Madness and civilization: a history of insanity in the age of reason
- New York Vintage Classics 1988
- xiii, 299 p.
Michel Foucault examines the archaeology of madness in the West from 1500 to 1800 – from the late Middle Ages, when insanity was still considered part of everyday life and fools and lunatics walked the streets freely, to the time when such people began to be considered a threat, asylums were first built, and walls were erected between the “insane” and the rest of humanity.