The historiography of psychoanalysis in Brazil: the case of Rio de Janeiro

On the artistic production of the alienated: history of theories and practices of Brazilian alienism, 1852-1902

The article deals with the presence of artistic manifestations of inmates of the Hospício de Pedro II, the first psychiatric institution in Latin America (1852-1902). The methodological framework chosen focused on the historicisation of the framing processes of mental illness, in order to demonstrate its consequences for the notion of the subject and the art he produces and in the process of circulation of this knowledge in Brazil. Derrida's concept of archive fever was used to analyse the reasons why such manifestations and the therapies used based on them were ignored by local narratives about the artistic manifestations of individuals in asylums.

[From psychosomatic medicine to medical psychology: the theoretical and institutional trajectory of Julio de Mello Filho]

Studies on the causality of pathologies and the doctor/patient relationship based on psychoanalytic formulations received two denominations in Brazil: psychosomatic medicine and medical psychology. The physician and psychoanalyst Julio de Mello Filho took a leading role in this movement after the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Danillo Perestrello was incapacitated by illness. This study investigates how the theoretical concepts of the psychosomatic movement were structured and the institutional strategies used to establish this discipline in Brazil. From an epistemological and historical point of view, the initial notion of transforming the hegemonic medical model was seen to lose force, followed by a shift in medical psychology as a field of health psychology.

The Politics of Clinic and Critique in Southern Brazil

Drawing on a historical ethnography of how Brazil's post-dictatorial psychiatric reforms have shaped young people's lives, this paper builds on Eve Sedgwick's analysis of the hermeneutics of suspicion to show that narrow applications of Foucault's biopower concept nurture forms of resistance to bio-reductionism centred primarily on epistemic deconstruction. To unsettle this hermeneutic, I put young people's theories of power into conversation with Georges Canguilhem's concept of the milieu and with feminist scholars' work on prefigurative politics. I introduce the concepts of threading and unthreading to consider how one subject of biopower, the child-like biobehavioural figure, was continuously being threaded within a specific milieu and in relation to another key figure: the elite angst-ridden 'storm-and-stress' adolescent. Young people's subsequent unthreading and reweaving politics, flourishing in co-construction with what I call the politicizing clinic, illustrate how decolonial pedagogies can incrementally change the patterning of social life.

Algunas reflexiones sobre el concepto de pionero en la historia del psicoanálisis: examen de una estrategia historiográfica

El presente trabajo analiza la presencia y consecuencias de una de las estrategias historiográficas más importantes de las historias sobre el psicoanálisis provenientes desde el interior del movimiento psicoanalítico. A partir del primero escrito freudiano sobre historia del psicoanálisis de 1914 el concepto de pionero se ha convertido en un concepto clave como fórmula de legitimación para los adherentes de las teorías psicoanalíticas. Se evidencia como el uso de este concepto reduce significativamente la multiplicidad del psicoanálisis como objeto de investigación histórica. Finalmente, se proponen algunas consideraciones metodológicas para plegar al psicoanálisis a una perspectiva ligada a la historia social y cultural de los países en los que es recepcionado.

[Danilo Perestrello and the psychosomatic medicine movement in Brazil: from theory to institutional acceptance]

In the 1950s, the psychosomatic medicine movement emerged in Brazil, led by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Danilo Perestrello. This article analyzes the strategies developed to configure this proposal and establish this field of study. From the beginning, this movement was characterized by a plan to reformulate medicine based on psychoanalytic theory and obtain favorable reception in institutions. During his career, Perestrello published articles and books with the intention of establishing a new way of thinking among physicians and worked at strategic institutions. His withdrawal from professional work due to a serious illness in 1976 was a factor contributing to the fragmentation of the psychosomatic movement in Brazil.

Adolescent Sex and Psyche in Brazil: Surveillance, Critique and Global Mental Health

Drawing on a historical ethnography conducted in Southern Brazil, this article explores how public health programs for adolescent reproductive and mental health have emerged in Brazil and begun to intersect with the growing field of "global mental health" (GMH). The story I recount begins not in the 2010s with the rapid rise of expert interest in adolescent health within GMH, but in the 1990s, the decade when young teens in Brazil were first coming into contact with practices and approaches in research, schools and clinics that have both underpinned and critiqued the production of an adolescent mental and reproductive health sub-field. In parsing what young women's encounters with the then newly-emerging questionnaires, measurement tools, school-based programs and clinical practices came to mean to them, I use a genealogical approach to consider how histories of education reform, population control, psychoanalysis, social medicine, the transition to democracy, feminism and grass-roots politics all entered the fold, shaping the way adolescent sex-and-psyche materialized as a contested object of expertise. I end by exploring what this case can teach global mental health advocates and social theorists about practices of critique.

[The reception of psychoanalysis in Rio de Janeiro: input for the debates on hysteria, nervousness and sexuality, 1908-1919]

The research note presents the initial reception of psychoanalytic theory by psychiatric physicians in Rio de Janeiro in the first decades of the twentieth century before it became an institutionalized scientific tool. To understand the specificities of its reception, it examines, from the standpoint of the circulation of scientific knowledge and the process of adaptation to the local context, how the perceptions of psychiatrists regarding psychoanalytic theory were embedded in the then prevailing scientific theories and assumptions, initially in the dabates on the hysteria and nervousness categories. It also suggests that psychoanalytic theory should be used to deeply understand other debates of the time, such as sexuality and nervous diseases.