Religion, Psychiatry, and Anthropology: a study on the Recife Mental Hygiene Service (1930-1937)

• Grant number: 22/02657-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: June 01, 2023
• Status: Discontinued
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Carlos Alberto Steil
• Grantee: Lucas Toledo Martins Baccetto
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 19/05567-5 - Historiography of anthropology, AP.JP
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/08806-9 - Anthropology, Psychiatry, and the Regulation of Afro-Brazilian and Spiritist cults, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

This project is interested in the practice and theoretical production of psychiatry at the beginning of the 20th century in its work with spiritist and Afro-Brazilian cults. More specifically, the object of this research is the Mental Hygiene Service (SHM) in the city of Recife (PE), a division belonging to the Assistance to Psychopaths of Pernambuco and active between 1931 and 1937. The choice of this Service is justified by the profusion of scientific works by psychiatrists linked to it - influenced by the medical debate and anthropology of the period - and by the institution's role in mediating with the Secretariat of Public Security of Recife for the evaluation of the granting of operating licenses to terreiros and spiritist centers. Based on the ethnographic analysis of the archives that contain the specialized publications of the Service's psychiatrists, the bulletins intended for the dissemination of their ideas to society, and the clinical records of the hospital where the institution was located, this research seeks to investigate the categories and practices used by the Service in understanding and intervening with the State in the control of spiritist cults and those of African origin during its period of operation. It is intended to advance the debates around the role of psychiatric knowledge in the regulation of spiritist cults and those of African origin in this period, as well as the effects of this phenomenon on the history of Brazilian anthropology.