Mental Illness and Psychology

«Mental Illness and Psychology» (1962) is a corrected and supplemented version of Foucault's earlier essay (1954), equipped with the main theses of his doctoral dissertation «The History of Madness in the Classical Age» defended a year earlier. This book allows us to trace the emergence and evolution of Foucault's original ideas — through a sequential critical examination of concepts of madness inherent in physiology, psychoanalysis, existential psychology, and anti-psychiatry. Here he attempts to refute one of the classical statements in the history of psychology, according to which the emergence of psychiatric medicine would have freed the «mad». The philosopher, on the contrary, demonstrates that the true alienation of madness should be dated to the moment when it began to be designated and treated as an illness. The essay reflects, on the one hand, Foucault's professional experience: working as a prison psychologist and teaching the history of psychology, and on the other hand, his personal experiences of his «marginality» and «abnormality».