I'm reading Foucault without any other guidance than his bibliographic chronology so of course this means I'm completely missing out on a lot of his subtle points and inferences. I still found this book interesting and articulate. The larger idea of madness being increasingly put under the microscope of rationality only to reveal, chillingly, that it was rational man's obsessive search for his own image being sought in the madness is a mind blower. Although abstruse, Foucault has such a knack for grounding complicated, subtle arguments into examples that even though I'm sure I missed a great deal that this work has to offer I came away with enough to encourage me to keep reading his books... so I will.