Professor Lois McNay talks about the life and legacy of Michel Foucault

Lois McNay was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 for a special Thinking Aloud programme on the life and work of the iconoclastic French philosopher and theorist Michel Foucault. The programme was broadcast on 26 August 2013.

Lois was asked specifically about Foucalts views on how societies treated the subject of madness.

Foucault was quite ambivalent about the anti-psychiatry movement picking up his work, she said. He endorsed some aspects of their work, but not others.

She went on to talk about how Foucaults own personal experiences as a young man, in which his suicide attempts were considered by doctors to have stemmed from his homosexuality, informed his views on the medical treatment of what is considered to be madness.

The full programme can be heard here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b038hg73/Thinking_Allowed_Michel_Foucault/