ABSTRACT
Hikikomori does not come out of nowhere and is located in the great historical–anthropological movement of madness and unreason described by Michel Foucault, which I shall detail next. Moreover, contemporary distresses, of which hikikomori is an example, can be viewed through the notions of disciplinary power and biopower. This leads to assert that psychiatry was to disciplinary power what the science of mental health is to biopower, and that hikikomori might be a fourth element with respect to Foucault's theory of the abnormal. We are experiencing a moment of wavering in medicine, which I call “the end of the clinic,” and propose avenues to rethink health and loneliness in the 21st century.
