Reasoning against Madness
Title Details

262 Pages

22.8 x 15.2 cm

2 b/w illus.

Series: Rochester Studies in Medical History

Series Vol. Number: 41

Imprint: University of Rochester Press

Reasoning against Madness

Psychiatry and the State in Rio de Janeiro, 1830-1944

by Manuella Meyer

  • Description
  • Contents
  • Reviews
Examines the emergence of Brazilian psychiatry during a period of national regeneration, demonstrating how sociopolitical negotiations can shape psychiatric professionalization

Reasoning against Madness: Psychiatry and the State in Rio de Janeiro, 1830-1944 examines the emergence of Brazilian psychiatry, looking at how its practitioners fashioned themselves as the key architects in the project ofnational regeneration. The book's narrative involves a cast of varied characters in an unstable context: psychiatrists, Catholic representatives, spiritist leaders, state officials, and the mentally ill, all caught in the shiftinglandscape of modern state formation.

Manuella Meyer investigates the key junctures at which psychiatrists sought to establish their authority and the ways in which their adversaries challenged this authority. These moments serve as productive points from which to explore the moral and political economies of mental health, demonstrating how sociopolitical negotiations shape psychiatric professionalization. Meyer argues that the gradual adoptionof punitive configurations of insanity helped sanction socioeconomic and political inequalities during a time of rapid socioeconomic, political, and cultural transformation.

Manuella Meyer is Associate Professor of History at the University of Richmond.
Introduction
Sanity in the South Atlantic: The Myth of Philippe Pinel and the Asylum Campaign Movement, 1830-52
"Of Grand Intentions" and "Opaque Structures": The Fight for Psychiatric Management of the Hospício Pedro II during Brazil's Second Empire, 1852-90
The Government of Psychiatry: The National Insane Asylum's Interior Lives, 1890-94
"The Service of Disinterested Men": Psychiatrists under State and Civil Scrutiny, 1894-1903
Breaking Out of the Asylum: Rio de Janeiro's Mental Hygiene Movement, 1903-37
Mad Spirits of Progress, 1927-44
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
"[V]ital reading for scholars interested in the growing literature on the global history of medicine and public health." JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE AND ALLIED SCIENCES
"[A] fine piece of scholarship based on solid research. It will be mandatory reading for everybody interested in the history of psychiatry in Latin America and in the history of Brazil in general." HISPANIC AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW

Hardcover

9781580465786

June 2017

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9781787440425

June 2017

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Title Details

262 Pages

2.28 x 1.52 cm

2 b/w illus.

Series: Rochester Studies in Medical History

Series Vol. Number: 41

Imprint: University of Rochester Press