Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason

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Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason

4.06 of 5 stars 4.06 · rating details · 4,129 ratings · 159 reviews

Perhaps the French philosopher's masterpiece, which is concerned with an extraordinary question: What does it mean to be mad?

Paperback, 320 pages

Published November 28th 1988 by Vintage (first published 1961)

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Dec 29, 2012 AC rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: foucault, postmodernism

UPDATE:
I realize now (as I read Dreyfus and Rabinow) that I completely misread this book. I read it too quickly, and the book is maddeningly eccentric and so difficult to comprehend. Further, I read it without sufficient context either of this book itself, or of Foucault's corpus, or of the philosophical background in which or against which MF is operating. The problem is intensified by the fact that Foucault is one of those thinkers who changed his mind extensively from first to last on importa...more

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Sep 06, 2008 Jessica marked it as aborted-efforts Recommends it for: crazy smart people; smart, crazy people

Recommended to Jessica by: crazy people; smart people (quelle est la différence?)

Shelves: social-work-or-relevant, crazy-ladies, kind-of-depressing

A last question remains: In the name of what can this fundamental language be regarded as a delirium? Granting that it is the truth of madness, what makes it true madness and the originating form of insanity? Why should it be in this discourse, whose forms we have seen to be so faithful to the rules of reason, that we find all those signs which will most manifestly declare the very absence of reason?

A central question, but one to which the classical age has not formulated a direct answer. We mus...more

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Oct 18, 2009 Δx Δp ≥ ½ ħ htgkvkkviholmvobsvzighxofyyzmw rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: i-do-not-want-spoil-the-party

arrgghhh...

ya ampun... satu hal yang membuat sebal baca buku filsafat adalah saling berjejalnya kata-kata "langit" bak dewata yang susah dimengerti "makhluk-makhluk berotak terestial" seperti saia dalam bukunya, fuih... T_T

banyak yang berpendapat filsafat itu sulit dan tidak menarik. tapi menururt saia, bukan karena "isi"nya saja yang rumit, penggunaan bahasa-bahasa "dewata" ituh justru malah meperparah filsafat untuk mudah dimengerti, yang ujung-ujungnya membuat kebanyakan orang keder baca buku...more arrgghhh...

ya ampun... satu hal yang membuat sebal baca buku filsafat adalah saling berjejalnya kata-kata "langit" bak dewata yang susah dimengerti "makhluk-makhluk berotak terestial" seperti saia dalam bukunya, fuih... T_T

banyak yang berpendapat filsafat itu sulit dan tidak menarik. tapi menururt saia, bukan karena "isi"nya saja yang rumit, penggunaan bahasa-bahasa "dewata" ituh justru malah meperparah filsafat untuk mudah dimengerti, yang ujung-ujungnya membuat kebanyakan orang keder baca buku filsafat :P

Pun dengan buku ini.

Ditulis oleh seseorang nabi postmodernis yang kontroversial, buku ini konon adalah salah satu karya terbaik dari Foucault. Konon, dia adalah salah seorang tokoh pemikir terbesar di abad 20. Seorang juru selamat pemikiran, yang juga seorang sekaligus sejarahwan, aktivis politik, orator, dosen, namun juga.......... seorang gay dan pecandu ganja :P

memang susah kalo baca buku filsafat bahasa inggris, selain banyak istilah yang memang dah canggih (nyaris gak ada di kamus biasa, jd harus membuat alis betekuk berlipat-lipat saking gak ngatrinya), juga penggunaan kata-kata yang aduhai, yang seharusnya, jika orang tersebut mau sedikit bermurah hati, bisa disampaikan dengan bahasa yang lebih "merakyat".

maksud saia, lebih enakan membaca kalimat "untuk hal-hal yang lebih nyata" daripada membaca kalimat "untuk tataran yang lebih konkret" kan? bayangkan jika hal itu terjadi pada buku berbahasa Inggris. oh may gad! apalagi kalau kemampuan bahasa Inggrisnya cekak seperti saia :P

Mana banyak isitilah "njelimet" lagih, seperti "transdiskursif", "eksistensialisme", "fenomenologi", "community discountinuity", "strukturalisme", "episteme", "genealogi", "bio-fasisme", "oneirocriticism", dll yang bikin stress buka-buka kamus.

padahal sebenarnya, ide-ide Foucault ituh "sederhana"--dan jenius seh :P-- tapi kalau dirangkai dengan kata-kata ajaib ituh, entahlah, kepala saia jadi sakit bacanya T_T

jd inget perkataan Wittgenstein (filsuf sekaligus sastrawan Austria), yang berujar (kira-kira ajah, kata persisnya saia lupa), pekerjaan para filsuf saat ini adalah tentang penggunaan bahasa T_T

*ditulis setelah bangun dengan pusing coz baca buku ampe mabok jam 1 malem*

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Feb 25, 2012 طاهر الزهراني rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

كتاب عظيم، يتحدث عن تاريخ الجنون في فرنسا ودول أوروبا، لا يكتفي بالجنون فقط بل وما درج تحته من أمراض، وليس فقط سرد تاريخي، وإنما قراءة تفصيلية عن نفسيات وخطابات دينية وسياسية وفكرية، كتب بمسحة أدبية مذهلة جدا، الكتاب مرعب، ويرصد حقائق ودراسات مهمة، أعجبني في نهاية الكتاب التعريج حول الفن والجنون

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Mar 12, 2011 Erik Graff rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to Erik by: James Koehnline

Shelves: psychology

By sophomore year in college I was beginning to think of becoming a psychotherapist and actually held two jobs at a psychiatric hospital during the year following, one setting up a treatment assessment program, the other administrating and evaluating diagnostic tests such as the MMPI. Then, later, back at Grinnell, I was trained in drug counseling a worked in the school's crisis center as well as in its draft counseling office. My real interest was in continental depth psychology, but the jobs a...more By sophomore year in college I was beginning to think of becoming a psychotherapist and actually held two jobs at a psychiatric hospital during the year following, one setting up a treatment assessment program, the other administrating and evaluating diagnostic tests such as the MMPI. Then, later, back at Grinnell, I was trained in drug counseling a worked in the school's crisis center as well as in its draft counseling office. My real interest was in continental depth psychology, but the jobs and the regular psych courses kept involving me in what passed for psychotherapeutics for most people exposed to it in the United States. My major in Religion was partially a front for extended, mostly independent, study of depth psychology, the department being liberal about allowing such things.

Upon graduation I went on immediately to Union Theological Seminary, majoring in their Psychiatry and Religion program and interning at a teaching hospital of Columbia University while attending seminars there, one for its psychiatric residents, another for psychiatric social workers and a third for chaplains like myself. Here, in New York, the emphasis was far more psychoanalytic than in Iowa or Illinois. Finishing seminary I intended to go on for an STM. with further study at the Institute for Religion and Health, coming under care of the UUA with every expectation of being a psychotherapist salaried by the church, our clients paying in accord with their ability to do so. My interests by then had become focused on questions of value and faith.

Sadly, the UUA discontinued its pastoral counseling program (one that Alfred Adler had worked for upon coming to NYC as a refugee from Nazism) and, more happily, I had fallen in love for a hometown girl. The consequence is that I returned to Chicago.

In Chicago I sat for the city and state civil service examinations pertinent to psychotherapeutic practice. Job offers came in, but all of them were for coercive programs, either in the prison system or in drug rehabilitation. Although I'd trained in drug counseling, I had no interest in serving in such a capacity if it had any coercive element and the positions Illinois was offering were all connected to the criminal "justice" system. I ended up working in three institutions for adolescents, all of whom had been designated psychotic, virtually none of whom were.

A few years of this and I returned to school. Illinois at that time had tougher requirements than New York. A Ph.D. would be necessary for the kind of practice I was interested in and for being able to pursue further Institute training. Loyola University, just a mile from home, had the largest philosophy program in the States, my roommate was in it, and the department was continental in orientation. Since my primary interest was in value questions, the fit seemed good, certainly better than their psychology programs.

Here, too, there was disappointment. The Advanced Standing Committee of the graduate school took a year to evaluate my previous four years of graduate study, leaving me adrift, not knowing what my requirements would be. I took courses relevant to what I thought would be my dissertation topic, then, that year later, found I had a bunch of stuff to do that wasn't relevant. Meanwhile I discovered that the department had but one person, Richard Chessick, who knew anything about my subject area. Then, having finished the course work for the M.A. and being one course from finishing the Ph.D., he had his contract terminated. Who to be on the committee? I thought seriously of switching to political economy.

Meanwhile, I got a job lead from the fellow, Bill Ellos, I'd been a research assistant to for three years, a lead that led to a job offer, albeit only part-time to start, in the dean's office of the part-time division. The people seemed nice, the job useful, besides, it would give my new wife (the hometown girl) free tuition, so I took it, obtaining another one at Evanston Hospital to help pay off the school loans. Eventually it became full-time, promotions followed, I was made assistant dean and a career-path quite different than the one I'd set out on seemed clear.

Although I continued to take classes at Loyola while working there, now I wanted to teach in one of their interdisciplinary graduate programs which would combine religion, psychology and philosophy. That seemed to fulfill the need to be useful much along the lines that being a psychotherapist had once seemed to promise. Besides, unlike most psychology practiced in the U.S.A., it wouldn't be coercive.

It was during this period of settling into the dean's office that I read Foucault's Madness and Civilization, a book which just served to reinforce what I'd read about previously in the study of the anti-psychiatry movement, the humanistic psychologists and the works of Thomas Szasz and what I'd learned working in institutions supposedly designed to help the mentally ill.

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Dec 26, 2012 Florence rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history, psychiatry, psychology

Madness in the 17th century was not easily defined. There was no distinction between insanity and other conditions for the imposition of confinement. Prisoners of the Hopital General were institutionalized because of poverty, inability to work, infidelity, religion, and ethical values. The definition & the many horrible treatments for hypochondria & hysteria vary throughout the centuries: Blood transfusions, bleedings, purges, cold water treatments, powdered lobster claw, baths, showers,...more

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Mar 27, 2013 lia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics, social-culture

Gila, apakah sebuah penyakit jiwa?

Foucolt ,Empunya post-modernist, membaktikan satu buku yang kemudian menjadi karyanya yang paling terkenal untuk membahas kegilaan. Tokoh satu ini mempertanyakan apa yang tidak pernah terpikirkan oleh orang lain, apakah gila sebuah penyakit jiwa? Untuk menjawab pertanyaan sederhana yang mungkin oleh orang lain akan ditertawakan, Foucolt menyambangi Rumah Sakit Jiwa dan para penghuninya.

Alkisah, Foucolt akhirnya menyimpulkan bahwa kegilaan adalah sebuah definisi...more

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Jan 09, 2013 Mamdouh Abdullah rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

أفضل من يملك تعريف عن فوكو هو فوكو نفسه عندما قال: أنا عاهل الأشياء التي قلتها وأحتفظ بسلطة رهيبة عليها: سلطة قصيدتي, وسلطة المعنى الذي أردت إعطاءها إياه. لست فيلسوفاً ولا مؤرخاً. أنا صانع أسهم نارية. أصنع شيئاً صالحاً في النهاية لضرب حصار, لشن حرب, للقيام بعمل تخريبي, لكنني أدافع عن إمكانية العبور, عن إمكانية التقدم, عن إمكانية إسقاط الجدران. إن صانع الأسهم النارية هو جيولوجي أولاً, أي عالم بطبقات الأرض. يتأمل طبقات الأرض وثناياها وصدوعها. ما الذي يسهُل حفره؟ ما الذي سيصمد؟ ينظر إلى القلاع كيف...more أفضل من يملك تعريف عن فوكو هو فوكو نفسه عندما قال: أنا عاهل الأشياء التي قلتها وأحتفظ بسلطة رهيبة عليها: سلطة قصيدتي, وسلطة المعنى الذي أردت إعطاءها إياه. لست فيلسوفاً ولا مؤرخاً. أنا صانع أسهم نارية. أصنع شيئاً صالحاً في النهاية لضرب حصار, لشن حرب, للقيام بعمل تخريبي, لكنني أدافع عن إمكانية العبور, عن إمكانية التقدم, عن إمكانية إسقاط الجدران. إن صانع الأسهم النارية هو جيولوجي أولاً, أي عالم بطبقات الأرض. يتأمل طبقات الأرض وثناياها وصدوعها. ما الذي يسهُل حفره؟ ما الذي سيصمد؟ ينظر إلى القلاع كيف هي منغرسة في الأرض, ويتفحص التضاريس التي يمكن استعمالها للتخفي أو لشن حرب. و بمجرد أن يحدد كل ذلك تحديداً عينياً واضحاً, تبقى التجربة وتحسس الطريق, فنرسل المكلفين بالاستطلاع وننصب الجنود الرقباء ونعمل على إقامة العالقات, ثم نحدد الخطة الحربية التي سنستعملها. هل سنحفر الخنادق؟ هل سنضرب حصاراً ؟ هل سنضع لغماً؟ أم سنشن هجوماً مباشراً؟ ولا تعدو الطريقة في النهاية أن تكون هذه الإستراتيجية.
...

ما معنى أن يكون المرء مجنوناً؟ من يقرر الأمر؟ إلى أي عهد يعود ذلك؟ هذه الأسئلة الثقيلة أجاب عليها الفيلسوف الفرنسي ميشيل فوكو في عمله الضخم: تاريخ الجنون في العصر الكلاسيكي, والصادر بترجمة متميزة للناقد و المترجم المتميز سعيد بنكراد من المركز الثقافي العربي.

القراءة لفوكو لا تختلف عن مسمى الكتاب, القراءة له هي ضرب من الجنون, والكتابة عن بحثه هذا ومحاولة تلخيصه لا يعدو أن يكون الأمر مجنوناً كذلك. عند قراءة أولية لكتاب فوكو حفريات المعرفة أغلقت الكتاب في حينه, لعلي في وقت ما أفهم ماذا يريد فوكو, وإلى ماذا يرمي في كتاباته.

عنوان الكتاب وشهرته يحملان شيئاً جذاباً … الجنون وفوكو. يكفي أن تقول جنون فوكو لتعرف كيف أثمرت تجربة فوكو في ميدان الفكر لتصل إلى معرفة حقيقة لطبيعة هذا العمل الضخم. فوكو عانى من مرض نفسي رهيب بسبب شذوذه، والذي أودى بحياته لا حقاً بعد إصابته بمرض نقص المناعة المكتسبة. عرض نفسه على أخصائيين في علم النفس, وسجن لفترة قصيرة في إحدى المصحات العقلية. من هذه التجربة سنعرف اهتمام فوكو بظاهرة الجنون, والتي كرس لها أطروحته الجامعية الكبيرة، لقد فهِم مشكلة الجنون أكثر من غيره. عندما بحث وكشف في الخيالات الشعبية والآداب والفنون والمستشفيات وأروقة البرلمان والسجون توصل إلى اكتشافه الكبير عن الحدود الفاصلة بين الجنون والعقل. استطاع أن يشفى من جنونه، وليس عبثا أنه فهم مشكلة الجنون أكثر من غيره. حولته تجربته الشخصية الحادة إلى مفكر كبير, وأستاذاً في بيركلي والسوربون و في مدارس عملاقة، وهذا ليس بالشيء القليل.

ميزة أخرى أعطت هذا الكتاب دينامكية أكبر, وهي متعة القراءة: ” لا بد أن يوفر الكتاب المتعة للقراء الذين يطالعونه”. وشعور المتعة هذا لا يأتي إلا بأسلوب فوكو الأدبي في كتابه تاريخ الجنون. أسلوب فوكو في الكتابة أسلوب نيتشوي متفجر. ويكفي أن تقرأ لفوكو كيف يقرأ لوحة بوش سفينة الحمقى لتعتقد أن هذا الكاتب ليس إلا شاعراً. لا أنكر أني واجهت عدة صعوبات في فهم بعض الفصول. هذه الصعوبات وأنا أقرأ الكتاب تحولت إلا متعة لجمال أسلوب ميشيل فوكو. حين قرأت بداية تأريخ الجنون في الآداب العالمية وجدت شخصيات روائية لم يذكر فوكو اسمها صراحة تظهر أمامي, وكأنه يحلل ظاهرة الجنون في الأدب, لا في العصر الكلاسيكي. جنون الهوى الميئوس منه هو الذي قاد هيثكليف, بطل رواية إيميلي برونتي لأن يكسر زجاج النافذة ويصرخ من داخل أعماقه وهو يشتم كاثرين إيرينشاو، ثم في نهاية هذا الجنون والصراخ يتمنى أن يلحق بها, وأن يدفن بجانبها, لأنه أولاً وأخيراً يعشق كاثرين. هذا الشخصية التي تخبئ أخطاءها داخل الجنون تبدأ لا إرادياً في البحث عن جوهر, إنها تقول الحقيقة عندما تتهم نفسها. جنون السيدة ماكبث في عمل شكسبير يكشف لأولئك الذين يجب ألا يصرخوا عن كلمات لم تُهمس إلا في آذان صماء.

السطور الأولى من الكتاب كانت مفاجأة. حين يختفي الجذام في نهاية القرون الوسطى, يقول فوكو أن هذه المدن التي غادرها هذا المرض أصبحت كيانات عقيمة وغير مأهولة! وراحت تنتظر بواسطة وسائل وممارسات سحرية انبعاثاً جديداً للشر ووجهاً جديداً للخوف وطقوساً متجددة للتطهر والإقصاء!. حين تختفي كارثة طبية ما في القرون الوسطى مثلاً كما دلل فوكو في بداية كتابه هذا, ألا يجب أن يكون هذا الاختفاء ينحى منحى إيجابياً لشئون السكان وتجمعاتهم؟ سيصبح الكائن البشري في مأمن من الإصابة بمرض مميت, فلماذا يوصف اختفاء المرض بالفاجعة!

بشكل غير مباشر, يشير فوكو إلى التنازع والاختلاف والصراع كسب من أسباب الوجود. عدم التنازع سيؤدي إلى الركود والخمول, والتنازع والصراعات سيحرك الراكد وقد ينتج منه ما يغذي التطورات الحضارية في مجالات مختلفة كالسياسة والطب الخ. الحياة الاجتماعية بأكملها ليست إلا صراعاً متواصلاً بين المصالح الخاصة. كل إنسان يسعى وراء ذاته, ولكن المجتمع ينتفع من هذا الصراع الجاري وراء المصالح الذاتية, إذ هو يحصل على النتيجة الأخيرة, حيث تنمو بها ثروته العلمية والاقتصادية والسياسية.

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Oct 24, 2012 Feijiao Huo rated it 5 of 5 stars

Thinking about there's just a fine line between a madman and genius...
Maybe the only difference is the number of their fans. Genius significantly has more fans than madmen. Their fans follow them all way, while most mad men die lonely with a single story failed to leave. That's why Focau study madmen and then conclude something about politic and power. We all know many historical figures are like madmen. Then the question goes to how the madman write their own history.
If we focus too much on hu...more

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Oct 11, 2012 Nathaniel Gallegos rated it 4 of 5 stars

A fascinating and deep book about a difficult and relatively obscure subject. What most intrigued and interested me about it was the treatment and analysis of a cultural development that has seemingly not garnered any study or serious analysis to date. It is often interesting to see gifted men and women apply their talents to the dark zones of human reason and apply an analytic to profound and culturally relevant developments in the course of civilization that have taken place largely unnoticed....more

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Jul 16, 2012 DeAnne rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy

While it is not possible to give a precis of Foucault, I'll take a running jump at it. Madness and Civilization takes an historical view of unreason, madness, passion, and the societies that create, enable, produce or punish them.

Foucault begins with the decrease in leprosy, and the rise of the Ships of Fools, his premise being that without lepers to kick around (er...as it were), madmen became the new scapegoats. Towns would load their insane onto the boats and send them crossing the ocean; an...more While it is not possible to give a precis of Foucault, I'll take a running jump at it. Madness and Civilization takes an historical view of unreason, madness, passion, and the societies that create, enable, produce or punish them.

Foucault begins with the decrease in leprosy, and the rise of the Ships of Fools, his premise being that without lepers to kick around (er...as it were), madmen became the new scapegoats. Towns would load their insane onto the boats and send them crossing the ocean; and would treat it like a carnival when foreign boats of madmen would berth in their ports. (It is important to note here that his only source for the whole section about the Ships of Fools is a fifteenth century book, written by Sebastian Brandt, which mixes woodcut images of madness with text. Scholars have pointed out that there is little evidence that these ships actually existed.)

Next he moves on to the period of The Great Confinement. "By a strange act of force, the classical age was to reduce to silence the madness whose voice the Renaissance had just liberated, but whose violence it had already tamed."

He moves on to passion, madness and discourse. "The possibility of madness is therefore implicit in the very phenomenon of passion." This is also the first appearance of Foucault's analysis of Descartes. Descartes's argument against skepticism, is seen by Foucault as evidence of the doctrinaire dogmatism of classical reason. Foucault argues that because Descartes has doubts about existing, the very fact of doubting proves his existence, and thereby proves that he cannot be mad. Essentially, his reason denies the possibility of madness. (This is a controversial interpretation.)

If any of that sounds interesting to you, then the other two thirds of the book await: discussions of types of diagnosis, doctors, the reduction of confinement and the rise of treatment, and what I think was his primary point; how madness interfaces with art; and whether one can create art without unreason.

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Jul 28, 2011 Derek Baldwin rated it 5 of 5 stars

If I remember rightly Foucault wrote this originally as a doctoral thesis, and I have to say there are many times when this is painfully clear: he frequently takes paragraphs, pages even, to make a relatively simple point in a very opaque way. This is typical of most of his books, of course.

The thrust of his argument - as I understand it - is that in western European nations at one time people who were "mad" were tolerated within society but gradually came to be seen as akin to lepers: they need...more If I remember rightly Foucault wrote this originally as a doctoral thesis, and I have to say there are many times when this is painfully clear: he frequently takes paragraphs, pages even, to make a relatively simple point in a very opaque way. This is typical of most of his books, of course.

The thrust of his argument - as I understand it - is that in western European nations at one time people who were "mad" were tolerated within society but gradually came to be seen as akin to lepers: they needed to be excluded from society to avoid contamination... he calls this "the great confinement". Asylums began to appear - the physical manifestation of this need to marginalise and separate.

Gradually the asylums became medicalised. Whereas they were for a long time hellish places in which the humanity of their inmates was not recognised, these institutions began to experiment with "curing" the madness of their residents. (As his other books explain, once medicalisation takes hold upon a way of seeing the world then it follows that different therapies develop. The field of madness became seperated into many different "forms" - depression, schizophrenia, etc, etc, we all know the labels.)

The more "humane" regimes were in fact still cruel. So, for example, a "madman" who is "calmed" by hosing him with freezing water is really being trained to be more docile, and to impose discipline upon himself, and to seem less floridly "mad", to avoid the pain and discomfort of the "treatment". Similar techniques work for circus animals (most of the time).

The genius of the book lies not so much in whether this is a valid argument but in the very careful and systematic way Foucault uses madness as a case-study for analysing how, as he puts it, objects of knowledge (in this case the madman) become the focus for new epistemes/discourses. These are the stratae upon which more modern sciences are founded (to borrow his "archaeology of knowledge" metaphor).

This is a demanding and often frustrating book but very important reading for anyone who wants to grasp some of the sweep of Foucault's vision.(less)

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Jul 06, 2011 Franditya rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wah, ini buku sip sekali. Meski nggak baca versi bahasa Inggrisnya, tapi lumayan menjelaskan maksud sang pengarang. Memang, derajat sebuah bangsa itu bisa dilihat dari caranya mengelola warganya. Bukan hanya warga yang normal, tapi juga orang-orang yang dianggap abnormal, termasuk orang gila. Kata-kata "gila" sebenarnya barusaja muncul pada awal abad pertengahan saat institusi medis mengalami kemajuan pesat. Sebelumnya istilah gila itu tak ada. Istilah yang biasa digunakan untuk mengasosiasikan...more

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Jun 02, 2010 Aurochz rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy, psychology, post-structuralism-and-modernism

The purpose of each of Foucault's major works is to criticize a major institution as a foundation of knowledge and reason. In MADNESS AND CIVILIZATION, he does just that by tracing the foundations of the idea of madness in western culture. The book shows how Asylums and Wards have been used as a tool of power to shape how we want people to live and how cultural standards and mores come to define madness as being in opposition to almighty reason.

He does this by showing how we have treated people...more

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Aug 30, 2009 Steve rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy

I was a double major in psychology and English as an undergraduate, with a minor in philosophy. When I graduated in January of 1998, I hadn't yet heard about whether I'd been admitted to graduate school and couldn't find a job teaching English, my back-up plan. I decided to turn my philosophy minor into a major, as I already had more courses than required for a minor and was only 4 away. It so happened that I was missing were mostly already determined: (1) history of ancient philosophy, (2) clas...more I was a double major in psychology and English as an undergraduate, with a minor in philosophy. When I graduated in January of 1998, I hadn't yet heard about whether I'd been admitted to graduate school and couldn't find a job teaching English, my back-up plan. I decided to turn my philosophy minor into a major, as I already had more courses than required for a minor and was only 4 away. It so happened that I was missing were mostly already determined: (1) history of ancient philosophy, (2) classical modern philosophy, (3) senior seminar. I also had one elective (I took contemporary European philosophy with Tom Sheehan). For my senior seminar, I decided to take a graduate course on Foucault and Deleuze, as I had generally enjoyed continental philosophy and especially Deleuze (in a class I had read Marcuse, my prof suggested I read Deleuze and Guattari's "Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia" and chat with him about it over coffee). Unfortunately, most of the class was on Foucault and we only covered two Deleuze texts: (A) Foucault, and (B) Difference and Repetition. However, this means I'm more well-versed in Foucault than I'd care to be. Before the class started, I talked to my prof, Andrew Cutrofello, and asked if there was anything he suggested I read before class started. He suggested three: (1) James Miller's (by the way, my father's name) "The Passions of Michel Foucault," as a biography of him, (2) Madness and Civilization, and (3) Discipline and Punish. We wouldn't be reading (2) and (3) in class, as the focus was more on Foucault's epistemology (i.e., The Order of Things, The Archaeology of Knowledge, etc.). So, I read them all -- (1) was full of stories of Foucault's sex life, anal fisting, and the like -- I had a hard time thinking of a person with my father's name writing about these. However, (2) and (3) were interesting to me. Madness and Civilization was especially interesting, as I was a psychology major, with interests in clinical psychology. Unfortunately, I took the work to be founded on historical facts, and it wouldn't be until my Ph.D. program in clinical psychology, where I wrote my history of psychology paper on changing bases of diagnoses of mental illness, that I found that Foucault's historical facts were often debated and sometimes made up.

The Mahers, two Harvard historians, published a reply to Foucault's text in "The American Psychologist." According to them, in 1494, Sebastian Brant's wrote a book called "Narrenschiff," or "Ship of Fools." However, Brant intended "Narrenschiff" to be a historical allegory, and not actually a recounting of historical facts. In fact, the only evidence of such ships were wood cutting with pictures of boats and "ruffians" on then. Foucault mistakenly took this to mean that these ships were real entities. He went on to base a large portion of his text on the idea of such things. While there clearly is reason to believe in culturally and temporally specific aspects of diagnosis, the rather radical epistemological break that Foucault was propagating was largely false. Furthermore, the psychologists, who rarely go so far as to research things they like for themselves, started publishing Foucault's work as fact, thereby leading to falsities being largely believed in the field. According to the Mahers, psychology texts in the 1980s took the satire of the ship of fools to be fact because of Foucault. If you're interested in reading their research, see the following article:

Maher, W.B. & Maher, B. (1982). "Stultifera Navis or Ignis Fatuus?" American Psychologist, 37(7), 756-761

I hear that "Madness and Civilization" was a shorted version of Foucault's text, "The History of Madness." I have not yet read the latter, and am certainly hoping that his sloppy scholarship was explained in it. Maybe that should be on my "to read" shelf, of maybe I'm too disappointed in the let-down of a seemingly good text being flawed that makes me not wanting to read it more.(less)

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May 15, 2008 Don Rea rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: could-not-finish

So far I'm about fifty or sixty pages in, and I've completely lost track of what this gibbering madman is raving about. Perhaps this is a poor translation, but after the first ten pages even individual sentences are meaningless and syntactically ambiguous. I re-read paragraphs, sometimes ten or twelve times, but I simply can't make any of this make any sense. I'll slog through for a couple more chapters to see if it gets any better, but I don't have much hope for this basket of word salad.

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Dec 31, 2012 Jessica La La La La La! is currently reading it

Shelves: psychology, manic-depression, health-medicine, history

Pascal: "Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness." (ix)
_____

If folly leads each man into a blindness where he is lost, the madman, on the contrary, reminds each man of his truth; in a comedy where each man deceives the other and dupes himself, the madman is comedy to the second degree: the deception of deception; he utters, in his simpleton's language which makes no show of reason, the words of reason that release, in the comic, the comedy: he speak...more

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Aug 26, 2012 Sarah Beth rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

They used to centrifuge sad people. I think I might have been a candidate for centrifugation back then. Her face is too sad, she sleeps too much, something like that.

I'm not totally opposed to piling the crazies on a ship and sending them downstream like they used to do. I've always like solutions that pass the problem on to someone else.

I liked the first three chapters, everything else seemed not only redundant but boring as hell.

- For a long time, certain forms of melancholia were considere...more

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Jan 19, 2013 Ben Eldridge rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

At times, a profound examination of the modern history of "madness", and its subsequent positioning as the modern "mental illness". Foucault demolishes the myth of any possible kind objective psychiatry/psychoanalysis, and the crux of his argument is that the categorization of madness serves as a social control mechanism... an exercise of power and reinforcement of the dominant social and familial systems. Being wary that this is an incomplete translation, the entire book doesn't really seem to...more

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Apr 12, 2012 Andreea marked it as to-read

Shelves: disability-studies

12.04

I'm going to finish this at some latter date. Why? Wellllll, there are eight copies of this book in the library - three are checked out, but five identical copies are still in the library. Now, a few days ago, somebody who wanted to be particularly annoying requested my copy of Madness and Civilization because they were too lazy to go look up the copies available - in all fairness, they're on the top shelf and in the medicine section - which is not at all where I'd expect to find them - but...more 12.04

I'm going to finish this at some latter date. Why? Wellllll, there are eight copies of this book in the library - three are checked out, but five identical copies are still in the library. Now, a few days ago, somebody who wanted to be particularly annoying requested my copy of Madness and Civilization because they were too lazy to go look up the copies available - in all fairness, they're on the top shelf and in the medicine section - which is not at all where I'd expect to find them - but if you get a stool and look carefully, they're not that hard to find. The fact that I had walk all the way to the library to check in my copy only so I could pick up another copy from the shelf and check it out 5 seconds later annoyed me too much so now I don't want to have anything to do with Foucault for some time.

---
When to stop listening to what somebody is saying about mental health;
Or why am I even reading this?

1) when they're reluctant to offer a clear definition of what they talk about and instead prefer incredibly obscure, vague, inaccurate and biased terms (check - Foucault always talks about "madness", never about, e.g., schizophrenia or developmental disorders - he also never makes any kind of distinction based on functionality, it's obvious that a high functioning individual and a low functioning one are regarded differently by culture/society - ISN'T IT? not to Foucault :/);

2) when they start using fictional characters created by neurotypical writers as examples of non-neurotypical experiences - erm, just no (check - Foucault hardly ever quotes nonfiction / autobiographical, medical or historical texts);

3) when they make pompous, generalized statements about truth and reason and existence and talk of metaphors and mythical journeys - all the while refusing to back this up with actual experiences of non-neurotypical people (check again and again);

4) believe me, as I read this book, I will think of more.

ALSO; I might punch you if you tell me that this is not supposed to be a "real" history - just a ~metaphorical~ ~philosophical~ work. JSGREOTUREFDSMIO if you think that the prejudice against non-able bodied people is ~metaphorical~ or ~philosophical~ you have some serious issues and a lot of privilege.(less)

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Jan 10, 2013 Hayaat rated it 3 of 5 stars

I've read this book because some reviews made me interested to know about the French philosopher Michel Foucault's views regarding the psychiatric methodologies interfering with power and social patterns.

The reviews criticized M.Foucault allegedly anti-psychiatric approach with mentally-ill individuals.

However, after reading for him, I believe M.Foucault found madness 'natural' that confinement is not a solution for it, and that it doesn't need to be 'fixed' because it's in the existence of an...more

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view all 5 comments

Hayaat No, didn't mean it's boring, but you see, Janet, I get irritated sometimes from what I like to call (the impact of the halo). M.Foucault was illustrat...more
updated Jan 15, 2013 01:29am

Janet That makes a lot of sense! I have read some books of a similar nature... as if by explaining the concepts in a lofty way, the concepts will seem bette...more
Jan 12, 2013 08:54pm

Jul 18, 2012 Brendan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy, psychology, history

Difficult to review because I wouldn't claim to have a clear understanding of everything that the author is attempting to communicate. It doesn't help that the syntax can be brutal, with quite a bit of humanities jargon. That being said, I found long sections interesting/provocative. His criticism of the evolving conceptualization of "madness" in western society is interesting and he makes a good argument that our modern understanding still rests largely on a foundation of metaphor rather than t...more

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Nov 29, 2011 Michael Burnam-fink rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: academic, medicine, history, 2011

Madness and Civilization explores two major canonical events in the transition from medieval to modern social structures. The first is the differentiation of criminals, paupers, and the insane. The second is the relationship between the insane and the agency responsible for treating them. However, in typical Foucaultian style the book elliptically skips around these main topics, instead focusing on 18th century nosgraphies between hysteria and mania and melancholia, and the various humoral theor...more

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May 13, 2013 Jack rated it 5 of 5 stars

There are certainly good reasons as to why Foucault is as vaunted a scholar as he is, and this book is high on that list of accolades. He provides a compelling history of "madness" in the West since roughly the fifteenth century through the nineteenth, and there prove to be no shortage of parallels we could draw with our modern communities.

He does not offer solutions, nor does he broach the issue of gender, which historically has held close ties with notions of madness. Still, Madness and Civil...more

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Jun 27, 2011 Timothy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy-theory

Four stars, I guess? I don't really know how to review something like this. There were several sections, including the conclusion, that I didn't feel I understood at all. And Foucault continues to frustrate me in the way that he seems deliberately obscure: while I certainly wouldn't say that he is dealing in simple concepts, they seem like they don't need to be as difficult as he is making them. But for all of its faults and quirks, this was a totally rewarding book. The idea that psychoanalysis...more

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May 10, 2012 Janki rated it 5 of 5 stars

He explores the history of madness through various stages that decided what was socially considered as 'madness'. I just admire the way he slowly brings out the social conventions and norms that every culture defines for what is considered as an 'illness' or 'deviance'. It just helps us explore the innumerable perspectives that we ignore constricted in the bubbles that we make for ourselves. Its not that before reading this book I wasn't aware and proud of being completely crazy!! But yes , fina...more

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Apr 01, 2012 Ben Hunt rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: politics, science-history

"The world that thought to measure and justify madness through psychology must justify itself before madness, since in its struggles and agonies it measures itself by the excess of works by Nietzche, Van Gogh, Artaud . . . And nothing in itself, especially not what it can know of madness, assures the world that it is justified by such works of madness"

My favorite Foucault, maybe because I understood more of it than any of his other books, maybe because it is so well-written, it's hard to say. If...more

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Dec 30, 2007 Richard rated it 5 of 5 stars

It is said that Foucault enjoyed being whipped.

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Jan 03, 2013 Samara Nouri rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: national-library

عمل نظري أكاديمي بحت تناول أندفاع الجسد والروح وتخطيهما لحدود المعقول والمستقيم والعيش داخل عوالم اللاعقل التي لاتعترف بأية حدود.

ركاب "سفينة الحمقى" هم شخصيات مجردة، أنواع أخلاقية كالجشع والحساس والملحد والمتعجرف .. وضعوا بالقوة ضمن الركاب الحمقى في رحلة أبحار بلا ميناء.

أنتشرت في جميع أوربا دور لحجز مرضى الجذام بشكل واسع في القرن الخامس عشر.
ثم تحولت الى دور رعاية لأيواء الفقراء والمشردين والعاطلين والعجزة والمرضى بالأخص الأمراض التناسلية التي كانت قد بدأت تنتشر انتشارآ كبيرآ في القرن السادس عشر....more

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Aug 02, 2011 Oliver L. rated it 5 of 5 stars

This brilliant book, which traces the shifting European "discourse systems" about madness from the late Middle Ages to the end of the 19th century, describes the process by which measures dealing with the insane shifted from exposure (as on the "ship of fools," if such things actually existed, or by wandering the countryside) to confinement (alongside the idle poor in "hospitals" and "charity wards") to paternalistic "medical" care (by doctors who, upon realizing that there were no curative tech...more

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About Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas. He held a chair at the Collège de France with the title "History of Systems of Thought," and lectured at the University at Buffalo and the University of California, Berkeley.

Foucault is best known for his critical studies of social institutions, most notably psychiatry, medicine, the human sciences and the prison sys...more

More about Michel Foucault...

Books by Michel Foucault

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

The History of Sexuality 1: An Introduction

The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences

The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language

The History of Sexuality 2: The Use of Pleasure

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“People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does.” — 257 people liked it

“Confined on the ship, from which there is no escape, the madman is delivered to the river with its thousand arms, the sea with its thousand roads, to that great uncertainty external to everything. He is a prisoner in the midst of what is the freest, the openest of routes: bound fast at the infinite crossroads. He is the Passenger par excellence: that is, the prisoner of the passage. And the land he will come to is unknown—as is, once he disembarks, the land from which he comes. He has his truth and his homeland only in that fruitless expanse between two countries that cannot belong to him.” — 6 people liked it

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