History and alienation: profile of women's hospitalizations at the Allan Kardec Spiritist Foundation (1922-1960)

• Grant number: 20/14453-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: July 01, 2021
• End date: December 31, 2021
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Brazil
• Principal Investigator: Márcia Pereira da Silva
• Grantee: Igor Alexandre Souza Ferrari de Almeida
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil

Abstract

It was at the turn of the 18th century to the 19th century that the medical science of psychiatry began to make more direct inroads on the bodies and minds of individuals. Through some treatments, sometimes painful and questionable, that lasted until the middle of the 20th century, this science was institutionalized through the creation of specific spaces where people considered mentally ill were placed, subjected to a disciplinary process and, in some cases, according to the doctors of the period, healed. The present research project takes as an object of analysis an institution of this type - the Psychiatric Hospital Allan Kardec - which received, since its foundation in 1922, a large number of people who have been there for a varied time and reason. This institution is located in the municipality of Franca and was founded from the articulated action of a group of spiritists who inhabited the locality. This remarkably unique characteristic influenced the paths taken by the institution throughout the 20th century. Our study will be based on the analysis of the so-called Entry Books and the search for information about the factors that constitute the hospitalization of women for the period. With this, our intention is to build the profile of hospitalization of women in the Hospital until the year 1960. About the subject, historiography has already identified pregnancy outside of marriage, non-subservience to parents, brothers and husbands, in addition to non-emotional relationships conventional, as reasons for women to be considered crazy and candidates for social alienation. Therefore, our objective is to, based on the conceptions of the History of Gender, understand what was the profile of hospitalization of women in the period for the municipality of Franca and region.