History of Madness

Abstract

The History of Madness (HM) is Michel Foucault's first major work, his longest single work, and the work that established his reputation in France. Foucault distinguishes four distinct components or forms of consciousness of madness: (1) the critical: the normative judgment which distinguishes and sanctions madness in its difference from reason or sanity; (2) the practical: an attitude of collective demarcation and exclusion of the deviant from a group; (3) the enunciative: the act of recognizing individuals as mad and identifying them as such; (4) the analytic: reflection on the nature and forms of manifestation of madness. Foucault thinks that the experience of madness in the Classical Age is characterized by a dissociation between the first two elements, on the one hand, and the latter two on the other.