In recent years the question of madness and how to define it has become the centre of a great deal of discussion. This is the question the distinguished French psychologist and philosopher Michel Foucault seeks to answer by studying madness from 1500 to 1800 - from the Middle Ages when insanity was considered part of everyday life and fools and madmen walked the streets, to the point when these people began to be considered a threat, asylums were built for the first time, and a wall was erected between the insane and the rest of humanity.