Abstract:
This article investigates the empowerment of Siamese government during the end of 1890s to 1910s which was the period of Western modernization in Siam. The study focuses on an analysis of medical knowledge application to state empowerment according to Michel Foucault’s analysis approach to this issue in the early modern period of Western societies (17th-18th Centuries) The article studies the cases of applying psychiatry to control “madmen” who were marginal people in the society. From the study of historical information, it shows that before the psychiatric knowledge was adopted into Siamese society, the diagnosis and management for who was a “madman” was based on traditional Thai medical knowledge or opinion from political leaders. Once the psychiatric knowledge was brought to Siam, the diagnosis and management of “madmen” was based on this modern knowledge along with the training and punishment required to keep the “madmen” in discipline in the same way of establishment of the state power over the population who was treated as a “madman” in Western society.
