O autor faz uma análise na obra prima de Michel de Foucaut A História da Loucura à luz da filosofia clinica, descrevendo como a filosofia em clinica, por ajudar os ditos Loucas a viver de forma mais plena, mesmo quando são confinados e interditados pelo poder constituído. O livro desenvolve a gênese a história da loucura, a partir de questões de fundo filosófico e histórico, e demonstra que a loucura é mais uma questão de conceito e tipologias pre determinadas por interesses do poder dominante, inclusive da medicina e da Igreja. É uma verdadeira viagem onde o leitor poderá montar seu Divã dentro do hospício e acompanhar de perto o trabalho honroso e gratificante do filósofo clinico.

This book provides a detailed examination of the historical roots of psychoanalysis from ancient Greece to the late nineteenth century, focusing on social practices that were related to the founders of psychoanalytic theory and maintained within contemporary treatment. Alongside the reconstruction of an evolutionary accumulation of healing practices, the book includes linked discussions of current issues pertaining to psychoanalytic treatment and its working structure as elaborated by Freud and Lacan. There are vital political consequences for psychoanalytic practice - here articulated with an acknowledgement of these practical derivations of early pre-psychoanalytic treatments of the soul. The book demonstrates that these are neither mere techniques nor concepts of the world and the human subject, but they concern the way the problem of power is articulated. The historical establishment of psychoanalytical practice becomes legible through analysis of the traces of the elements of a political ontology, an account of the roots of those traces and the elaboration of the conceptual structure of psychoanalysis as theory and treatment, a praxis which maintains its own distinctive identity.