Madness and Civilization

Ever wonder why we treat mental illness the way we do? What if the line between "sane" and "insane" isn't a medical fact but a social invention? This summary challenges you to see how society, not science, first created the idea of madness to control its outsiders. You'll discover how the "insane" went from being part of the community to being locked away in asylums, silenced and separated. Foucault reveals how this shift wasn't about compassion but about power, reason, and defining who belongs—and who gets left out.

Michel Foucault was one of the most influential and controversial thinkers of the twentieth century, holding a prestigious chair at the Collège de France as Professor of the History of Systems of Thought. His work radically questioned the accepted narratives of history, medicine, and social science. Drawing from his own early psychological studies and deep archival research into hospitals and asylums, Foucault exposed how concepts like "madness" are not medical facts but social constructs, created by institutions of power to control and exclude.