At the beginning of the 1960s, Michel Foucault asked the question: who are the mad, and how has the attitude towards them changed throughout history? The result of these reflections was a fundamental work on the history of psychiatry and the author’s slight suspicions that the science of the insane has always been in the service of the state. And if so, can it be called a science? Throughout human history, those called mad were not the sick, but those inconvenient to the state. The more one thinks about it — the more likely it is that having thoughts will be used as an argument at a psychiatrist’s appointment. This edition is a fundamental sociologist’s work devoted to studying the concepts of norm and pathology. The book became a stimulus for the creation of so-called “anti-psychiatry,” a movement against the system of punitive measures to combat any kind of dissent.