Individual perception and cultural development: Foucault’s 1954 approach to mental illness and its history.

Abstract

In his 1954 book Mental Illness and Personality Foucault combines the subjective experience of the mentally ill person with a sociocultural historical approach to mental illness and suggests that there exists a reciprocal connection between individual perception and sociocultural development. This article examines the ramifications of these connections in Foucault's 1954 works and the connection with his later historical works. The article also examines the similarities between Foucault's 1954 thoughts and contemporary intellectual thought, such as those outlined in Maurice Merleau-Ponty's existential phenomenology and in Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem's historical epistemology. In sum, my study shows that Foucault's historical analysis began long before his 1961 dissertation History of Madness. It also shows that, more than announcing the "death" of the subject, Foucault's historical analysis may have contributed to saving it.

Perspectives on Diversion in the Criminal Justice and Health care Systems

“…As systems have changed in the past, they remain open to change now. Foucault believed that “rationalism, concepts, and knowledge need not be a closed system; a priori assumptions are subject to change” (Joranger, 2016, p. 42). Diversion programs and practices are a means to change a very rigid caste-like system, allowing people in need of assistance to receive the aid they deserve rather than simply being made “docile” conformists.…”

“…; American Psychiatric Association, 2022). French philosopher Michel Foucault saw modern (1970s) psychiatry as treating not illness but deviations from societal expectations and "conventional bourgeois morality" (Gutting & Oksala, 2022). In addition, Foucault (1975) saw this system in tandem with schools, hospitals, armies, and criminal justice as a means to create "docile bodies" (p. 135).…”