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Michel Foucault: the anti-history of psychiatry1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

Peter Sedgwick*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, University of Leeds
*
2Address for correspondence: Peter Sedgwick, Department of Politics, The University, Leeds LS2 9JT.

Synopsis

Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization contains a bold and influential account, over several historical epochs, of the relations between madness and society's institutions of care and control. Foucault's various theses are reviewed in the light of more empirical historical studies and are, on the whole, found wanting.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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Footnotes

1

This paper will be printed as a chapter in Psycho Politics to be published by Pluto Press, London, and Harper & Row, New York, 1981.

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