Foucault: Madness as a historic figure and its delimitation in psychiatric and psychoanalytical practices

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore Michel Foucault's thoughts through the historic course of madness and its insertion in a field of opposition between reason and non-reason. The deprivation that affected madness in relation to its possibility of expressing the truth about itself is highlighted here. In that sense, the creation of psychiatry in the early XIX century is featured by the moral silence of madness which psychoanalysis will be in agreement with later on. Then, the historic development of the relationship between the doctor and the patient emphasizing the psychiatric practices and their contestation by anti-psychiatry is approached.