What is Madness and Civilization?
''Madness and Civilization'' is a book by [[Michel Foucault]]. Foucault wrote it in 1961 and it’s about how people understand [[Mental illness]]. == Summary == In the book, Foucault says that people during the [[Renaissance]] praised [[Madness]] and the [[wisdom]] of insane people but that during the [[Age of Enlightenment]], they started to lock up insane people. Foucault said [[society]] was trying to punish them. He said the difference between normal and insane was just an idea that society created as an excuse to lock people up and let doctors study them. Foucault said that treating [[Madness]] as a [[disease]] was actually as bad as trying to punish people for being insane. == Reception == In 1985, [[José Guilherme Merquior]] said that Foucault ignored how badly everyone actually treated insane people in the [[Middle Ages]] and [[Renaissance]] when people actually thought that being insane was worse than being evil. And Merquior said that Foucault made a lot of mistakes in the book. But in the 1990s, [[Jan Goldstein]], [[Roy Porter]] , and [[Gary Gutting]] said a lot of good things about the book. A man named Kenneth Lewes compared it to [[The Myth of Mental Illness]] by [[Thomas Szasz]]. [[Category:1961 books]] [[Category:Psychiatry]] {{Stub}}