The course "Abnormal" taught in the 1974/75 academic year coincides with one of the peaks of Foucault's research activity and reflects the shift in his primary research interests from the archaeology of discursive formations to the genealogy of apparatuses of knowledge and power. Using nineteenth-century forensic psychiatric examinations and texts related to the practice of post-reform Catholic confession as his primary material, the philosopher discusses the formation of a new—normalizing—power. He places the concept of the normal and abnormal individual at the center of the history of normalizing knowledge, which arose in early psychiatry and gave rise to the concept of sexuality. Foucault examines the formation of this concept within the framework of the medicalization of childhood and analyzes the procedure of confession in the Catholic ministry, thereby paving the way for his final book, Confessions of the Carnal. The course allows one to trace the movement of Foucault's thought at the crossroads of several historical and philosophical paths and, at the same time, serves as a model of insightful and witty scholarly prose.