The madness discourse produced in the Revista Médica de São Paulo (1898-1914)

• Grant number: 19/25193-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate (Direct)
• Effective date (Start): March 01, 2020
• Effective date (End): May 31, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Social Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Belinda Piltcher Haber Mandelbaum
• Grantee: Raquel Saad de Avila Morales
• Host Institution: Instituto de Psicologia (IP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

At the end of the nineteenth century, inserted in a context of scientific standards imposition, city sanitation and behaviors normalization, Brazilian medical class sought the legitimation of its discourse and therapeutics from the science produced in laboratories, the officialization and regulation of the profession and its organization as a class through medical-scientific productions and medical-sanitary institutions. It was during this same period that Brazilian doctors started to assimilate the evolutionary view of degeneracy, taking responsibility for the mission of national regeneration that would put the country - through order - on the path to progress. In the transition from Empire to Republic (1889), madness began to be recognized as a disorder, a disturbance of the social peace and an obstacle to economic growth of the country. This research has been investigating the discourse produced about madness by the psychiatric class in the publications of Revista Médica de São Paulo: Jornal Prático de Medicina, Cirurgia e Higiene (1898-1914). Who was considered crazy? Who were referred to the hospice? What were the justifications given to hospitalizations? Which treatments were tested in mad people? How was the hospice organized? Departing from these questions, it will be possible to outline the ideal of man and woman defended hegemonically at that period and to understand the order and moral that expected to be safeguarded in the consolidation of the Brazilian National State. The methodology adopted in this research lies in the field of Cultural History of the Social, proposed by Roger Chartier. The research is being developed around three axes: first, the critical study of selected publications in the journal; second, the social history of madness and psychiatric practices in Brazilian Old Republic; third, the reflection on how the symbolic goods were appropriated by São Paulo's psychiatrists and how it has reverberated in the way of thinking and acting on those who were considered crazy. (AU)