Book description
In this addition to the College de France Lecture Series Michel Foucault explores the birth of psychiatry, examining Western society's division of 'mad' and 'sane' and how medicine and law influenced these attitudes. This seminal new work by a leading thinker of the modern age opens new vistas within historical…
Why read it?
1 author picked Psychiatric Power as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This consummate French philosopher explores the lineage of psychiatry as an intertwined field of knowledge and form of power. For Foucault, moving beyond asylums, in the nineteenth and twentieth century armies called on psychiatry to assert the reality of military power and the functioning of military purposes. A similar relationship has taken place with the family in relation to nation-states and military establishments. The author provides many useful concepts to appreciate the psychiatrization of soldiers as shocked, exhausted, hysterical, neurotic, and traumatized, among other diagnostic categories. From this work, a significant value I gained is a historical understanding of how…
From Michael's list on the psyche of disabled war veterans.
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