This book, part of an ambitious "archaeological" project by the French theorist and researcher Michel Foucault (1926–1984), is based on his doctoral dissertation, which he wrote after several years working in psychiatric hospitals.

History of Madness in the Classical Age (1961) is an attempt to analyze and interpret ideas about the essence of madness that prevailed in European culture from the 17th to the 19th centuries, undertaken to uncover the genealogy of psychiatric practice in the 20th century. Foucault, drawing on medieval medical treatises, past popular superstitions, and literary images, asks how the concept of madness and social attitudes toward it have changed. How did madness become a disease subject to specialized treatment? How did Homo sapiens, who took it upon himself to judge the insane, come into being?