In 1960, while working at the Institut Français in Hamburg, Michel Foucault completed his Docteur d'État thesis, Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique (Madness and Insanity: History of Madness in the Classical Age). His extensive, thorough study, consisting of 943 pages of text was a groundbreaking analysis of the complicated relations of knowledge and power in modern society as seen through the prism of mental institutions. It originally met with mixed re