It is interesting that you are reading this. It is as you know a
really early work of Foucault's. I think Foucault, in fact, I am quite
certain, later repudiated this early work and went so far as to forbid its
republication. In any event, there are some interesting comments,
observations, and summarizations of that work and that period [in
Foucault's life] in Jim Miller's The Passion of Michel Foucault. The main
pages are pp.76-8, as well as 50,63,,66,,108, 193, 73. I mean he forbad
its publication in French, and as far as I know it never was reprinted in
French. In fact, I own a copy of the now [to my knowledge] out of print
copy of the work you are referring to. What Foucault repudiates is the
phenomenological approach which he uses, and thus the results or the way
in which he 'interprets' them via the methodolgy he was using at the time.
Miller provides an interesting contextualization of Foucault working in
the mental health domain at the time as well. For instance Foucault was
aware that the hospital he was associated with used electric shock therapy
on the patients, and so he may have been witness to such treatments. There
is a discussion of this period in Eribon's biography of Foucault,, and I
believe in another biography of Foucault as well. What are your own
interests in that area of Foucault's work?
BEst, CD.