Video essay, an introduction to Michel Foucault’s History of Madness / Madness and Civilization

by Then & Now:
Michel Foucault’s History of Madness (abridged in English as Madness and Civilization) was a revolutionary exploration of how our interpretations and experience of madness have changed over time, and how they’re not quite as ‘rational’ – or even more ‘rational – than they first appear. Everyone who was worked on the history of psychiatry since has worked in Foucault’s shadow. He looked at history not as a history of administration, of records or politics, or what the psychiatrists said happened, but as a question of something was experienced and how what we think of as timeless actually changes over time.