Debunking Andrew Scull: Michel Foucault’s History of Madness « The ...
Scull continues, “Foucault’s isolation from the world of facts and scholarship is evident throughout History of Madness.” What he really means, ...
kugelmass.wordpress.com/ 2007/ 04/ 29/ debunking-andrew-scull-michel-foucaults-history-of-madness/

Theoria: Blog » Still More on The History of Madness
While there is certainly a degree of continuity between The History of Madness and The Birth of the Clinic, namely a concern with the institutional sites of ...
www.theoria.ca/ theoria/ archives/ 2007/ 04/ still-more-on-the-history-of-madness.html

MADNESS AND TRANSLATION Michel Foucault, The History of Madness ...
Michel Foucault, The History of Madness. Edited by Jean Khalfa ... History of Madness thus provides insight into the development ...
www.springerlink.com/ index/ 4lu6v5r516m85132.pdf

myspace
Yes Foucault's "History of Madness" could be termed 'an extended version of ... In actuality, "the History of Madness" came first, it is actually the title ...
forum.myspace.com/ index.cfm?fuseaction=messageboard.viewThread& entryID=34558301& categoryID=0& IsSticky=0& groupID=1004...

Cambridge Collections Online : Foucault and the History of Madness
"Foucault and the History of Madness." The Cambridge Companion to Foucault. Ed. Gary Gutting. Cambridge University Press, 2005. Cambridge Collections Online ...
cco.cambridge.org/ extract?id=ccol0521840821_CCOL0521840821A004

faure
To Do Justice to Freud: The History of Madness in the Age of Psychoanalysis ... This is perhaps one of the meanings of any history of madness, ...
criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/ issues/ v20/ v20n2.derrida.html

History of Madness
History of Madness - 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...
www.clinicalpsychologyarena.com/ books/ History-of-Madness-isbn9780415277013

Madness and Civilization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A full translation titled The History of Madness was published by Routledge in June 2006. [1] This was Foucault's first major book, written while he was the ...
en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Madness_and_Civilization

VTLS Chameleon iportal Full Record
Title, History of madness / Michel Foucault ; edited by Jean Khalfa ... History of Madness begins in the Middle Ages with vivid descriptions of the ...
202.186.5.2/ cgi-bin/ gw/ chameleon?sessionid=4442557556& function=CARDSCR& search=KEYWORD& lang=en& pos=1& host=10.11.50.2+...

Rewriting the History of Madness: Studies in Foucault's Histoire ...
Michel Foucault has had an extraordinary impact on writers in the human sciences since his first book Madness and Civilization appeared in English
www.questia.com/ library/ book/ rewriting-the-history-of-madness-studies-in-foucaults-histoire-de-la-folie-by-arthur-st...

About the author (2006)

Michel Foucault (1926-84). Celebrated French thinker and activist who challenged people's assumptions about care of the mentally ill, gay rights, prisons, the police and welfare.

Jean Khalfa is a lecturer in French at Cambridge University, UK.

Jonathan Murphy is an experienced translator, editor and lecturer.

Bibliographic information