Psychiatry began as a product and consequence of the Enlightenment. This philosophical age had established the fact that all that is Real potentially has a place somewhere in the categories of Reason. No consideration had been given to so-called Unreason, which clearly by definition could not be included in those categories. Psychiatry was born out of a utopian idea, according to which the case of Unreason could be clinically managed by Reason within the framework of the hospital. During the French Revolution the most radical current wanted to abolish hospitals. This idea sprung from consideration of the fact that, far from being able to cure the ill, these were in fact institutions of social control. By hospitals, what they intended were general hospitals, as psychiatric hospitals were yet to be invented. In “The hypochondriac”, Moliere focuses most of all on the fascination and power of medicine over the patient. His main character repeatedly undergoes treatment with the only remedies known to medicine at the time, i.e. enemas and bloodletting, eventually reaching the point of exhaustion. The French revolutionaries envisaged hospitals being substituted by borough dispensaries. This concept was a forerunner of what is known today as the Mental Health Centre, which is an alternative care setting to the Psychiatric Hospital. As Robert Castel appropriately noted, history, on that occasion, hesitated1. Subsequently, the logic of the Restoration and the principle of controlling deviant behaviour prevailed.