SOCIETY. INTEGRATION. EDUCATION Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference. Volume IV, May 24 th -25 th , 2019. 174-182 © Rēzeknes Tehnoloģiju akadēmija, 2019 http://dx.doi.org/10.17770/sie2019vol4.3703 THE EVOLUTION OF FOUCAULT'S REASONING ON PATHOLOGY Normunds Kozlovs Riga Stradins University, Latvia Ilva Skulte Riga Stradins University, Latvia Abstract. This paper is an attempt to theoretically describe the development and transformation of the ideas of French philosopher Michel Foucault whose work on body, disease and mental illness provide a basis for an advanced approach in the philosophy of medicine. The aim of the research is to understand on the basis of the theoretical review of Foucault’ s works and secondary literature the evolution of the reasoning on pathology in different works by the French author. In the first part of the paper we describe how Foucault came to the idea that psychiatric and organic must be treated as completely different. In the second part, we ad more sociocultural context and discuss Foucault’s ideas in the perspective of developing modernity. Keywords: body, disease, gaze, ideology, medicine Introduction In the late 1940ies and early 1950ies, during his studies and early lecturing at the École Normale Supérieure the famous French poststructuralist philosopher Michel Foucault was deeply interested in history of psychology, but also the clinical psychology and psychiatry of his time. It was the time before he started his structural analysis of society and before his different “archaeologies”, when he (shortly a member of the Communist party) developed his view on mental illness in the work that was first entitled “Mental Illness and Personality” that included also a part on Pavlov’s reflex theory. Back then Foucault’s theoretical approach was based on phenomenology and was inspired by his professor Maurice Merleau–Ponty and Martin Heidegger. He believed in unity and experience of personality. But until next edition and success of this work, Foucault’s ideas changed. He developed a renewed version of the book with a new title “Mental Illness and Psychology” and with another view with no integrity of personality. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the evolution of the reasoning on pathology in different works by Michel Foucault. We used as a method the