This text comes from a communication presented to and discussed with an audience of psychologists (in August 1977). Its aim was to prepare (or to awaken) the hearers to a possible direct reading of Michel Foucault's writings, especially those more closely related to the area of psychology. With this view in mind a choice was made to elaborate an "introduction" to the reading of Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique, this introduction being done by way of two approaches: the first one, more specific, is restricted to the survey of a precise stretch of the book, the "Introduction" to the Second Part; the other one, more general, intends to "locate" the book on the sequence of M. Foucault's writings (until L'Archeologie du savoir), provides a comprehensive view of its internal content and concludes with a reference to the Preface of Les Mots et les Choses, where it is raised the question of the differentiation between the "other" and the "same".
Reason and unreason; discourse; gesture; knowledge and recognition; the "other" and the "same"