Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the challenge of analyzing madness or mental illness from two diverse perspectives: human experience and human history. It introduces all the primary themes for the project by first describing some problems of modern psychology and how an approach to madness that integrates experience in history can respond to them. The book focuses on Maurice Merleau-Ponty to present a phenomenology of the pre-rational and a phenomenology of madness. It argues the importance of viewing the human as an undivided whole who, through common patterns, can access all forms of human experience, even experiences of madness. The book describes an archaeology of the irrational and an archaeology of madness.